by Nippin Anand

I hear people speak about work, safety of work, learning from work, learning from what goes well, learning teams, learning organisations etc.

But we never say we want to learn about people.

Why not? Some years ago, I visited a ship at the Aberdeen port. It was a point of time in life when I truly believed in ‘learning from normal work’.

I had worked it out. Focus on everyday work, pay careful attention to the context, observe the gap between documented manuals and ‘real’ work and encourage people to talk about what really works and what won’t. Simple.

The first person I met on the back deck of the ship was an able seaman. I asked Raymond, ‘Can you please talk me through how you lower the lifeboat from the start to the end?”

Raymond said, ‘I will tell you everything about the lifeboat, Sir. But before that can I shard something with you. The company has introduced a new tax on our earnings. [As seafarers] we never had to pay taxes on our income before and it’s not small money. It’s almost 30% of our earning, and it puts us in a very difficult situation.’

Soon others joined with Raymond, and I wondered where this conversation was going. I am asking about lifeboat procedures, this is not the scope of my work.

But then something happened that took me by surprise. Raymond said, ‘I know you are here as a visitor. You can do nothing about our situation, but you care to listen. Thanks for listening, nobody from the office listens to us.’

‘Now let’s talk about the lifeboat, sir’, he said.

We spoke at length about the entire process from preparation, to launching and lowering of the lifeboat. Raymond told me about the problem with the cranking handle used for hoisting the boat in an emergency. He highlighted the extra precautions that were needed during hoisting the boat (because the original fuse on the davit winch motor had been replaced with a fuse of much higher amperage). Several other issues came up in our discussion such as communication difficulties with hand-held radios and the problem with monitoring the boat whilst being stowed in position.

I hear people speak about work, safety of work, learning from work, learning from what goes well, learning teams, learning organisations etc.

But we never say we want to learn about people.

Why not?