You align employees to what matters most by giving them the necessary tools to do their job, or they will sink your business.

Regardless of their primary job duties, all employees are responsible for representing the business in the best interest of you, the employer, and your customer.

Any customer who feels that one of your employees doesn’t care about their business represents the tip of the iceberg of severe problems in your business.  Consider the sinking of the RMS Titanic. It all started near midnight on Sunday, April 14, 1912, in the North Atlantic Ocean, four days into the ship’s maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City.

The Titanic was the largest passenger liner of its’ time, with an estimated 2,224 people on board. She struck an iceberg at 11:40 pm—and when she sunk two hours and forty minutes later a 2:20 am, more than 1,500 people would die—making it one of the deadliest maritime disasters in history.

During the day, the Titanic had received six warnings of sea ice, yet the crew failed to adjust its course.  The Titanic‘s high speed in ice-filled waters was later criticized as reckless, but it reflected standard maritime practice at the time. According to Fifth Officer Harold Lowe, the custom was “to go ahead and depend upon the lookouts in the crow’s nest and the watch on the bridge to pick up the ice in time to avoid hitting it.” Once again, like the example cited above, “It isn’t my job. Someone else will do it.”

The North Atlantic’s ocean liners prioritized time-keeping above all other considerations, sticking rigidly to a schedule that would guarantee their arrival at an advertised time. Ships were frequently driven at close to their full capacity, treating hazard warnings as advisories rather than as calls to action. In 1912, it was widely believed that ice posed little risk; close calls were not uncommon, and even some head-on collisions had not been disastrous.

Unfortunately for the Titanic, they did collide with an iceberg.  While traveling 22 knots, near her maximum speed of 24 knots, lookout Frederick Fleet sighted the iceberg.  Because of the size of the ship and the speed with which it was moving, the helmsman was unable to turn quickly enough to avoid the glancing blow that buckled her starboard (right) side and opened five of her sixteen compartments to the sea. The ship’s designers had designed the Titanic to stay afloat if four of her forward compartments flooded, but they hadn’t planned for the ship to stay afloat if any more compartments flooded.  And so, on April 15, the Titanic sank—because one more compartment flooded than the vessel had been engineered to withstand.

Consider Joseph Bruce Ismay, the English businessman who served as chairman and managing director of the White Star Line.  He was the highest-ranking White Star official to survive the wreck of the company’s brand new RMS Titanic.  And for this circumstance, he was subject to severe criticism. Do you think Ismay would have liked the engineers to design the Titanic to stay afloat if five compartments flooded?  Do you think he would have liked Captain Smith or Officer Murdoch to slow the ship down because of the sea ice warnings?  Frederick Fleet did his job, spotting the iceberg, but unfortunately, not in time for the ship to change course. As a result, an avoidable tragic disaster occurred.

Your employees need to care about your customers

When you have employees who cause customers to feel they don’t care about their business, you have issues needing immediate attention. Either you have people working for you who need to be bounced from your company, or you have procedures and processes, which are getting in the way of your employees taking great care of your customers.  Sometimes the problem of not caring can be traced to the failure to provide your employees with the tools they need to do a good job.

For example, Frederick Fleet, the Titanic crewmen who spotted the iceberg, survived the sinking of the RMS Titanic.  He was twenty-five years old when employed as a lookout aboard the Titanic.  Fleet first sighted the iceberg, ringing the bridge to proclaim, “Iceberg, dead ahead!”  Frederick did his job as well as he could. Unfortunately, it was only learned during his testimony at the inquiries that followed that had he been issued binoculars.  Fleet would have seen the iceberg far in advance because it was a highly visible blue iceberg, in calm seas, on a moonless night.  Failure to give Frederick an important tool contributed to the tragedy of the Titanic.

How positioned is your business to avoid a tragedy?

An early warning sign that your employees don’t care about your business or your customers lies in shrinking profits and a struggle to hold onto cash.  Click here to take this “free” Business Assessment to learn how positioned your business is to avoid tragedy.  Upon completing the BusinessCPR™ Business Assessment, you will receive a risk profile showing how at risk your business is to suffer tragedy from cash flow and profit problems.