High Performers Naturally Gravitate Towards Community
Many were shocked in June of 2023 when the Titan Submersible built by a fairly new company, "OceanGate" suddenly imploded 13,000 feet under the sea. It was the beginning of weeks long search that brought in major assets from the Coast Guard and Navy to converge on the site hoping to find survivors.
One group of people who were not shocked ; the deep sea exploration and submersible engineers and designers who have worked in this industry for decades.
According to James Cameron, famous Oscar winning director and deep sea record holder, "A number of the top players in the deep submergence engineering community even wrote letters to OceanGate saying what they were doing was too experimental."
The story impacted people through different lenses. Many of the public were captivated by the class issues of high risk, wealthy tourism. Others were horrified by the loss of life and parallels to the Titanic catastrophe.
From the lens of the business risk world, we paid particular attention to the story of how a community, previously built around this unique, bespoke industry were the ones who could see this coming and knew how to prevent it.
It's clear that in the most dangerous and high performing environments, the "top players" inherently recognize the value of idea sharing and becoming a part of a group. They don't have a profit incentive to do so. They are motivated by the shared desire for excellence, high performance, and safety. Perhaps most importantly, they use each other as incentive to continually get better.
James Cameron added "The take home message from this "Deep submergence diving is a mature art."
Mature indeed.