Andrew Mina

Recently, I was lucky enough to take an electric motor trip around the canals and harbour of Copenhagen. I did this with some wonderful colleagues. Our goal was to collect the rubbish for Støt Affalds­ind­samlingen i uge 14 (Support the waste collection in week 14) project.

This was a part of a work campaign with we’re encourage to give back to our communities in the month of April. The volunteering was enabled through the partnership between GoBoat and Danmarks Naturfredningsforening (The Danish society for Nature Conservation).

Now what has to be noted here is that waterways of Copenhagen are clean, clear, and swimmable. Over the past decade, other than private boats, canal tours and harbour buses, all other maritime traffic has been moved out and run-off redirected.

Now this is my third time being a ‘captain’ of a GoBoat, and to be honest I enjoy it. The different elements – leadership, service, way-finder, and the adventure.

For the most part it was smooth sailing. However, I did get honked by a canal boat captain to move aside, we did go around in circles to collect some floating rubbish was was moving with the tide, and I did bump into a couple of things.

Towards the end one of my colleague’s said we’d crashed a few times. I immediately rebutted with that “we bumped, not crashed”. Perhaps due to my immediate (and probably a little defensive) reply matter was quickly settled.

But the thought remained with me. Did we crash? And on reflection – no we didn’t. No one ended up overboard, nor did we sink, or require rescuing.

“You always pass failure on your way to success.“

Mickey Rooney

During this third trip as captain these three things stood out:

1. You probably bumped and not crashed – so don’t give up! Keep going and learn in the flow. Owning the bump and not overstating it can means you can bounce back faster. And as such things are probably not as bad as you imagine them to be.
2. Communicate failure or potential failure – towards to the end I did get my brave on to say “we’re going to bump into something”. This changed the whole experience for everyone. This made us more safe because we were aware and were even able help in the situation, and even mitigate the impact. Communicating bad news is necessary!
3. Create a culture of excellence not avoidance – our lives shouldn’t be lived in avoidance of failure but lived through failure and success. Whether we have lived it ourselves or observed it in others much of who we are today has been influence by failure that has lead us to success.

Finally, we all have different thresholds of failure and risk. It should be one of our goals to learn what these are for ourselves, and just as importantly for those we work and volunteer with.

Reflection and action:
Are there any moment or experiences in your life that you need to be generous about, and reframe them in to ‘bumps’ and not crashes?

“Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”

-Nelson Mandela