I have been binge-watching the TV series ‘The Terror’. It’s chilling, eye bulging, sofa-gripping stuff, based on the real-life Franklin expedition led by Captain Sir John Franklin and Captain Crozier, who set sail from England on 19 May, 1845, with a crew of 24 officers and 110 men aboard two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. The aim was to find the holy grail of the Northwest Passage – a sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Arctic Ocean – that would allow an easier trading route to Asia across the North American continent.
SPOILER ALERT! The expedition doesn’t go all that well…
An iceberg damages Erebus‘s propeller, then things go from bad to cursed with both ships becoming trapped in the arctic ice. For a long time. A really long time. We’re talking years…
I’ve been watching the ice-coated crisis of the 19th century Franklin expedition unfurl on my Panasonic flat screen at a time when, on the work front, I’ve been delivering an executive training programme (of the virtual kind) for the ILO’s International Training Centre focusing on… crisis management. Serendipity? This juxtaposition of activities certainly got me thinking about some of the lessons to be gleaned from how Captain Crozier and his crew deal with the mounting hair-raising horror aboard HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.
So here are my 5 crisis management takeaways from The Terror:
I’ve been watching the ice-coated crisis of the 19th century Franklin expedition unfurl on my Panasonic flat screen at a time when, on the work front, I’ve been delivering an executive training programme (of the virtual kind) for the ILO’s International Training Centre focusing on… crisis management. Serendipity? This juxtaposition of activities certainly got me thinking about some of the lessons to be gleaned from how Captain Crozier and his crew deal with the mounting hair-raising horror aboard HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. So here are my five crisis management takeaways from The Terror:
1. Heed the evidence (beat the freeze, don’t shoot the breeze)
With Erebus momentarily out of action because of the iceberg collision, Francis Crozier, captain of the Terror and second-in-command of the expedition, recommends to Franklin that they shift all men from Erebus to Terror and head south pronto to avoid becoming trapped in winter ice (“Nature does not give a damm about our plans”). Franklin overrules Crozier’s concerns despite the mounting evidence of that the ice will thicken before they can reach open water. He cannot stand the ignominy of losing a ship and believes that the expedition can somehow still succeed as planned. But, sure enough, the sea freezes over and the ships are trapped, encrusted in the ice like Tiffanies in a tiara. The message? Good crisis management is all about dialling down the hubris, acting on the evidence and making big calls at the right time.
2. Set the right tone (but don’t mention the massacre)
At the heart of good crisis management is good communication; finding the right words and tone of message at the right time. As the Arctic ice-pack predicament evolves, Captain Crozier addresses the men on several occasions, perhaps most poignantly as they prepare to set off on the 800 mile trek South, dragging provisions and wounded men across the ice and the desolate pebble landscape of Beechey Island. The aims of the various rallying calls throughout the series from Captains Crozier, Fitzjames and Franklin are to give hope, stiffen resolve, maintain discipline and ultimately maintain humanity. It doesn’t always work out, but The Terror highlights the power of the spoken word, especially at a time of distress and looming disaster. One final word on communication: there is a grim scene is Episode 7 where Crozier, Fitzjames and Sergeant Tozer, find the decapitated remains of a group of men who had been sent ahead as an advance party. To avoid shattering already fragile morale, Crozier chooses to keep this from the rest of the men. There is a lot of talk about the importance of transparency in crisis comms, but there will always be exceptions…
3. Focus on prevention (eg: avoid lead-infected cans of food)
Of course the best way to manage a crisis is to avoid it happening in the first place. One of the factors that sealed the fate of the Franklin expedition is the fact that the cans of food that the men ended up eating for years were contaminated. In 1984 Dr Owen Beattie, a Canadian anthropologist, exhumed the ice-preserved body of John Torrington, the first of Franklin’s crew to die, from the grave where he had been buried in January 1846. The post-mortem revealed lead concentrations up to twenty times more than normal, levels that would have resulted in acute lead poisoning. This tallied with findings from the skeletal remains found on King William Island and with tests carried out on cans of tinned food collected on Beechey Island. Documentation of the original contract signed in 1845 reveals that the order for the tins was rushed; this supports the theory that the seams were not properly sealed leading to contamination. What is the lesson here? Diligent planning and risk management from the outset is the best way of avoiding catastrophe!
4. Manage morale (carnival on ice, anyone?)
In Episode 6, with Crozier out of action going cold turkey on his Whisky habit, Captain Fitzjamesannounces a wild masquerade party on the frozen Arctic. Apparently, the cargo for expeditions at that time would often include trunks of fancy dress gear and accessories for morale-boosting theatrics and cross-dressing, rum-fuelled revelry. Fitzjames’ aim was the raise spirits ahead of the men heading off on their 800 mile walk South. Living through a crisis – especially a prolonged one – is draining. Keeping a close eye on morale and finding ways of breaking through the heavy monotony of gloom, to create hope and ignite collective energy is an important part of crisis management playbook. The ‘carnival on ice’ in The Terror (SPOILER ALERT) ends in absolute carnage, fiery conflagrations and mass casualties. But, you get the general point.
5. Stay true to your values (even through the nasty business of survival)
With starvation kicking in and mutiny in the air, there are impossible decisions to make such as leaving the sick behind. It’s a hard watch. Even more horrific is the sheer desperation, leading to the last resort of cannibalism. In the words of the leering and increasingly unhinged Cornelius Hickey “survival is a nasty piece of business”. Captain Crozier makes a number of impassioned speeches, about leaving nobody behind, about remaining true to yourself. How does this relate to slightly less extreme crisis situations? A golden rule that has come out of discussions with business leaders around the world for the ILO program has been the importance of organisational culture and of staying true to your values and ethics even in the midst of the most high-octane crisis. This applies as much to a mid-19th century maritime disaster as it does to 21st-century business leaders dealing with the Covid-19 crisis and its collateral calamities.
As some of the snippets mentioned above indicate, the ultimate outcome of The Terror – and the real-life Franklin Expedition that it is based on – is overwhelmingly bleak (and I haven’t even mentioned the super-natural horror of the Tuunbaq)! So, you could argue that it’s not the most obvious case study material. But as the participants in my ILO training programme have pointed out ‘you can learn as much from what didn’t work as you can from what did’. I think that’s right.
And the series also includes one of most apt crisis management quotes I have come across…I’ll leave the final words to Captain Crozier:
“It is a captain’s duty, after all, to mind for the worst case, not for the one he hopes for”.