Competence

Not everything, but not unimportant

We were about halfway through a shutdown.  300 people, focussed on our Transhipper.  As is normally the case, most of it is going alright, but a couple of things were causing a problem.

I was involved in a conversation with two of the team just before I took this photo – both contractors. One a permanent contractor, who’s in all other respects a permanent employee (for a variety of personal reasons, he wants to remain a contractor).  The other, a Fitter & Mechanical Supervisor for one of our key external contracting companies.  Different people, different backgrounds & ages, but known to each other and have worked together on and off for the last 4-5 years.  Both extremely capable in their fields (mechanical maintenance, of all sorts, on most equipment, with mining gear being the current focus).  They’d both be in, or close to, my Magnificent 7. 

It wasn’t a long or effusive conversation – we had a pallet of new components that needed to be assembled, then the old assembly removed, and the new one fitted.  The location was difficult to access, and you really should do it in a particular order.  It was mainly one of them describing what was needed, and the other saying, “Yep”, and “OK”, and occasionally seek a slight clarification, “Are we freezing the bearings with dry ice, or nitrogen?”, “Are the new bolts up there?”, “Can we jack the shaft higher than that?  It might make them easier to get off”, “Do we need to change the Permit for that?”. 

Unfortunately, “Yep” in these conversations very often means, “I don’t understand what you’re talking about, you’re just confusing me more – can you just piss off and let me work it out myself?”  It didn’t here – I knew both were understanding what the other was saying and meaning.  A Communications Consultant would say they were using verbal and non-verbal prompts, asking open questions, and recapitulating.  It all took about 5 minutes - one was confident the task was assigned, the other knew what he had to do.  The job was done when I got in the next morning – our contractor and one other bloke had finished it before crib. 

Two other crews of 3-4 tradespeople had failed to complete this task, failed even to really start it, the previous two nightshifts. 

I feel like I’ve been banging on and on about the benefits of a few really competent people.  What makes competence?  Like anything deep & complex, it’s multifactorial – nature, and nurture; experience, training, natural gifts, verbal comprehension, spatial reasoning, visual acuity, processing horsepower, the murky “attitude” concept.  The second bloke, the contractor who did the job that night, is very good at this – but I think he’d be good at most things he decided to do.  He has the traits I associate with an all-rounder, particularly intellectual horsepower, a great gift with people, and willingness to lead.  The first bloke perhaps slightly less so, although with mechanical maintenance tasks in almost any area he has proven himself over and over.   

But here both were in their element, and the conversation just sang.