It amazes me the speed of this campaign and indeed, life in general. I remember those initial meetings where I put my name forward to run with this campaign. This was nearly 2 years ago, and it seems like it was only yesterday. So much has happened and continues to. I firmly see why people look forward to just being on the boat, with a simple outlook and minimal (albeit repetitive) daily functions to complete.
2 years to run a campaign is not uncommon in the ocean rowing world and it’s not without a huge level of support and assistance. One thing is for sure “you only know what you know”, and “you have no experience in ocean rowing until you have experience of ocean rowing”. You must rely on data gathering by speaking and engaging with those who have done it before. With this much time to define a campaign you are afforded many opportunities to reflect. Reflection is an opportunity to identify the paths trodden, and if you are willing, it offers an ability to evolve as an individual/team or redefine good practices while changing those that are not so good (either for you or for those coming next). I’ve chosen to write about our campaign and how I feel the balance has gone.
Firstly, I must establish that this is a reflection of our team, not me as an individual, but our ability to balance the many components that make up what I believe to be a successful campaign model. Detailed loosely below is the 6 pillars we worked on, but as you can imagine the additional strands that are created from each pillar are endless. There is always something to do.
As we approach our 100-day countdown, I am thoroughly proud of what our team have produced and the attention to detail that they have all committed too. The balance and struggle are real and anyone thinking of starting their own journey needs to recognise this otherwise it will consume you. We are all managing full-time, demanding roles and all the team except me have moved jobs and houses throughout our campaign. Finally, we mustn’t forget the families. The families deal with our incessant talk of the Atlantic and the “who is doing this” and “why we have to do that” conversations and the countless hours on the phone, on Zoom or just researching, I estimate that each individual is picking up an extra 8-15 hours every week on top of work and family commitments. This must be understood before embarking on such a campaign.
Why has it gone so well for us? In my humble opinion we listened. We spent the first 2-3 months just listening to as much of the experience out there as we could. When everyone insisted that we needed to understand each other and what we all wanted to achieve from this epic adventure, we did. You will notice that these are our foundations.
For the most part, these pillars are developed in isolation, focusing on small goals within each part of the pillar. Focus shifts from pillar to pillar during certain elements of the campaign for obvious reasons; for example, the physical pillar is an enduring element that runs up until the day you deploy. We have used our training serials to monitor our smaller physical goals and amended our training plans to suit the overall goal of injury free, endurance rowing.
Our platinum sponsors Made to Measure Ltd have provided us with individual mentors and this has allowed us to work on all sorts of mental and behaviour issues. I have personally found this extremely rewarding. My thoughts and dare I say feelings are appropriately challenged, not to tell me I’m wrong, but to make me aware of any biases or thought patterns/behaviours that could be seen differently by other members of the team – hugely rewarding! This practice and through listening in the early stages have allowed us to come up with signals or code words that allow the others to know something is wrong without saying something is wrong. It offers an opportunity to level the field of play for the individuals of a team who will naturally be feeling different at different times and through no fault of their own. They may not have picked up that something is wrong with another member or they may not notice that it’s their actions making the other person feel this way. Either way we can approach it sensibly and keep the boat moving without sacrificing our standards or foundations.
The medical and nutritional pillar are just practice. You can not practise too much in any pillar but these two, they will make or break your campaign. The other pillars are important, naturally but you can finish without team/physical/mental and vessel resilience, it would be miserable but possible. Without the correct nutrition or medical practice, it becomes life threatening and must be managed as such. We have a superb training lead in Phil, and he is fully conversant with our nutritional needs and his knowledge is amazing. His years spent as a military diver means he knows the risks around water and his medical knowledge is testament to this, but we don’t take this for granted. Instead we all need to be elevated to his skill level so we can support him, if he needs it.
The last 2 are just about being present, engaging and supportive. The more time you spend on the boat or together as a team, the better your resilience will become. Your time together will start to define your team character and be valued by all team members as you believe in your goal and each other. We opted for 3 prolonged training serials instead of catching an afternoon here or there. We gave them themes, ‘Crawl-Walk-Run’ (hopefully the adolescent terminology is recognised and understood as a progressive way to develop our knowledge and understanding). This also doubled up as an opportunity to develop our team resilience, for you only really begin to know someone when they are hungry, tired, cold, wet and whilst they may fool you for a day, it’s very difficult to do so over several days when you are still feeling hungry, tired, cold and wet. The vessel and team resilience are drilled inconspicuously but constantly (or at least as often as possible). These final 2 pillars if captured right will be the ‘how good’ the campaign is. They exemplify our foundational requirements and support the other pillars by spreading the load of our goal.
Some may question that there isn’t a financial pillar and naturally you could argue that there should be. I was worried from the start needing to raise that much capital through sponsorship, but I believed in our narrative and was convinced that if we continued to press the engagement correctly, we should be ok. I’m grateful that we achieved this in good time and could then focus on other areas.
My very first formal presentation to the chain of command had 3 threats;
1. Financial.
2. Medical.
3. CV-19.
Whilst we have managed to reduce the risks to each of the above, we recognise that we are only one instance away from elevating them back to a high risk. This is normal. We mustn’t get complacent and think that we can clear all threats. We do have the opportunity to exercise and practise those threats to minimise the threat and indeed the risk.
I am confident that as we approach the start we are in a very good place. The model has allowed us to identify what and how we are doing things but it’s not a blueprint to success. Success is established early on and that is down to the team, the engagement with each other and how secure our foundations are. As a team, we know our goals, we know what we are prepared to sacrifice to get them and we know what we can’t control. Even if we can’t control aspects, we can prepare for them changing our course or our goals and we have planned for that too.
I can’t wait…………………..
#teamwork #dreamteam #inspireeachother #teamworkmakesthedreamwork #inittogether #believecommitsucceed #resiliencepillars #listenandlearn #noegos #eatrowsleeprepeat #twac21
Project Lead,
Capt Scott Pollock