Responsibility and Accountability Part 1: Command, Control, and Customer Service

This is Part 1 of a series on accountability and responsibility. As the graphic shows, the two should work together. But often the two are divorced, or at least separated. Part 1 is a vignette to frame the discussion. This part looks at a recent experience I had on a cruise ship that illustrates issues with responsibility and accountability and what poor lines of authority can do to service.

I had an interesting experience yesterday, well most of the week, really. We are cruising with my parents and my sister and her husband to celebrate my parents’ 66th anniversary. Monday, while in Martha’s Vineyard, the cruise ship had a problem with their air conditioning, which triggered a few other problems, and they had to close the kitchen. Mostly, they handled it well and sent us to the Black Dog restaurant for meals. Then it happened. We took a ferry over to Nantucket for the day, which was part of the itinerary. We expected to come back and have dinner at the Black Dog again. Instead, without consulting any of the passengers, they decided to have dinner in Oak Bluffs, where the ferry launched and landed.

Pure confusion. No one knew where to go or what to do, and no one from the ship seemed to take charge. We only knew we were supposed to go to Nancy’s. We walked out onto the outdoor deck with no clue what to do. It was in the low 60s at the time and most of us were dressed for the warmer weather of the day. Not freezing, but certainly uncomfortable. At 65, I was one of the youngest passengers, many of whom have medications to take at certain times. We tracked down the cruise director and got a van to take some of back to the ship.

Now, I think the Hotel Director thought he was doing a good thing to get us fed earlier. The problems were:

1. No one asked what we wanted.
2. No one told us anything but to go that way and find Nancy’s. There was no one waiting there for us to get us to where we should go when we reached Nancy’s or what their plan was.
3. No one on the ground coordinated what was happening and simply left us hanging in the increasingly cold weather.

When we got back to the ship, we saw the captain and outlined the situation to him. He had no idea what was going on and, frankly, got belligerent and walked away from my sister. My dad and I found the captain and talked to him. He said the hotel general manager was in charge of all that and as captain, he only ran the ship. The hotel general manager did not report to him. The hotel general manager reported to someone at corporate headquarters. I asked how the corporate guy did his evaluation. He said through the hotel director’s reports. No “the buck stops here”. Just stop bothering me.

The captain wore military eagles and is a retired Coast Guard officer. So, I guess I expected a more take charge, let’s get this fixed attitude. I understand the corporate structure does not give him command and control, but his attitude was terrible. It was like, “not my circus, not my monkeys” don’t bother me. He simply wanted to walk away from us like he did to my sister.

No apologies were offered* and we have heard nothing from the hotel general manager or the cruise director. So let us look at the two concepts in the title.

One of the principles of war is unity of command. I brought that up with the captain. He said, “Yeah, I studied JOPES.” I guess he does not realize that JOPES is a command and control system, but does not go into the principles of war, which come from Clausewitz. Surely corporate does not. The principles of war are time-tested and can readily apply to many corporate activities.

Violating them, especially unity of command, comes with a price, even in corporate structures. There is no “the buck stops here”. Situations can spiral out of control when no one has overall responsibility. Now I suppose someone at the top of the corporate structure that has responsibility, but that does not help at the local level. The captain and the hotel director have two different chains, and the captain did not seem to know where the two chains come together.

Customer service was poor, as exemplified by the numbered points above. We still do not really know what happened to the ship to cause these problems.

I wonder whether customer service suffers when there is no effective command and control. While this seems like an isolated instance, I suspect it is a window into a lot of the problems we experience in society today. People often seem to dodge responsibility, and the concept of customer service seems to be watered down. I suspect the two issues are intertwined together.

Follow-on parts of this series will explore this in politics and business and society.

*The corporation sent a letter after a day or so and offered 30% a next cruise if we booked while onboard the current cruise to make up problems encountered. But the hotel director and the captain never offered an apology or explanation.