Giampero Soncini, CEO, SpecTec Group gave a presentation entitled ”Homo Informaticus vs Homo Nauticus”. He noticed that shipping industry has immensely changed in the last 30 years, going from an almost deregulated environment, to one of the most regulated in the world. In these last 30 years, the working conditions of crews have also changed, and not always for the best: the phenomena of criminalization of seafarers, the arrival of piracy, the economic crisis, the plethora of new rules and regulations have made their lives difficult. He explained that the use of IT can alleviate the burden, however the shipping industry is a very late adopter of advanced IT to manage ships. During his presentation, he examined some of the reasons behind this attitude.
Being in the information technology in the shipping industry all of my life, I woulk like to convey a little bit of the problems and the issues that Ive seen so far. There is definitely an obstacle, a resistance within IT and shipping. Definitely, people are not early adapters; shipping people are not very keen in utilizing ERP system which is absolutely common ground in any other industry in land based industry. Some of these may be related with personal interests. People dont want to be controlled; some of these people do not understand the advantages and benefits of a lot of personal cases. Definitely the shipping industry is suffering from this lack of awareness in the type of the IT.
One interesting thing that I find out is that it isnt a problem only in the shipping industry; we all have an issue with technology, this is not something new. For those who like history, you may remember the Luddites, the people who were against technology with the steam machines during the industrial revolution in 1811 in England. They want to literally destroy the machines because they did not want technology to take their role. But you have to understand the reason as software is only a tool. It is simply something that we are using in order to make our life better. When you go to a supermarket, you are absolutely familiar with the fact that the cashier will use a bar code system and when you go to buy something you dont expect a guy on board a ship, for example say I need a spare part, Ill be back in two hours, how to scan the whole ship to find out if we have it in a shop etc. You normally expect to take whatever is there or located into a computer. But when it comes to us, chief engineers, its getting a little bit more complicated. Ill try to explain why. First of all, we are definitely resistant to changes. All of us. We like our habits, we like take our cup of coffee the same way with two spoons of sugar; we like to do things as constantly identical as possible. So anything that changes our habits, it is seen as a danger to our own life – changing the way we work is pretty difficult. It is something that we dont like to be imposed on and therefore as managers we have to find the ways to commit people to the changes.
Why do people resist on? The main issue again, is totally personal. When I am confronted of something new, I will ask myself if I am going to be able to use it. We are losing power. Imagine I m a procurement manager and I know everything about my suppliers. And all of a sudden, Im asked to insert all of the information to software so that the junior trainer can almost have my same know-how. He will find out exactly who supplies water, in what price, in which time and so on and therefore, all of a sudden, so I feel my position is undermined. I will feel threatened and I will feel oh my God, now Im going to be obsolete, I cost too much money Im going to be substituted by computer. So all these activities go even if you dont thing about it. In reality your brain is thinking about this for you. And therefore it is with the loss of job security especially in times where there are budgets cuts.
IT is perceived by most as a dangerous change to his/her own lifestyle:
- Will I be able to learn
- Will I look antiquate
- Will it tell my boss that I am not doing the right job
- Will it keep in memory all my mistakes
- Will it allow younger people to bypass me
- Will it make me redundant
- Will it stop it from doing what I want/need (for me only.)
So the task of the management when a new IT system is implemented or even a navigation system is implemented is to explain the reasons behind it and to fight against this resistance which is embedded in us.
Now the interesting part of my activities has been to identify within an organization the people who really like to be involved in changes, the ones who dont give a damn about it but they will do it because in any case they have to do it, the ones who will resist and will explain, maybe will motivate, but will be against, and the ones who will be against but will not say so but will try everything they can to undermine the project. These are the more dangerous ones. So you have four types of individuals in a company:
- The enthusiastic
- The followers
- The objectors and
- The undergrounds
The enthusiasts are the ones that you can talk to, you can bring new software and they will say I love it, I will be the first one to use it, can I please do it etc. Obviously as you can understand they are very rare. If we find one in the organization we are lucky, depending on the size, maybe two. But it is definitely very rare. But of course, they will see the innovation as a challenge. They will see that it is something good to have for the company so they will present a positive image not only to themselves, because they will say that if I learn enough, maybe Ill have a better career. I see it for the whole organization. So these are very good people.
Then you have the followers. Essentially you need them. The followers are the 78%. We are all followers. Just look at the train. There is one locomotive and a lot of wagons behind. We are lot of us followers. We follow our politicians, even if we hate them. They are locomotives unfortunately; we follow them. They are compliant so you need them. You need the leader but you need also them.
The objectors, you will identify them immediately in any meeting by the way they are sitting. They dont want to be involved. They are negative. Sometimes the negativity is important, because you dont want to be surrounded by people who always say yes of course, because you are the boss. You need some people to give you a negative feedback because it is important that you get it. But of course you have to identify them and convince them until they stay with their hands crossed and notice that once I do a lot of you, immediately open your arm which is good, because it means that he became more receptive to what Im saying. As soon as you open, you say ok, this is interesting. So you have to open them up.
And then the worst part of the all; the undergrounds. These people sometimes have a personal interest, sometimes even economic. They dont want innovation and so they do absolutely everything to undermine any project. And these are the dangerous ones. If they are at a high level there is no way. Its very important to identify the people who say no I dont want a system, I dont want another solution, because its going to undermine me, I dont want it Ill do everything I can for it to fail. These are the people who really try to block the system. That they will not come to trainings, that they will do everything in their powers.
When you start an IT project, you have to involve everybody. To tell them what your expectations are, how you are doing it, especially you have to say we are not doing it in order to substitute all of you with the computer, because the computer is a tool, you have a screwdriver and you have a screw but you still need somebody to operate it. Its only a tool but you need to explain it, to find out what exactly the goals are and what you expect from them. So the people are also involved into the project. They dont become just the victims of the project.
Can sailors and software live together? I was the first user of my software and Ive been involved now for 17 years and Im happy to say that Ive been doing this for 30 years and it really works. But it is important that you remember what I just said, because Ive seen a lot of time projects not going as well simply because of the human factors. Because the software is a software. They are all the same at the end of the day. Changing is a must, progressing is a necessity. Remember that habits are terrible to have and very difficult to be broken.
Above article is an edited version of Mr Soncini’s presentation during the 2015 SAFETY4SEA Forum which successfullyconcluded on Wednesday 7thof October 2015in Eugenides Foundation Athens attracting1100 delegates from 30 countries representing a total of 480 organizations.
Click here to view his presentation video