Learning by Training

By Arend van Campen

2020 PASSED BY

A moment of reflection when I look back and wonder what happened to our industry, our society and our world last year. I wrote earlier that ‘business as usual’ won’t be likely nor possible any longer, but that a new, sustainable method is needed if we’d like to preserve our yields and social cohesion.

Venture capitalism is not that method. When Uber or Amazon grow more, most of our shops and businesses in our town centres will be closed. Hotels will suffer and professional taxi drivers will be left standing on the side of the road while a freelance Uber driver picks up the fare for half the price. How many people can we employ if hundreds of thousands of jobs can presently only be done by the cheapest laborers coming from south-east Asia, Central America of India? Shipowners profit from lower wages, but that profit can’t be sustainable unless ever more costs are cut. Several luxury cruise liners won’t survive the economic lockdowns taken by scared politicians who overlook proportionality and actual harm the majority of their citizens.

But what about our oil, chemical transport and storage sector? How can we survive lower demand, less travel, less consumption because the average family will not be able to support any luxury for some time to come? A re-design is needed.

I know I may repeat myself once more. I foresee a need for communication, for cooperation, for conversation between all players in our industry and with those that are interdependent such as subcontractors, service and supply companies. This can be done in 2021. HCB will invite you to an online information sharing platform. With this collected information we can then create a feedback loop map by which to predict the future for the sector.

Your input will be valuable as a risk management tool based on Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety. Thus the needed variety to understand the risks and mitigate them are awareness, knowledge, information, capabilities, capacities and so-called attenuators and amplifiers. The complete, but flexible requisite variety - i.e. information by which to minimise risk - can be used to predict what will be happening on the short and long term. The technology and science to do this is available.

The time of mechanistic, empirical determinism is over. The world has become too complex (wicked) to solve by outdated methods that have caused them. A new set of instruments are here, they are obtainable, but only for those entrepreneurs, CEOs and managers that are not afraid of change. Asking governments to bail them out, to subsidise green deals, or banks for a loan will not be focusing on ‘capability building’ but makes the industry dependent on politically ulterior motivation, and unscrupulous banksters, which increases risks.

TTT worked out how to implement these exciting new methods to achieve goals and reach destinations for any organisation, so they can stabilise and stay sustainable, not just in the context of nature, but as self-organising living systems ensuring continuity. Perhaps you will read this and ask how? I wish you all a Happy New Year and a creative 2021.

This is the latest in a series of articles by Arend van Campen, founder of TankTerminalTraining. More information on the company’s activities can be found at www.tankterminaltraining.com. Those interested in responding personally can contact him directly at arendvc@tankterminaltraining.com.