Worse Than That

Quick! What’s the worst thing you can imagine an employee doing with a large company asset that has nothing to do with his or her normal responsibilities? Sleeping or playing computer games while flying a commercial airliner has possibilities, and so does navigating a supertanker full of crude oil through dangerous waters while drunk, but both of those cases did at least involve driving the vehicle to where it was supposed to be going at the time you were supposed to be there. Sailing a barge into a major highway bridge because you weren’t paying attention, or derailing a freight train full of poison gas because you weren’t paying attention are both fairly egregious, but again, the employees responsible were at least on course, if not very conscientious. Opinions will vary, of course, but I believe the top spot has to go to a ship captain who wrecks a 1,000-foot vessel against the rocky shore of an island so that one of his crew can wave to family members who live there…

In case you missed it, MSNBC is running a story claiming that this is exactly what happened in the crash of a passenger liner off the Tuscan coast on January 13 of this year. It seems that the captain had decided to ignore the safety requirement of staying at least 500 meters (1650 feet) away from the coast of the island of Giglio, instead closing to about 150 meters so that the ship’s head waiter could wave to members of his family who live on the island. So far there are still 29 people missing in the wreck, and six bodies have already been recovered, making 35 deaths a genuine possibility. Wrongful death suits tend not to be quite as expensive in Europe as they are in the US, but this is a fairly extreme case, given that the accident was entirely caused by human error, and none of the people who perished in the crash could possibly have foreseen the danger or taken a reasonable action to avoid it…

There’s also a tremendous risk of environmental damage, as the ship went aground in the protected waters of a preserve for whales, seals and dolphins. Cleanup might not be quite as difficult as the operation following the Exxon Valdez incident, if only because the cruise ship has less oil to spill, but ocean clean-up efforts are never easy, and they only get worse in sensitive environments. This could easily destroy the entire preserve, as well as all consumer confidence in the shipping line. And we should probably acknowledge that the ship itself is worth somewhere on the order of $513 million USD all by itself, bringing the potential bill to $1 billion or more before the suing is done…

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that any of my readers (assuming I have readers) would do something as monumentally idiotic as sailing a huge passenger ship (it’s the size of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, or about 68 feet longer than the Titanic, if you prefer) into shallow, rocky water so that a member of the crew could wave to people on the shore. I’m not even suggesting that we, as managers, should take steps to ensure that no one who could be stupid enough to do such a thing is ever given command of a major corporate asset like a $500 million passenger liner; that’s just not something you’re going to turn up on a job interview or an annual review. What I am suggesting is that we, as managers, should never assume that none of our employees could ever be arrogant, stupid or short-sighted enough to make an error this horrendous while working for us. The people who run this cruise line thought that, too…

And you know that it is only a matter of time before someone does something even worse…