Democracy on board

[ QUOTE ]

..if it works with two why not 5.

[/ QUOTE ]

The maths is against you:

Potential for disagreement amongst n people is (n-1)factorial

(check it out:
1 person = 1 point of view = 0 potential for disagreement
2 people = 2 points of view = 1 potential for disagreement
3 people = 3 points of view = 3 potential for disagreement (A vs B, A vs C, B vs C)
4 people = 4 points of view = 6 potential for disagreement (A vs B, C or D; B vs C or D; C vs D
)

By the time you're up to 7 people, there are 720 times more potential for disagreement than with 2 people.

I think your intention is laudable, but fails on 2 counts: Firstly not everyone will have the same interpretation of the common good, hence rifts develop (e.g. enjoyment vs speed; safety vs thrills); secondly human nature emphasises the individual over the group, and conscious efforts need to be made to over-ride this.

Needs leadership - not easy & almost forgotten in the last 20 years.

Andy
 
Mike

Sorry - I missed your point - been a long time since I saw the sketch - brilliant

Anyway time's up, I'm not going to argue anymore. sorry


Ian
 
I want to see the Das-Boot man overboard drill please -

Is it? 5 people - one overboard - 4 left - now lets all sit round in a circle - then

"What shall we do, what's best then, who does what".
Uh - turn the boat round, sorry that wasn't an order, do you think we should, - who 'd like to steer?
Who'd like to point, oh no I'm steering, no I do steering on a Wednesday, ah VHF - oh you'd rather point ......

Headline:
Man drowned two days ago, 4 headless chickens still somewhere deciding who should do what, when and how..



Ian
 
[ QUOTE ]
Headline:
Man drowned two days ago, 4 headless chickens still somewhere deciding who should do what, when and how..

[/ QUOTE ]

The scariest part of that is that 2 years ago it was a headline!

The Ginger Tw......Git
 
I refuse to accept that this question should ever be asked. You take other people on your boat, be they crew or family, unless they are profesionals employed by you to conduct the voyage. YOU are the captain and as such have the ultimate responsibility for the safety of your guests/crew.
 
Das_Boot,

You sound like fun to sail with, but your chosen approach won't work. Your approach works with two people who live together who have spent a long time learning how to compromise.

You need to listen to everyone and then make your decisions. But everyone has to follow your decisions. If they think you're wrong from time to time, and they will, people will have to accept it. That makes for safe sailing.

Jeremy
 
Well the group has spoken with an overwhelming voice.

I would add a slightly different point. People, especially less experienced people, are much happier if they know the ground rules with regard to things like tidiness, use of heads, use of water, general hygeine, coming on watch on time, making a cup of tea for one or for all, turning off the gas, etc etc. It will cause simmering resentment if someone is, for example, brushing their teeth under a running tap while someone else perceives that water must be conserved and is more frugal.

Part of the skipper's role is to ensure these groundrules are established. That does not necessarily mean giving orders, but on day one have a conversation like this: we have this much water, we can avoid the need to stop if we do this, but we might start to smell, how would we like to handle that. Discuss it, listen to concerns, make a decision by saying something like 'OK, so how about if we all do this, this, this. Is everyone happy with that? Then all feel involved and all know what is expected.
 
Re: OK! give it a go

What's the worst can happen? It's unlikely you'll all drown.

Perhaps your right. Maybe only hierarchical crew structures do cause all the accidents. You can dream.

There is no recorded incidence of a leaderless group ever achieving anything, but hey, using salesmans logic, that next attempt is going to work out just fine.
 
Re: OK! give it a go

Excellent epitaph for the drowned sailor methinks. "Hey next time it's going to work out just fine"..........
 
Re: OK! give it a go

As an afterthought. Maybe having to think about doing things differently makes you think about how you do things now.
As William Faulkner was fond of saying people want more than anything to maintain the status quo.
Even if I am wrong at least I have given the subject serious thought. There were some good points made that I will have to take on board when formulating my aproach.
I am however going to try to sail without anyone beeing in charge. I want everyone on board to have an equal stake in their safety. I want them to think for themselves.
I concede this can only be done if all on board are satisfied with the level of competence of all the others. If there is mutual trust I think it can be done. However this will need to be tested in practice where it might fall apart.
 
Re: I\'ve got a company

with a flat structure. Everyone understands their responsibilities and their entitlements. We all do much the same job but I get paid more and get my own way more often. The people I employ love it and so do I. They set there objectives and get the job done. Need a day off, no worries as long as the works done. Need help? Then ask. Need more forms to fill in or mindless criticism then go elsewhere. Everything runs really great until it goes really wrong. Then I sort it out, we try to find the cause, make sure it doesn't happen again and off we go.

Now I'm a great recruiter, a great deligator (cos I'm lazy) and I've 25 years experience of doing what you advocate. I'd bet you can't do it on a boat for any length of time. Let me know how you get on.
 
Re: I\'ve got a company

I think I might give shares in the boat to the crew that way they will all be owners and share responsibility.
I would have to institute a give back system when they leave the boat.
I will let you know how it goes.
Recruiting is my middle name lazy my first but I am crap at deligating.
 
All the emergencies

erm no, lackk of skipper can precipitate emergency. Not tother way around. Most skipperish briefings are in calm times and preventative, not the "arg man overboard now!" type. At times when i haven't done this, there have been accidents.

Examples include a seniorish IPC bod who came on board in marina with his kids and suprisingly for them in uk it's a no shoes boat - as are all med boat - but they had socks on (unheard of in the med) and on explorting down the c'way steps they went flying. My fault ultimately - i sh've said shoes off for the boat, socks off for you, butdidn't because he's sort of older and wiser and more boaty and it was his kids and etc - and because i didn't sort of take charge of his kids on my boat - which i could easily have done altho i didn't think ahead nor think of the danger at the time.
 
Re: All the emergencies

Just a quick question- have you started to discuss your ideas with your prospective crew? And how long before you go? Just being nosy.
 
Re: I\'ve got a company

Think I'm coming in this debate a bit late but have to make a comment as it strikes a bit close to my own heart.

I've spent most of my life with a viewpoint not too dissimilar to d_b's - i'm not a marxist or anything that fancy, I just refused to believe that I had the right to boss people about (and hence was a very passive person).

However, Since leaving uni my graduate employer sent me on a few courses about the role of leadership and general team dynamics my viewpoint has changed somewhat.

I am now of the opinion that the best leaders are those that don't want to lead i.e. people like d_b and me. And this is why:
Firstly, you have to accept that the larger a team gets, the more it needs a co-ordinating element to ensure that it works as one. If everyone goes off and does their own thing then there is a chance that important tasks will be missed simply because everyone was doing something else and thought that somebody else was doing that task.
A good team can co-ordinate for itself and a good system can help (eg, checklists to ensure that everything is done) but both of these take time to develop and in the absence of these the best option is for somebody to take the task of co-ordinating.

There are two types of people who can take this role. There are the autocrats(dictators) who control the team and make them do as they say and there are the democrats who monitor the tasks and ensure they are completed using the pooled wisdom of the team.

The problem is that when people see the role of co-ordinationg they instantly think of 'leading', 'bossing' and a general hierarchy. This leads to naturally dictatorial people to try to take the role while democrats will shy away from it regardless of ability to fulfill that task.

D_B, we are both democrats - we believe that a decision is more likely to be correct if everyone has an input and we believe that no-one has a right to be dictatorial to the rest of the team hence we naturally avoid the role.

This is a decision that we have both made and the only way of guaranteeing that it is fulfilled is by taking the role of co-ordinator/leader.

If you accept the responsibility of being skipper, you are not being dictatorial. In fact you are doing the opposite. You are stopping a potential dictator from filling that space and are guaranteeing that all crew will be consulted before decisions are made. As a democratic person there is only one potential weakness when you accept the role - we naturally seek to improve the quality of the decision when sometimes the quality of the decision is less important than the timeliness that it is executed. It is important to identify when this situation arises (albeit rarely) and react accordingly. Not because we are imposing ourselves but because that is what the team wants you to do - there just isnt enough time for them to say it.

As an aside, I like to look at it a different way: there are two ways that decisions can be made, there is the traditional top-down heirarcy but if you turn it on its side you have a left-right decision making process. For example. A car design engineer decides how the factory worker puts the car together and how the car buyer drives but he is not the boss of either and neither feels oppressed by him. There is no reason why you cannot be the skipper and make the important decisions without oppressing the crew.
 
Re: I\'ve got a company

Thanks for the reply you are right in what you say. I am just trying to stear away from the traditionalist way and to concern myself with the idea that there might be better ways to get things done.

Funnilly enough you mention checklists this is one thing we have on board both my wife and I sometimes go through them it does not seem to matter that we duplicate the job.

Going back to the dictatorial style and the idea of responsibility my wife and I are co-owners of the boat how do we separate responsibility.

Do the dictators subjugate their wives to their will.

If I owed the bank money for the boat would I need to bring the bank manager on as a co-skipper.
 
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