Recently, I was aboard the Queen Elizabeth of the Cunard Line, which I would describe as the most friendly cruise ship I have ever been on. It was not so large as to lose its personality, not so small as to be cramped. Full disclosure, this was a paid gig, I was working.
The first time I heard the Captain deliver the midday address over the PA system, it was immediately apparent that the ships Captain is a woman. The welcome letter I received was also signed by a woman, the Cruise Director. I had never been on a ship where either the Captain or the Cruise Director were female. Those are two of the most demanding jobs on the planet. They are concrete jobs where you have to perform; where the consequences of non performance are immediate and painful.
I was in one of the quaint bars midship enjoying a merlot when my waiter returned with my receipt. He had noticed the discount I enjoyed and so correctly deduced that I was no ordinary passenger, but a celebrity of some kind. He asked and I told him. In great excitement, he excused himself and returned a few minutes later to present me with the two books he had written originally in his native language (Brazilian) Portuguese, now published in English.
This being the age of the internet, which cannot be escaped from fully (even on a ship in the Pacific), I Googled so that I could Wikipedia, and after having informed myself as to who these people were, was reminded of the observation of the great management theorist, Peter Drucker and the British politician Winston Churchill. An observation arrived at independently, I am sure, from actual experience.
Extraordinary performance from ordinary people.
Extraordinary performance does not require extraordinary people. As bad as you may think things are, if this were the case, they would be worse. The world we live in depends on ordinary people doing extraordinary things, day in and day out.
The Captain’s name betrays her Norse heritage: Inger Klein Thorhauge. If I change my name, it would be to that. This is not the Norse heritage you may initially imagine, because she is a Faroese, as natives of the Faeroe Islands are called. Four hundred miles west of Norway and three hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle, the Faeroe Islands were settled by Norwegian Norse (Vikings) around the ninth century (1000 AD). Wind blown (salt spray everywhere) and rain drenched (it rains 280 days per year), the population of 47,000 imports most of its needs and exports fish.
Her father was an engineer with the fishing fleet and she first took to the sea at sixteen in a holiday job on cargo ships as a stewardess. You can see her Wikipedia profile for yourself (link below). It is sparse and I did not have the opportunity to speak with her to flesh out the details. I can imagine going from a deck officer in 1997 to Captain of the Queen Mary in 2010 must have been an extraordinary journey, yet by listening to her daily broadcasts, this is a regular, or even ordinary, person.
The Captain is responsible for guiding a ship safely from port to port and ensuring that onboard activities are safe and emergency procedures, if needed, are adequate. The Cruise/Entertainment Director is responsible for the happiness of the passengers, onboard and during onshore visits. This is the business end of cruising, where the money is made and lost.
While I had a business in hospitality, I dealt extensively with Cruise/Entertainment Directors, to a man they were tough men, with a friendly veneer and a core of steel which could rapidly surface to confront a threat only to submerge just as rapidly.
When I met Sally Sagoe I could not visualise her as a Cruise/Entertainment Director, though her job title made that clear. Pleasant and constantly smiling, she moved purposefully as someone who had places to go and things to do, never lingering. There is very little room for looseness on a ship, but this one was particularly tightly run, both operationally and as an entertainment platform. Attention to detail, even for a minor celebrity as myself was obvious. After I sat down for a 45-minute Q&A with Sally, I left with the impression that she had read everything ever written about me; where she would have found the time to do so is beyond me. Her appearance belies her age. Her journey from London via the popular and long lived English soap Eastenders, through film to the cruise industry via a band must be quite the story. I did not have the chance to hear it, but sizing her up, she is extraordinary, with no airs or excessive graces. An ordinary person doing extraordinary things.
While you are struggling to write five hundred words a day and you need to be doing a thousand, trying to write a book and failing, on pausing for a glass of wine your waiter presents you with two books he has written. This is a truly humbling experience.
Martines Rocha de Souza is a Brazilian born in poverty in the Bahia province of Brazil. Like all Brazilians, he dreamed of football stardom, and like most, upon discovering he was not quite good enough, he kept his fond memories of teams, teammates, and games, and moved on with his life. Moving to Sao Paulo with nothing but the shirt on his back and the phone number of his aunt, he is now the co-owner of a hotel in Sao Paulo and a travel author. He has been just about everywhere, done just about everything, and written very candidly about his very ordinary beginnings, his very human failings and his extraordinary results.
If you are reading this, wherever in life this finds you, there is within you the capacity for extraordinary performance. This does not depend on gifts or privilege, the only thing you really need is intent and courage. Try. If you fail, lick your wounds, find out why, then try again.
Dudley ‘Tal’ Stokesis an athlete and entrepreneur representing Jamaica in 4 Winter Olympic Games between 1988 and 1998. His 14th place finish in the Lillehammer Olympics remains the best ever achieved by a black man. Through speaking, coaching and writing he continues to influence and inspire others. He can be found @ dudleystokes.com.
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