6 Key Lessons Construction Can Take From the Titanic

The Titanic ship is a historic icon anywhere in the world, either from its real history or from its 1997 motion picture with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. One way or another, it is famously known as the unsinkable ship that did sink. Let us dig into great lessons learned from Titanic to inspire you and your team at your construction company to do better and succeed at your projects.

Si cet article est destiné à inspirer la réussite, vous vous demandez peut-être pourquoi nous nous intéressons à un bateau qui a coulé. Le fait est que, bien souvent, nous apprenons mieux dans des situations douloureuses. Apprenons donc des erreurs des autres pour les éviter dans nos vies et nos carrières.

Voyez grand et foncez

Innovation dans la construction est essentiel au mot et innover, c'est faire quelque chose qui n'a jamais été fait auparavant. Qu'il s'agisse d'un produit ou d'un processus, vous faites quelque chose d'entièrement nouveau ou d'une manière totalement différente. Titanic left its mark in history even though it sank in its maiden trip! Over 100 years later, we still think about it and talk about it.

If you can dream about something great, find your way to make it happen. In the construction market, a lot can be based in math and science. If this is not your role, find the people that are able to support your idea and that would devote to it as their own. Many times things are put aside or denied for lack of reference or a guide on how to do it correctly. When we are doing something for the first time, you have space to establish what you believe is the best way to do it.

Do your homework and research about the possibilities. Build parallels about other inventions and correlate the kind of invention you are proposing. When presenting your idea, show not only the technical part that this is doable but what this will mean to your company, market or even to society as a whole. Show your vision!

Suivre les améliorations

Reviewing things in search for improvements is a deeply needed exercise for business resilience and continuity. One must be able to revisit its creation from different perspectives and identify points of improvements, even though you might be criticizing your own work. There are many aspects of a construction project to be taken into consideration and many times things can only be seen when they are done.

Listen to your team, to your co-workers. What do they have to tell you? What is going on in the project? Bonne communication dans le domaine de la construction est fondamentale pour le succès. Visitez vos projets et voyez aussi les choses de vos propres yeux, surtout si vous êtes le maître d'ouvrage. Thomas Andrews était l'architecte naval en chef du Titanic. Comme il l'a fait pour tous ses projets de bateaux, il s'est rendu à son voyage inaugural pour rechercher les améliorations possibles, des points esthétiques aux points techniques.

Les risques sont à prendre, choisissez les vôtres avec soin.

We all know what happened when the ship had only 20 lifeboats instead of the 46 originally planned. You will not be able to control all the aspects and you will have to leave things aside. Choose carefully what you will fight to avoid and what risks you will choose to take. Ignoring them for they are less likely to happen should not be an option. It was a sad decision taken in the Titanic case. Plan what should be done when the risks actually happen. Have plan B, C and even D.

Les attentats du 11 septembre 2001 sont une autre histoire tragique qui a changé notre façon de faire de la construction. Une fois de plus, après un moment tragique de l'histoire ayant entraîné de nombreux décès, les travailleurs de la construction se sont attaqués aux risques. Dans ce cas, aujourd'hui sécurité et évacuation Les procédures sont prises beaucoup plus au sérieux qu'auparavant. De nombreuses solutions nouvelles sont apparues par la suite pour remédier aux points douloureux constatés dans cette affaire.

Les humains sont faillibles, prenez bien soin des vôtres.

The Titanic was close to being perfect, in the eyes of its chief naval architect, thought to be unsinkable. Yet, after a few human mistakes, it took over 1,500 lives with it. The point here is one thing is your construction masterpiece another is how humans will deal with it. Accept this and prepare your team to understand that. We are not perfect and we will fail at some point, more than once.

The human factor needs to be considered among the risks and it ultimately needs to be addressed. After all, construction is done by and for humans. Most things around us are touched by construction. This market has a huge impact on people’s lives and, therefore, an equally huge power of transformation - for better or for worse.

Lead them to their best to minimize the problems. Encourage them to always seek les meilleures solutions de construction et non la solution de facilité pour contourner les problèmes. Donnez votre propre comportement en exemple pour inspirer les autres.

Faire face à la musique

Montrez l'exemple, on reconnaît un vrai leader quand les choses vont mal. Lorsque l'on a déclaré que le Titanic n'avait d'autre destin que de couler, Thomas Andrews a fait face à la musique de "son" navire et a dirigé l'évacuation pour soutenir le sauvetage du plus grand nombre de personnes possible, en commençant par les femmes et les enfants. Lorsque les officiers du navire qui ont survécu ont été interrogés à New York, il a été unanimement qualifié de héros qui a fait passer la vie des autres avant la sienne et qui est mort pour cela. Nous avons déjà dit que les gens font des erreurs et que vous en faites partie. Ce n'est pas un problème en soi.

The issue here is: how do you behave when you or your team make a mistake?

Do not abandon the boat! Stay with your team, support them to solve the most urgent points first and seek a solution. Looking for something or someone to blame will not make you look good and more importantly will not solve the problem.

Your team and company are your ultimate responsibility. If they do something wrong, you did so. Take this to your hands and lead them to the path of teamwork to put the fire down out of the issue the best possible way. This will bring you loyal employees who, feeling respected, will devote their best to your team, project and company.

Peignez-moi comme vos femmes françaises

Even at a management or executive level, you may face a problem that is not in your power to solve. What do you do then? Get inspired by the fictional case of Rose and Jack. In the film, they already had a sense that something wrong was going on, but the official information was not yet at their level. Rose then asks Jack to paint her as one of his french women in one of the most iconic film scenes of recent cinema.

The lesson to be learned here is if something is going wrong it does not mean that all is going wrong and that nothing good can come out of it. If you know what is going on, do you ask yourself what you can do so support the response team to solve it? Do you offer some help? Do you look at the people around you? These were some of the main brave and noble actions our heroes in the film did. Rose and Jack intensively lived, loved and helped others in their path as they could.

What Did We Learn From the Titanic?

Titanic made history in many aspects, teaching us that even in the saddest stories one may find positive points to be learned and followed. Here we highlighted 6 key points to inspire you to achieve more and to find your own learning path.

According to us, the most important lessons learned from titanic should be:
Do not be ashamed to think or to be different. Lead and support others on your way up, always taking your share of the responsibility. Great minds may shock some people with their perspectives but, at the same time, they are the ones changing things for the better.