During the 6th SAFETY4SEA Limassol Forum, Lennart Ripke, Senior Consultant & Commercial Director, Green Jakobsen, focused his presentation on enhancing human performance in the maritime industry.
Recognizing the need for improvement: Understanding human performance
Anyone with experience in the maritime industry is well aware of the daily challenges we face. When we talk about human performance, we must first understand what it truly entails.
“The first step in solving any problem is to recognize there is one!”
-Will McAvoy, The Newsroom (2012)
Human performance refers to the ability of individuals, teams, and organizations to safely and efficiently navigate challenges under varying conditions. This ability is influenced by numerous factors, commonly known as performance-influencing factors (PIFs), which have gained recognition, particularly through SIRE 2.0.
To improve human performance, organizations can follow these four steps:
- Recognizing the need for improvement
- Identifying and evaluating relevant performance-influencing factors
- Determining measurable parameters for tracking performance
- Setting clear objectives and taking action
Recognizing a problem is only the first step—so what comes next? How do we move beyond simply identifying an issue to actively addressing it?
The Danish rowing team: Identifying and evaluating relevant performance-influencing factors
The second step in improving performance is evaluating which PIFs are relevant to the problem we aim to solve and determining which factors can be adjusted to achieve the desired outcome. To illustrate this, let’s look at an entirely different industry—sports.
Eskil Ebbesen, an Olympic rower and now a performance consultant, provides an interesting case study. Early in his career, he and his teammates were world champions in rowing machine performance, generating more power (watts) than any other team. Yet, when the Danish team competed in the European Championships against the Italians, they were stunned. The Italian rowers, who were older and generated significantly less power, won with a lead of over ten seconds—a massive margin in rowing. Even more surprising, while the Danish team was exhausted, the Italians finished the race celebrating, seemingly unfazed.
This prompted the Danish team to ask: How is this possible? How can a team that generates less power be so much faster and less fatigued?
To find answers, they first analyzed all the measurable data—what we call quantitative data. In the shipping industry, we do the same. When discussing performance-influencing factors, we often focus on what can be measured. However, this approach has limitations. There is a wealth of unmeasured, unseen data, particularly the insights and experiences of the crew. In fact, we often know more about the condition of lube oil in our engines than we do about how our captains or chief engineers feel, even though they are the ones making critical decisions.
Returning to our rowers, their key realization was the importance of discussing their experiences. They focused on one crucial, previously overlooked factor: the feeling of boat balance. Through discussions with Ebbesen, I learned that boat balance directly affects friction in the water, which significantly impacts rowing speed. The Italians had mastered this aspect.
The Danish team responded by systematically reviewing each training session, discussing how the boat felt and how it behaved. This may seem simple, especially for a four-person team with a shared goal of winning Olympic gold. However, in our industry, implementing such discussions is far more complex.
Still, the lesson remains relevant. In our industry, we track safety metrics such as LTAs (Lost Time Accidents) and LTIFs (Lost Time Injury Frequency), yet there are critical aspects we do not measure—such as psychological safety. Interestingly, this concept originated in the military, not as a feel-good initiative, but as a deliberate strategy to enhance performance.
By acknowledging and addressing these unmeasured factors, we can take the next step beyond recognizing problems and actively work toward improving human performance in our industry.
Determining measurable parameters for tracking performance
To enhance human performance, we must first identify the key factors that influence it. In step three of this process, we need to determine the right parameters to measure these performance-influencing factors—whether it’s psychological safety, collaborative leadership, or any other relevant metric that impacts performance. This measurement must occur at multiple levels: individual, team, organizational, and, ideally, even industry-wide.
Once we begin tracking these performance-influencing factors, patterns emerge. For example, when analyzing data from a shipping company from 2018 (as shown below in the graph on the left), one factor stood out significantly: leaders’ ability to provide clear directions.
At the time, deficiencies in this area were leading to major safety issues. Once the company recognized this problem, addressing it became straightforward. When the root cause of an issue is clear, so is the path forward—both in terms of strategy and investment. Consequently, they took targeted action to improve leadership communication, which led to a significant reduction in lost-time accident frequency.
Notably, there was an uptick in incidents in 2020, which was primarily due to COVID-19. However, the broader trend demonstrated that focusing on the right performance-influencing factors yielded measurable improvements.
To further refine this approach, we categorize performance-influencing factors into two key areas:
- psychological safety,
- and task reflectivity/task focus.
These elements contribute to what we call collective intelligence, a measurable indicator of how well a vessel is functioning at any given time. By aggregating this data, we can assess performance trends over time and evaluate how different senior management teams influence onboard operations.
This approach allows us to predict risk levels for vessels, though not specific incidents—given the complexity and number of variables involved. What we can determine, however, is which vessels are at higher risk due to factors such as poor team cohesion or a lack of psychological safety among crew members. Unfortunately, the maritime industry has yet to fully utilize this predictive capability to mitigate risks effectively.
Psychological safety serves as a leading indicator, while task reflectivity/task focus acts as a lagging indicator—meaning that changes in leadership impact psychological safety first, followed by shifts in task performance. Over time, we can observe how changes in command influence the overall environment on a vessel and, subsequently, how task focus improves or declines.
Setting clear objectives and taking action
The final step in driving human performance is setting clear objectives. Just as we saw in the fleet data, once you identify an area of weakness, you must establish objectives to address it. These objectives should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART goals).
This structured approach was successfully implemented in the fleet discussed earlier. In 2018, more than half of its vessels were underperforming. However, by identifying the right performance-influencing factors and focusing on targeted improvements, the company significantly increased its number of high-performing vessels.
An interesting case emerged in 2023 when the company acquired over 20 new vessels. The influx of new crew members initially led to a drop in performance. However, by 2024, they were able to recover quickly. Their success was largely due to the fact that they had already established a systematic approach to improving human performance—one that could be replicated even amid significant operational changes.
The views presented are only those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of SAFETY4SEA and are for information sharing and discussion purposes only.
Above article has been edited from Lennart Ripke’s presentation during the 2025 SAFETY4SEA Limassol Forum.
Explore more by watching his video presentation here below
