This is a previous article I wrote in 2017, published on LinkdIn. Enjoy.

At the end of last October I was asked whether I wanted to rejoin the production organisation. Given the vessel it concerned, the part of the organisation the request came from and my previous roles,
experiences and ambitions, I took most of one night to think it over. The next morning I jumped on my motorcycle to the Kinderdijk yard to take up my current role and challenge.

In harsh organisational circumstances, the global shipbuilding and work ship industry took some hard hits the last 2 years, it felt like coming home however. It took a couple of weeks in getting
to know the vessels’ production team, many of the guys I met for the first time. After launching in December we transported the vessel to the Krimpen aan den Ijssel yard.

It’s been roughly 3 months now since launching and I can only be proud about what all production disciplines were able to achieve and especially overcome. I’m quite sure however the most challenging phase is about to start and will continue until the Minerva is handed over.

My last article was written last year looking back a year in time, when I was an outfitting supervisor. In this article I’d like to look back just one week and share an anecdote about a conversation I
had which made me reflect a little again. So what I want to share is an encounter with two colleagues during my round on the vessel. We met in the ships steering gear room which is being cleaned in preparation for final painting. These two guys are part of the cleaning crew, one is a general
janitor and the other a grinder. We started with the usual “Hellos'”. But it quickly turned into a fun and well needed inspirational conversation of 10 minutes. It continued with one of the guys saying “We see a lot of what’s going on on the vessel and we want to ask you, as the production boss,
some important questions.”

They continued drilling me about production team roles and responsibilities, planning, quality problems, what they thought was the biggest production issue and my role in reporting and explaining to my superiors. One of the problems they thought they saw was with certain subteams on the electrical side. They told me about how they witnessed certain inefficiency and unnecessary rework. I listened carefully and in the end I told them they were actually right on most of their observations. From my own experience I gave them my opinion on how to construct a
successful team and that the cleaning and grinding is an essential part of the production process. I was slightly amazed about the level of knowledge these colleagues, given their specific roles, had about the developments aboard the vessel and technical challenges. Two things stood out however:

The first was the way they were able to describe my natural conduct in the production team and what they thought this told them about my character and effect on the team. This made me realise that most of what we do or say as team members is noticed by all surrounding us, and can have an impact how insignificant you yourself might consider it to even be.

The second was the pride they have about helping construction of the vessel. It reminded me of an anecdote about president JFK meeting a janitor at NASA, for those interested see for example http://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/how-to/growth-strategies/2014/12/what-a-nasa-janitor-can-teach-us.html

To conclude I’d like to say that this encounter was a well needed brake from the daily on goings and provided an opportunity to reflect. Leave me a comment if you’ve had similar encounters or want to share your own thoughts on team work, team composition and essential elements for mission success! If I interested you in reading more about some of my experiences in shipbuilding and business, check out my article on “Maximizing your added value”.