By now we are all familiar with many of the surprising stories emanating from the Italian ship disaster in the Mediterranean.
The stories creating the most fun and mischief are the ones about the captain’s behaviour. The recording of his conversation with the coast guard was the first staggering news, than he fell into the life boat and from what I understand he now says he was told to sail close to the shore to promote the company.
On a completely different note, I was talking to a friend who is the captain on an international airline. Having previously had a private pilots licence, I have a particular interest in flying and always enjoy my chats with him.
On this occasion he was telling me how on his last trip to New York, an aircraft from a fairly minor african airline had taxied onto one of the active runways whilst another aircraft was commencing take off. My response was fairly clichéd in that I immediately thought how unprofessional some of these airlines are.
To my surprise he told me that the air traffic controllers in the US often speak very fast and use jargon. On one occasion he was actually with a very experienced training captain when the air traffic controller gave an instruction speaking very fast and using jargon to the extent that the training captain didn’t understand what he was saying. His response of “negative, say again” was met by a repeated wrapped full of jargon instruction. “Negative, say again” was then met with “for the last time, (and the same instruction again)”.
This is where it got interesting. The training captain said “I will repeat ‘say again’, until I understand your instruction”. The air traffic controller than spoke more slowly and the communication was achieved.
If you were traveling somewhere, which type of captain would you like? Both are qualified, experienced, and under normal situations, quite capable. How would you really know who you have?
It’s no different when it comes to any adviser especially those whose advice and leadership could be “life threatening”. Is the adviser you use strong enough and confident enough to stand up to you if they believe it is necessary? Have you scoped out the exact role you want him or her to play, the profile in terms of personality, experience, qualifications and knowledge that you expect them to have? Are you skimping on fees forcing your adviser to cut corners?
It may be worth doing a detailed profiling and role description exercise and having an in depth discussion with adviser on some of these issues.
SentinelWealth has developed AdviserMatchTM as a tool designed to assist clients to develop detailed profiles and role descriptions, to be used for the selection of financial advisers. For further information, please contact Melissa Oliver on (02) 8908 5300.
