The Missing Locker Key That Sank the Titanic Is Still Sinking Your Team Today
Officer David Blair left the Titanic without handing over the key to the binoculars, a tiny oversight that contributed to the disaster. Mark Murphy argues your team needs a Stabilizer role to catch these details before they sink you: someone who owns checklists, deadlines, and error-checking. Eric Schmidt played this role at Google, turning chaos into billions.
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In this episode, you'll learn how one tiny oversight literally helped sink the Titanic and how modern teams are experiencing those same oversights every single day. Welcome to The Science of Teamwork, the show where we uncover the hidden mechanics behind how real teams succeed or fail. In every episode, we break down the stories, research, and psychology that explain why groups get stuck, why decisions stall, and why even so-called dream teams often underperform. I'm Mark Murphy, New York Times bestselling author of Team Players and founder of Leadership IQ, where I've spent more than 20 years training executives, boards, and every type of organization to build teams that actually work. On April 10th, 1912, the Titanic set sail. Now, it was a monstrous ship, as you know. It was almost 900 feet long. Ships in that era had something to help them see further out into the sea because the ship was so darn big. The thing was called a crow's nest. Mast. And if you're watching this on video, it's this basket-looking thing that is about halfway up the front mast. And it's a basket, a barrel kind of thing that 4 or 5 people could stand in and look out in front of the ship to help, you know, see things that were objects in the way of the ship so that the ship wouldn't crash into anything. Okay, here's why this is important. This crow's nest had inside of it a locker. Inside that locker were held the binoculars, what they called at the time glasses. Okay, now fun little quirk of the Titanic is right before the ship set sail on April 10th, they did a quick staff changeover. There was a guy named David Blair who was the second officer on the Titanic right before the ship was about to get underway, he was transferred to a different ship and they replaced him. Okay, so they— no good reason, it was pretty capricious and just, you know, on a whim they decided to do a last-minute reshuffle of the staff. So David Blair, the second officer who is the guy in charge of the binoculars locker in the crow's nest, gets assigned to a different ship. Now they put a new guy on because they did not have particularly good processes in place. And there was nobody on the Titanic staff who was designated to be in charge of like, you know, dotting the i's and crossing the t's. There was no taskmaster, what we would call a stabilizer. There was nobody to say, hey, let's make sure we go through the checklist before, you know, we let David Blair walk off the ship because he was allowed to just walk off the ship. He literally walked off the ship with the key around his neck. To the locker in the crow's nest for the binoculars. Now, because the ship is so big— again, nearly 900 feet— and the seas were dark and smooth on the night they ran into the iceberg, they did not see the iceberg. All right, the Titanic crashes, over 1,500 people died. Now here's the interesting thing. When there was a U.S. Senate inquiry following the sinking of the Titanic, one of the senators asked one of the survivors, the guy who was supposed to be in charge of the lookout at that particular shift, the senator asked him, well, suppose you had the glasses, the binoculars, could you have seen this black object, the iceberg, at a greater distance? And the lookout guy said, well, yeah, we, we could have seen it a bit sooner. And the senator goes, well, well, how much sooner? And the lookout guy says, well, enough time to have gotten out of the way. Seriously, the Titanic crashed into the iceberg partly because a guy was transferred off the ship, David Blair. Not his fault, he was transferred off the ship and there was nobody designated to make sure that every little i was dotted and t was crossed. There was no checklist, there was nobody in charge of of making sure that things didn't get missed and that people didn't walk off the ship with the key to the binoculars locker. On every great team, there are 5 roles that have to be fulfilled. There's a director, person who's in charge of making really tough decisions. Trailblazer, they bring innovation. Harmonizer, they keep the relationship smooth and healthy. The Achiever, they're kind of your worker bee, they roll up their sleeves and get work done. And then there is a stabilizer. The stabilizer is the person who is in charge of planning timelines, making sure we hit our to-dos, making sure the checklists are actually checked off, that the i's are dotted and t's are crossed. You will know that your team lacks a stabilizer when, for example, your team misses deadlines. More than 50% of teams actually miss their deadlines pretty regularly, and If you're consistently missing deadlines, that's probably a good sign that you don't have somebody designated to be that stabilizer, the taskmaster who's keeping you on track, making sure that the i's are dotted, the t's are crossed, we hit our deadlines, we know what the due dates are supposed to be, etc. If you're constantly letting schedules just lax and lax and lax and lax and we keep missing those deadlines, if it feels like, you know, we're a creative group of people but there's just not enough structure here, you're probably missing a stabilizer. If there are little small oversights that get missed, if your report goes out and it has typos in it, yeah, there probably wasn't somebody who was playing the stabilizer role who's in charge of making sure that we error check our work. If there are bugs in the code that your team is producing, there probably isn't a stabilizer who is empowered to make sure that the group error checks everything, debugs it, whatever you do, to make sure that there are no errors. Whatever your equivalent of not walking off the boat with the key to the binocular locker is, that's your stabilizer. The stabilizer makes sure that there are no bugs, there are no typos, and that nobody walks off the boat with the key to the binocular locker. The way you fix this is pretty simple. In every meeting you are in. Designate— it can be the same person, it could be different people— but designate a stabilizer for your meeting. Assign them, make sure everybody knows who it is. They own those details, they own that checklist, they own those processes. And empower them to basically say, folks, we are not leaving the meeting until we are clear on the deadlines. Who is supposed to do what by when? What are the things we are missing? Who is in charge of error checking? Am I in charge of error checking? When do you have to get me the things that need to be error-checked? What is the checklist? What are the tiny details that if we missed those would sink this entire project? Interestingly, some people look at this and they say, well, that stabilizer, they're kind of, you know, they can be a little bit nagging, right? Well, they're just, you know, they're not a real power player on the team. They're just kind of the team nag. And what I want to make crystal clear is that That is not at all the case. Yes, your stabilizer will help prevent the Titanic sinking because they'll make sure that nobody walks off the boat with a key to the binocular locker. But some of the world's most famous organizations were led by stabilizers. Eric Schmidt was the legendary CEO of Google. So it was founded— Larry and Sergey, they founded Google, but it was like a grad school with a bunch of brilliant people who couldn't get themselves organized. They hired Eric Schmidt to be their CEO. When he took over, they had they had about $90 million with an M in revenue. When he left, when he stepped down as CEO, they had about $38 billion with a B in revenue. And the way Eric described his role was as adult supervision. He said, my job was to manage the chaos. He put plans in place, he put the checklists in place, he put the processes in place. This is not a token role on a team. You need to have somebody— if you want your team to actually hit deadlines, you need to somebody who is empowered to make sure that the team actually gets done what they're supposed to get done. Every great team has all 5 roles, but they really do need a stabilizer. I don't know what your version of the crow's nest binocular case is, right? But whatever that is for your team, you need to have somebody empowered— named, empowered, trusted to ensure that your team does not miss that critical detail. Thanks for listening to The Science of Teamwork. If you want to go deeper into the ideas we explored today, check out my book, Team Players. It lays out a revolutionary research-backed system for building extraordinary teams, a system that will completely change how you assemble, lead, and transform the groups that matter most in your organization. Links to get the book are in the show notes or episode description. And if your organization wants to build teams that actually work, whether it's your executive team, board, project groups, or cross-functional squads, I'd love to help you. I train and speak with leaders around the world, and you can reach me directly at mark@leadershipiq.com. That's my personal email, or through leadershipiq.com. If you're enjoying the show, please follow the podcast and share it with someone who relies on great teams. Thanks again for joining me. I'll see you in the next episode.
