DOMINO EFFECT IN CHANGE MANAGEMENT - CAPT AJIT VADAKAYIL

CONTROLLING  THE DOMINO EFFECT ,  CHAIN REACTION,  SNOW BALL EFFECT,  CASCADE EFFECT, BUTTERFLY EFFECT  , AVALANCHE EFFECT - WITHOUT TEARS --  CAPT AJIT VADAKAYIL

Two decades ago, I was coming back to the ship after taking my wife and son ashore, for some shopping. 

My ship was due for a crew "articles of agreement" renewal and I was running 15 minutes late, as my cab got stuck in a traffic snarl.

I saw my Chief Officer and Purser coming down the gangway,  as soon as they saw me—and then I knew that something was cooking.

Purser was the first to break the news .  

" Sir, there are three forces who want to meet me, and they have been waiting for 10 minutes in a single confined space .  One is the Shipping Master, the Crew Union boss, and the Company Crewing manager !"

Chief Officer said that they are right now in his day room, waiting for me .

The Purser with 30 years of experience told me “ It is very rare that these diverse "cobra and mongoose" forces sit together , so something important will be discussed?

My Container ship had just come back from USA East Coast , Canada and Mediterranean. It was an uneventful voyage.

Pretty soon , I had the gentlemen in my cabin . 

All the three accepted a chilled beer. This does NOT happen at sea.  For the crew will think that they have been sold out.

In this public sector undertaking shipping company ( SCI ), the crew is highly unionized and pretty rotten. It was almost impossible to sack a sailor as the unions were militant and too strong—coupled with weak resistance.

This was one of the sole reasons why many Captains left the company and went to foreign companies, where your word is law –you are more powerful than a dictator.  One bad report and the sailor is OUT.

I really cannot explain how bad this situation was those days. 

I was a Captain for 9 years in this bullshit system where the PRAJA literally rules over the RAJA.  

They wrangled excessive overtime ( money ) for doing little or NO work.  If it was denied they would go slow while shutting the hatch covers in rain or cleaning a hold or tank for the next cargo. 

The unions terrorized the company  with flash strikes.  Nobody dared to call the bluff. 

The unions even poured acid on the face of one of the Shipping Masters' in front of a crowd and nothing happened to them,  as they had political support.   

Really I should NOT be telling all this.  So I wont add anymore.

We had a system of “disciplinary loggings” – which every Captain exercised . But all these loggings had no value.  The Official log book was full of disciplinary log entries. The Captain could NOT make any adverse remarks on the sailor's CDC in the ability and conduct column

So it was the shipping master show spoke first “ Captain, you have NOT logged down a single sailor for 9 years. Yet, we know that your ship is the most efficient one in the SCI fleet . Your alleyways are cleaner , your crew output is more,  they say you give them good food , take care of them -- so much they even refuse to pay HAFTA to the unions ( usual thing )”

So the union leader chips in “ Captain saab, your crew is happy with you though you do NOT allow them to ARYAA bond ( cigarettes , whisky etc ) to smuggler boats who come in by the droves at the anchorage. We have this information from the Customs as you have put checks and stoppers.”

And then the company crewing manager asks me “ What do you do that the other Captains do NOT do. It is almost impossible to figure out why your crew works more when you give them just 25% of the overtime the other Captains give . As you can see it is impossible for the 3 of us to sit together with any other Captain having a beer just before article change , when fake grievances will come forth from crew for financial compensation ?”

Hard pressed for an answer I just told them “ I learnt early in life as a young officer  that  that sweetness is mistaken for weakness at sea .  And another thing to go with this is –knowledge is power”

I was at sea during times of huge CHANGE.  The dry cargo ships were getting phased out and new sophisticated oil tankers were coming in. 

None of the old timers had experience on tankers.  So in my young days we cadets ran the ship, as our officers and Captain did NOT have any tanker experience . We were bright and young and fast on the uptake. Knowing more than others was a habit , out of compulsion.  

For if something went wrong during loading –say—a hydraulic valve got stuck, we young cadets had to solve the problem, by reading the manual.  And we were good at it, as we went on board ships by merit, after passing an all India exam ( Dufferin ).

This can be projected by a simple example. I was just 2 months at sea, log promoted to Third Mate. The ship was discharging 90,000 tonnes of Iranian crude oil at Bharati Dock Chennai.  

At 1800 hours I handed over watch to the 2^ndOfficer ( via his cadet ).   Things got delayed a bit and  I was in the shore leave boat after a quick bath by 1835.

Later on, the next day evening the Captain’s wife told me this story. 

It seems Chief officer told the boatman to shove off  the quay.  There were 3 ladies in the boat— Captain’s , Chief Engineer’s and of course Chief Officers’s wife.   All of them had been sitting for 15 minutes already and the boat was supposed to leave the ship at 1815.

The boatman just told the Chief Officer off  “The young 18 year old cadet saab (Third Officer ) will come down soon.  I will wait till he gets into the boat”

Chief Officer tried to twist his arm by saying that the Cadet is the smallest rank on the ship, and the top ranks are waiting with their wives—so he must shove off –or else BLAH BLAH ”

The Tamilian boatman then  went to the Captain and told him on the face “ Saar, we all know who runs that ship.  The Cadet may be small in rank,  but he knows the ship better than all of you.  Patience!”

And then there was sullen silence all around,  you could cut the air in the boat with a knife -- with some crew sniggering .

So what I meant to say is that I grew up in an atmosphere of constant CHANGE.  And I can say that change was very poorly managed, causing most of the crew and officers severe problems at sea.

I have put a post on change already.

Read it,  for it will come in handy for what follows.

Punch into Google search CHANGE MANAGEMENT VADAKAYIL

If you just Google  "change management" you will see 1.3 BILLION ( 1300 million ) posts on change management.  The above post will be better by miles, than all of them.  

No, I am NOT being cocky. 

This is the type of confidence 30 years as ship captain can give you. Once a ship sails out the sailors are isolated.  The captain is responsible for them all the 24 hours in a day , for every single thing , almost like mother hen.

I have deliberately omitted DOMINO EFFECT in above post , for it requires some amount of wisdom, or it will be like giving a match stick to a dang monkey.

What is domino effect?

Watch this video, first.

As you can see a tiny finger push can down something as big as a World Trade Centre, building.

I once attended a company seminar. I was to be the captain of a new French oil and chemical company ship. But they call in many company officers who are on  leave—and most of them come as this is the chance to stay at company expense in a 7 star hotel for a couple of days, and wine and dine with long lost friends. 

So the Director of the company takes out his company magazine and tells the audience. “Can anybody tell how the magazine if different from the others you have seen in your life?” 

When it came to me without opening up the magazine I said “ PASS, since I am the Captain designate of your ship, I will answer last.”.   Pretty soon it came to me.  

Everybody else had failed to find the right answer.  

So I had a cursory glance and said “ Your company magazine is about the people you employ and interact with ”. 

The answer was right, and so I got some some applause. Yes, organizations can’t exist without people.  People make the difference in every business. 

To achieve a high performing culture, the right type of people must be recruited , engaged and retained.  A leader who suffers incompetence is himself incompetent.

You must realize that every organizations is an interconnected system . Change in one area has a direct impact on other areas.

Regardless of how long it took you to set up the pieces, once you push that first small piece over, it takes seconds to cause a change reaction that brings everything to the ground. You don’t need to go around pushing all of them.  If you have to do that you are NOT a bright leader of men.  

Above : A stupid leader .

Once a leader has set up the dominos the way he wants , he will not allow anybody to change or adjust anything without consulting him. At the same time he will take care to prevent a negative domino effect by placing buffers at places he chooses and by avoiding a linear sequence .  He must make sure the changes, or the people making the changes, aren’t like a bull in a china shop.

Above: A wise leader.  In reality he does NOT do it himself. He causes the next domino to anticipate this crash and create a buffer space  OR  he gives him more weight .

A ship is unlike a shore industry. People usually come for a short contract of 4 months. The leader must know the pitfalls of such an arrangement where suddenly he loses a valuable member and gains a suspect member who needs to be familiarized..  Delegation works abdication does not.

Implementing change includes communication,  creating employee commitment, and measurement with feedback systems . It is important to remain flexible and open to adapting the structures and processes .  Commitment will not come unless employees understand why the changes are happening and how and where they fit into making them successful.

 Above: An a$$hole of a leader who cant think for nuts.

Put your people first , during times of change.  Challenge them, engage them, and support them. Provide for your team and they will provide for you. .  Even though the pieces to your business aren’t actually plastic dominoes,  you should treat them as such in your mind. 

Because once the dominoes start to fall , putting the same pieces back , as good as new, will be almost impossible and it takes a long time to set them back up.

Can you believe this?

The domino theory was a theory was used by USA to justify war against an unsuspecting country. During the 1950s to 1980s,  they speculated in a mindless manner that if country came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect.  The domino theory was used by successive United States administrations during the Cold War to justify the need for American intervention around the world.  

The US President  Eisenhower was the first to refer to countries in danger of Communist takeover as dominoes,  in response to a journalist's question about Indochina in an April 7, 1954 news conference.  In addition to protecting free states, of course, this intervention would also ensure that the United States would have a toehold , then a foot hold and soon the driver’s seat is making moolah out of this “would have fallen like a domino” country’s economy.

So this is what President Eisenhower said in Aug 1953,  "If Indochina goes, several things happen right away. The Malayan peninsula, the last little bit of the end hanging on down there, would be scarcely defensible ... all India would be outflanked. Burma would certainly, in its weakened condition, be no defense." Eisenhower acknowledged that it would be possible to stop this chain of events by major intervention even after Indochina fell, but he said that halting the process at any later point would be more expensive than stopping it in Indo china BLAH BLAH BLAH “

Below:  US airforce planes spraying deadly AGENT ORANGE on the Vietnamese.

The domino theory was basically a call for the United States to pick South Vietnam as the place to take a stand against communism (sic). 

So do you know what happened?

Punch into google search AND THE WINNER IS VADAKAYIL

This US bullshit theory held that if South Vietnam went communist, next would be Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma , India and so on. The feeling was that unless the US took a stand in Viet Nam to beat back communism, the forward march would be inexorable. 

The Domino Theory states that every failure is in fact a series of failures that play upon each other-- a physical cause that’s triggered by a human cause, which is in turn fed by a latent cause.

In the 1977 US President Richard Nixon defended America's destabilization of the Salvador Allende regime in Chile on domino theory grounds.  Borrowing a metaphor he had heard, he stated that a Communist Chile and Cuba would create a "red sandwich" that could entrap Latin America between them.  In the 1980s, the domino theory was used again to justify the Reagan administration's interventions in Central America and the Caribbean region.

In the 2003 invasion of Iraq neoconservatives argued that by invading Iraq a democratic government could be implemented, which would then help spread democracy and liberalism across the Middle East; this has often been referred to as a "reverse domino theory".

DID I NOT WARN YOU , THAT THE DOMINO THEORY IN THE HANDS OF A MONKEY,  IS LIKE A MATCH STICK..

An important characteristic of the Dominic Effect is that the initial change should be minor.  For example the moment the price of crude oil is raised  by the OPEC countries, the other countries will also immediately revise their prices , and costs of everything jacks up, sooner than later.

In the stock market , when a company makes an announcement  to issue bonus the immediate reaction is that the price of the company shares will rise quickly. This is because the mere announcement  indicates that the future stock earnings are going to be high. The investors look at maximizing their profit and invest in this profit making company, while actually they would be in the red. Because of the increase in the demand of  this company's share the price of the shares rise. 

Conversely if a mischief maker uses “paid up media” and spreads the rumors of the  company's  bankruptcy,  within no time the investors will withdraw ALL their investments from that company's share and the price of the share will fall down drastically.  

This is how Rothschild make an ass out of the naive John Bulls after the Battle of Waterloo. Nathan Rothschild received a message from a long distance carrier pigeon and first spread the rumour that England lost . 

After he mopped up all the shares in the stock market ( panic selling ) for a song , he then broke the news that England won,  and Napoleon lost.  After this England has always been in Rothschild's pocket.

A business organization will spend  years, setting up the pieces together in a pattern that yields growth.  Then at one point – some idiot adjusts or replaces one of those pieces and that change inadvertently knocks over the other pieces – and it causes  the domino effect. 

Organizationally, the domino effect can be caused by the replacement or addition of new technology- it could be an acquisition, or downsizing of the organization. A simple variable can be both cause and effect. Reality will not be still. And it cannot be taken apart!

A chain reaction is self propagating and self sustaining.  

In a chain reaction, positive feedback leads to a “self-amplifying chain” of events.  This is the principle for nuclear reactors and atomic bombs with amazing output power. . If a reaction results in a small energy release making way for more energy releases in an expanding chain, then the system will typically collapse explosively until much or all of the stored energy has been released. This reaction cannot be reversed.

A cascading failure, a failure in a system of interconnected parts,  ( example a power transmission grid ), where the service provided depends on the sure operation of a preceding part,  and the failure of a preceding part can trigger the failure of ALL successive parts.  In a cascading effect, there is a dimension of hierarchy, i.e. it goes from top to bottom, so that one domino can topple several dominos below it, and they will topple others below them.  

The Domino effect is a wonderful metaphor to talk about what happens in organizations and teams - where both good attitudes and the bad ones have a tendency to cascade rather percolate.

The Butterly effect is explained in the Vedas and this is the reason why Hindus do Agnihotra Yagna .  The Stonehenge on which Agnihotra was done , was made by the Indian Aryans (Dryuhus ) who migrated outwards after the river Saraswati dried up in 4000 BC. . 

In modern Quantum physics it is proved that  when a butterfly flaps it’s tiny wings, it produces a domino effect a sequence of events in the atmospheric resonance and trajectory. Leading to potential events disrupting the equilibrium, and balance of nature, such as the potential to cause a tornado.

We as humans, also have the capacity to create the Butterfly Effect.  Our thoughts, the frequencies, the vibrational resonance we operate from, can alter, and determine our physical surroundings, and external space. In Quantum Physics, the theory being that thought waves produce particles, as demonstrated by the “Double slit experiment “.

The common analogy is with the rolling of a small ball of snow down a snow-covered hillside, as it rolls the ball will pick up more snow, gaining more mass and surface area, and picking up even more snow and momentum as it rolls along. Those individuals who fall into addiction are victims of the snowball effect.

The avalanche effect is where one small change causes other changes in the system that are more significant. Even the loud sound of a gunshot can trigger an avalanche.

Change can be defined as an alteration in the existing field of forces which tends to affect the equilibrium.  Change is inevitable in the history of any organization.  Organizations introduce changes through people.  A change agent is a person  who acts as a catalyst and assumes the responsibility for managing the change process.  Organizational development is a term used to described a variety of change-oriented activities.

I used to work in a Norwegian company before, the largest Chemical company in the world at that time.  They splurged big and we used to have our seminars ( 5 days of cocktails and fun ) at Al Sharm resort in Egypt,  where the US presidents have their pleasure jaunts and  meetings with world leaders.   

One day a pumpman forgot to shut a valve and few litres of some liquid chemical went to the water in a European port.   This company with hundreds of ships is no more— as they have outsourced whatever ships they have remaining..

All of you know what happened to mighty Exxon right?

In order for any change to be effective, it is necessary to ensure that the change gets integrated in the organization, it is stabilized, and it becomes a part of the organizational working.  Change is, therefore, a very complex process.  You cant build a sky scraper on poor foundation and push your luck with a horse shoe for ever.

Let me end with a true story—a message for sailors who read this .

At sea , to claim insurance and to protect the back sides of the shore bosses we have doctored software for accidents .  

We are forced to lump ROOT CAUSE analysis tools, where as soon as the blame comes on the sailor's incompetence or negligence , it stops .  And then the poor sailor is victimised.

So why did the third mate have a collision?

The root cause arrives by the RCA software says he slept on the bridge , which is a crime, and the third mate did NOT follow watch keeping company orders as per the manual.

You sailors must take this further.

Here is a true case , of an European Third mate, who sailed with me. 

Why did the third mate fall asleep?---He could NOT sleep in his rest hours. 

Why could he not sleep?-- Because he was very worried 

Why was he worried ?-- Because his best friend told him that his wife was seen in a pick up bar. 

Why was his wife --? --because her husband has NOT send his allotment for past 3 months. 

Why did the allotment --- ? --because the company did not remit the allotment. 

Why did the company---? --because the owners dis not send the funds despite 10 reminders. 

SO THE ROOT CAUSE IS -- THE RICH SHIP OWNER DID NOT SEND FUNDS.

Grace and peace!

CAPT AJIT VADAKAYIL

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