- Seven Deadly Stupidities
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- The Sinking of El Faro
How does a 791-foot cargo ship navigate directly into the eye wall of a major hurricane that has 150 mph winds and 50-foot waves, and go down with all hands lost?
Courtesy Vanity Fair/Mark Nerys
Simple: When our focus on achieving a goal is so intense, we lose sight of the risks and fail to consider the downside of our decisions. We call this Being Blinded by the Upside and it is one of the Seven Deadly Stupidities.
Michael Davidson was an experienced captain, one of many who worked for Tote Maritime, the owner of El Faro and a half dozen other cargo ships. In September 2015, El Faro set out on a run from Jacksonville, FL to San Juan, Puerto Rico, a 1200-mile trip that would take five days each way with cargo of several hundred shipping containers and cars.
Captain Davidson
For the captain and his crew, this was a routine trip. Two days later, El Faro was 15,000 feet below the surface, resting at the bottom of the sea with all 33 crew lost.
There is nothing routine about being on the ocean. Between 2011 and 2021, almost 900 large ships were lost at sea. That’s almost two large ships per week. Several of these are lost without a trace: no distress calls made, no wreckage found, nothing.
Let’s go back to Davidson and Tote. As El Faro left Jacksonville, Davidson had an application pending with Tote for a promotion. The transcripts from the ship’s black box paint a story of a captain who minimized concerns about a massive and powerful storm directly in his path.
Why would the captain ignore clear evidence that his ship and crew were heading into a catastrophe? He was blinded by the upside. Davidson wanted that promotion and a series of course changes would only delay his delivery and add costs to the trip. Not cool when you are looking to advance your career.
And what about Tote? It had a command center and could see El Faro’s location relative to the storm. Why did Tote remain silent? Seems like nobody wanted to take their eye off of hitting that on-time delivery. To torture and old phrase: Something was broke, and nobody dared to fix it. Not the captain, not anybody at Tote. They were all fixated on the upside of making the delivery on time and on budget.
Captain Davidson and others may have made some serious decision-making errors, but that doesn’t mean that were bad people. The last recorded message from El Faro is of Davidson encouraging the last remaining crew member to climb to him and Davidson promising the crewman, “I’m not leaving you.”
Keys to Success
Aim high and go for the upside, but be aware of what happens if you miss.
Work through the scenarios: Can you live with not making the goal or is the task now defining your existence?
Will your quest for the upside affect others or are you in it alone? Can others who are involved withstand the breakage if things don’t work out?
Our full posts on El Faro:
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