Harshjohari

The biggest mistake leaders make this time of the year …..

Q4 is usually the time of the year when many organizations and leaders get into annual business planning cycle

I am sure some of you would also be in the same boat

You set business goals

Reduce cost by xx%

Increase revenues by yy%

Then you start tracking these goals closely throughout the year

And then same time next year, you repeat the same exercise right ?

I believe this is a flawed approach

And you know what the biggest problem with this approach is ?

You focus on what you need to DO as a leader

G

I left shipping in 2009 to pursue the next phase of my career

Some of you may recollect that 2009 was the midst of sub-prime mortgage crisis

Probably the biggest financial crisis the world had ever seen

Almost everyone, including my family, thought it was a foolish decision

Leaving a well-paying, well-settled job during the peak of an economic crisis

Was it a big risk ?

Yes, it was !

Was it scary ?

Hell YES ! It was scary and it was crazy !!

I was not even sure if I will even get a job

And on top of it, I had taken an education loan

While I left shipping, I h

One of the key skills I learned during my sailing days was voyage planning. Voyage planning is an exercise where you need to consider several things, such as the weather conditions, ocean currents, fuel capacity, type of cargo, contingency planning.
A well-planned and executed voyage means safe and timely operations of ships and one of the activities while planning a voyage is to mark “NO-GO” areas on the navigation chart. There are areas where the ship is NOT meant to go to avoid any damage. Such areas are shallow waters, old shipwrecks, rocks &reefs, areas that have not been surveyed, etc

During my sailing career, I have traveled to several ports across the world. Before you start the voyage, you need to do voyage planning. You need to plan a journey from point A to point B. This course is actually a close representation of google maps where for north the course is 000 degrees,east is set for 90 degrees, south for 180 degree and west for 270 degree. Then courses translated onto a navigation chart where the ship has to navigate. If you want to move in a North-East direction, which is at 045 degrees but mistakenly placed it at 046 degree. Your 1 degree mistakes will drift you 60

The high point of my career was sailing as a captain on merchant ships. The captain is the most senior rank which comes with senior-most rank. A captain has provided various perks with a private luxurious cabin with a living room and day room, a private office space. Along with the perks, work comes up with great responsibility as safety of crew with lives of people on board.
The responsibilities of the captain include the ship and cargo worth of millions of dollars, the can also issue birth and death certificates. They can conduct marriages and issue marriage certificates. One signature on

One of the key skills I learned during my sailing days was voyage planning. Voyage planning is an exercise where you need to consider several things, such as the weather conditions, ocean currents, fuel capacity, type of cargo, contingency planning.
A well-planned and executed voyage means safe and timely operations of ships and one of the activities while planning a voyage is to mark “NO-GO” areas on the navigation chart. There are areas where the ship is NOT meant to go to avoid any damage. Such areas are shallow waters, old shipwrecks, rocks &reefs, areas that have not been surveyed, etc

When I was sailing on ships, one of the key skills I learnt was voyage planning

Voyage planning is a meticulous exercise and you need to take several factors into account such as :

The weather conditions, ocean currents, fuelcapacity, type of cargo, contingency planning

A well planned and executed voyage means safe and timely operations of ships

One of the activities during voyage planning is to mark “NO-GO” areas on the navigation chart

As the name implies, these are areas where the ship is NOT supposed to goto avoid any damage

These areas include shallow waters, old ship

There was no GPS in 1991 when I joined shipping. I learned navigation using heavenly bodies such as the stars, the sun, the moon & the planets.
We used a sextant, which allowed us to measure angles and altitudes, and then we managed to perform complex manual calculations to arrive at the ship’s position which was fairly accurate, sometimes within 5 meters off the actual position!
With automated position systems developed we start using SatNav (Satellite Navigation) to the current GPS and lost the significance of stars. Where there were 6000+ stars visible to the naked eye but only 58 st