Good news, readers—however bad your day is, it can’t be worse than what Gerry Cahill is enduring.
He’s the CEO of Carnival, and he spoke—as you can see below—to the press before going on board the ship that suffered a major fire, lost power, listed dangerously to one side, and became a fourteen-story un-flushable toilet.
Well, Cahill looks the part—male, white, greying hair, craggy looks. Viewing the video, I remembered my Wal-Mart days of bumping into guys like this: guys who could work fourteen hours a day for six days a week; guys who knew the numbers; guys who always were taking seminars on servant-leadership, leading by example, coaching by walking around.
Leaders, you see, are not born but developed, which is very fortunate because that means—guess what!—you can build a nice little industry around it. Along with motivational speakers, the leadership guys routinely charged into Wal-Mart—eager to activate our sleeping potential and make us all proactive change agents, empower us, fan our self-development, and deliver added value and unexpected benefits to our associates and customers.
I wrote that sentence pretty much as fast as I could type, since I spent seven years writing the equivalent. Sometimes I wrote in Spanish, sometimes in English—in either language it was gibberish. I can report, however, that English is much more capable of gibberish than Spanish, though that could reflect my lack of prowess in Spanish.
Tens of thousands of dollars were spent on the two twin gods; motivation and leadership. Every monthly meeting had some section of it devoted to the topics. Had it had any effect whatsoever, we would have had a building full of generals.
It was as much a part of the building as the grey carpet and the blue walls.
“I’m going to the leadership seminar, so I won’t be in class,” a student would say.
“Isn’t there a leadership seminar tomorrow?” I would counter.
“Yeah.”
“So did you talk to Human Resources to reschedule?”
“Uh, no….”
“Isn’t being responsible part of being a leader?”
It was useless, and in the end I gave up and simply observed. My students were good people, all doing things that the organization deemed necessary. Some of them were in charge of selling fifty or sixty million bucks a year. Some of them were in charge of deciding whether it was Crest or Colgate that would catch your eye on the shelves. Some of them simply spent their days figuring out how the business was doing financially—whether the millions were rolling in at the necessary rate.
They were not, most of them, leaders. Actually, they were utterly content to be led, to be told what to do, to do it—often grudgingly—get paid, and leave. That was the name of the game: try not to get fired before you win the lottery.
My mother and brother took a trip out west, years ago, to visit Eric. Along the way, they came upon a group of Indians who were struggling to set up a teepee. It looked like a bit of diversion in a very flat landscape, so they stopped to watch.
Well, only Franny watched. Johnny got right into the action, and was soon directing the Indians on how to set up their teepee.
Say what? A Manhattan lawyer directing a tribe of Sioux?
Interestingly, none of the Indians complained, or suggested that Johnny take his white ass off their land, or told him to take the teepee and shove it where the sun don’t shine. They all parted the best of friends.
So Cahill—getting back to the Good Ship Norovirus—is going to go apologize for the five days of hell that 2300 vacations turned into. Typical move, a classic example of modern-day leadership. He’s taking charge, he’s owning responsibility, he’s standing in the front line.
He’s a fool.
Look, giving those cruise passengers a chance to vent is not going to do them or him any good. People are going to be filming him with their cell phones; it’s going to be all over YouTube, he’s going to look stupid.
What should he have done?
Gotten the passengers off the boat however he could have done it. Whether it was getting an aircraft carrier or another cruise ship—apparently several approached to provide food—or talking to the Navy, he should have found a way to evacuate the vessel and speed for home. A cruise ship can move quite quickly, and even if all the additional guests were stuck on the top deck for twenty-four hours—well, wouldn’t it be better than five days?
Carnival considered the idea, and decided no. Here’s a quote from an Email written by a vice president of the company:
"Regarding why we didn't use another cruise ship, we checked on this and all of our ships are in service right now, meaning that there aren't enough cabins available to accommodate more than 3,100 guests who are currently on the Triumph. Additionally, a ship-to-ship transfer at sea would be considered too risky," he said.
Hmmm—all of their ships are in service? So you’re going to let 3,100 “guests” slosh through sewage for five days, just not to inconvenience other “guests” on your other cruises?
Nor do I know how difficult a ship-to-ship transfer would be. I’m suspicious, grammatically speaking, of any sentence that has this shaky, waffling construction—“would be considered too risky.” Is it risky or not?
It was all about the bottom line, of course. But I think it was about something more. All of our talk about leadership and core values and corporate culture has fogged our minds, blinded our vision, turned us into worse yes-men than we ever were before. Nobody had the guts to tell Citibank or Bank of America or Merrill Lynch, “hey, these subprime loans are gonna backfire!”
No one told Cahill, “hey, we gotta do whatever to get these people off the boat!”
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