Some of you may have come across the current daily reports on Sky News from Geoff Meade, Sky Reporter aboard the Navy's HMS Trenchant (aka 'The Perisher') - the real live 'You're fired' for aspiring Captains of UK's nuclear submarines. Geoff Meade is the first journalist to be let aboard a nuclear submarine.
Though Geoff's main focus is on conditions aboard HMS Trenchant the real drama is the real live simulation happening as a cadre of 'would-be captains' are put through the 'mill' to see if they have what it takes - for some it will be the end of the career...........
The Pass/fail course is called 'The Perisher' as this group of student-captains get put through the paces of leadership competency above a nuclear submarine. It's interesting that the crewmen try to suss out who will last and who won't - sound familiar?
As the Captain of HMS Trenchant states it's all about '.......leading under demanding circumstances for a period of months'...' and 'not coming second.....'
They're all assessed by 'The Teacher', an experienced officer and assessor with feedback being pretty instantaneous and at times fairly brutal. For HR, note that there are no on-hand coaches and mentors other than 'The Teacher'. As it should be.....
But back to HMS Trenchant. No deodorants are allowed aboard due to their interfering with the air purification system and there are only 3 bathrooms for 130 men and little sleeping room. I have yet to hear of the first woman applicant but I'm sure it will be soon but there are certain obvious constraints to overcome....
The cost is put at some £2 million per 'Perisher' which sounds costly but not everybody gets to run a nuclear submarine and the weight of responsibility that goes with it.
An exercise perhaps for budding CEOs
Sounds like the requisite course for any potential public Plc CEO to undergo and earn the spurs to earning all that dough. It wouldn't go amiss in the public sector either. Just maybe we might avoid some of the poor leadership that seems to be so prevalent. And the cost certainly doesn't need to be anywhere near of that of the Navy's.
In an interesting parallel, Some 20 odd years ago I was involved in the design and participation of a similar type assessment exercise though for managers in a realistic operational setting which involved trained actors and simulated events which was to be later repeated in another organisation. Those who were involved all say the same thing. They never forget it. The question is why don't organisations use more of this type of assessment? And it doesn't have to be a pure Pass/Fail thing.
Because let's face it running some of these private and public sector organisations is infinitely more expensive. When it comes to leadership there seems to be far too much industry 'talk' and too little assessment 'walk'. Testing is a great way of assessing leadership capabilities and of course gauging talent (or lack of it).
I have remarked before how organisations appear to have like many other things put the cart before the horse when it comes to management.
Rather than pre-assess and ensure competency before placement it would seem that wider practice is to promote and then coach - a very expensive endeavour if there is no short limit placed on the coaching time.
There is also one of those classic sport-business cross-overs which has been misinterpreted. At organisational level, coaching should really be about enhancing/maintaining superior performance (talent) similar to top sports-people, not trying to coach out deficiences that should have been spotted 'a priori'.
In other words too much of coaching at management level is reactive, rather than proactive in an organisational setting - it's also rather costly. But we should always remember that to be a manager of people requires the manager to be a competent coach as it is a fundamental part of a manager's role.
If its not what are you paying managers for?
Back to HMS Trenchant
As Geoff Meade comments, exercises demand each Perisher to 'perform a mind-numbing mental calculation of the course and range of the pursuer. It's the only way of simulating the mental workload of command ........... The strain reduces some candidates to their knees as they buckle under the effort.'
Sounds like this would have been particularly useful in the banking world of late........
