Recently I learned a very valuable lesson in leadership that I would like to share. The culture at Sixthman is very team oriented and I am a huge proponent of exploiting the rewards that great teamwork yields. We have an Operations Department, a Marketing Department, a Call Center Department, an IT Department and a Finance Department. Additionally, each cruise has a team assigned to it made up of one person from each department who meet weekly to lead their cruise to success. They develop ideas and strategy, take those back to their departments for feedback, and then make decisions at a subsequent meeting. Its our first year doing this and people really seem to like it for many reasons. It promotes the notion that each cruise has its own personality, people are in the loop, and everyone is gaining perspective of the overall company. However, we made the common mistake of not providing enough direction (See Marine or Astronaut Blog) and discovered a few months ago that by defining some boundaries, the teams could be more productive.
So now to my point. There were several responsibilities that fell solely into the lap of one person with a particular expertise while the rest of the company was able to share responsibilities and collaborate within their departments and on their teams. Our friend Peter has been tasked with developing and maintaining our entire booking engine and the IT backbone, Carla was asked to lead our box office and to execute the seating for all the cruises, Lauren was asked to lead special projects, and Melissa was asked to manage the relationships with the artists performing on each of the cruises and to motivate them to spread the word.
A few months ago, we hired a young man named Michael to work with Peter on development and IT services, and recruited Jana internally to work with Carla on the box office. Since then, I have seen a new excitement in both of them and have attributed it to “being rescued from the island”. Peter and Carla have always shouldered the load without fan fare and made huge contributions to Sixthman, but I feel like they are going to surprise themselves with a healthy stride and energy from being able to collaborate daily with another talented person.
The guilt phase set in as I was beating myself up for not seeing this months ago and, just as it began to subside, a new wave fell on me as I realized that Melissa and Lauren are still stuck out there on their islands alone. (Probably with only a volleyball for a friend).
Learn from my mistake here, and please tell Melissa and Lauren that help is on the way! Good thing we have some ships at our disposal and know what a muster station is.
-Andy