The danger of the Yes Man
In an industry where expectations and costs are high, the temptation can be for the team around an owner to say 'yes' even if the answer should be 'no'. Captain Danny Keeven asks whether it is time that owners dare to say 'yes' to a captain who dares to say 'no'.…
In an industry where expectations and costs are high, the temptation can be for the team around an owner to say 'yes' even if the answer should be 'no'. Captain Danny Keeven asks whether it is time that owners dare to say 'yes' to a captain who dares to say 'no'.
A couple years ago there was a captain who had to take a relatively big yacht to the other side of an ocean. The owner told him to leave at once and even though there was severe hurricane risk, the captain decided to follow orders and head straight into a hurricane of serious proportions. Unsurprisingly, the yacht suffered severe damage that took it out of service for at least 12 months for major repairs. Thankfully no one was harmed, but this unquestioning adherence to the owner’s request put the yacht and crew at serious risk.
The law is very simple: the captain is fully and solely responsible for everything that happens on the vessel under his or her command. This means that a captain should say question anything that comes outside what I call “the triangle of good and safe practice”, being: safety, human capabilities and physics.
I wonder if it all comes down to unrealistic expectations. Over the years we have created an industry where vast sums of money are paid to achieve arguably unattainable levels of perfection. The result is that owners expect a ‘yes sir’ approach to their wishes. They don’t want your problems, they want your solutions. When it comes to captains, this is particularly dangerous.
A big part of the problem is unfortunately often the managers. A yacht manager can be a big help to a busy owner, helping them to manager the decisions on the everyday running of their yacht. However, while it enables owners to distance themselves from this aspect of ownership, leaving the details to someone else, the managers also have the effect of distancing the owner from his captain and crew.
The draw of a manager is also the claim that they will cut the operational costs of running a yacht – a naturally appealing thought for any owner. However, the problem lies in managers promising owners things that are unobtainable. When things inevitably go wrong, they tend to blame the captain and/or crew of the vessel. This then confirms these owners in believing that a distance between their captains and crew and themselves has been a good idea all along. A vicious circle.
The relationship owner captain should be one of mutual trust. It can be difficult to attain this with a manager as the go-between. I was once in a situation in which I had to deviate from my intended course to seek shelter due to rapidly deteriorating Mistral wind conditions in the gulf of Lyon. I promptly received a sat phone call from the manager asking why I was off course when he had seen on the internet that a nearby weather buoy only showed a wind speed of 15 knots. Despite explanations he was unsatisfied and wanted me to keep his deadline, ordering me to go back to course. In the end, I told him that if he disagreed with my decision, he could fire me on arrival in port, but for now I was the captain on board and I would take the course I deemed safest. As it was, despite the 70-knot winds, we arrived only 20 hours later than planned but without a scratch and were able to begin our scheduled charter on time.
Perhaps it is time once more to look at the relationship between captain and owner (and manager), reevaluate the culture of saying ‘yes’ at all costs and instead think about saying ‘yes’ to a captain who dare to say ‘no’.
Click here to become part of The Superyacht Group community, and join us in our mission to make this industry accessible to all, and prosperous for the long-term. We are offering access to the superyacht industry’s most comprehensive and longstanding archive of business-critical information, as well as a comprehensive, real-time superyacht fleet database, for just £10 per month, because we are One Industry with One Mission. Sign up here.
