• Trust Care Easy

    WHY THREE SIMPLE WORDS ARE SO VERY IMPORTANT

by Bo Mathiesen

Managing Director, Danish Pilot Service

I think it is very noble, but a lot of companies get tangled up in trying to position themselves in the marketplace by using Values and Missions. I’m afraid there are so many companies expressing themselves through them that they assume an air of anonymity. The same words and thoughts repeated so often they could become an after-dinner game – one of trying to match the aims to the particular company.

Values and Missions tend to plot a path to a desired goal. At the Danish Pilot Service we have taken a different approach. We want to look at where we are now, for now is when we are needed. Only what we are now, at this moment in time, is relevant to our services, relevant to you. Now is what you get.

Looking into our very soul to see what we are about, three words kept appearing. Trust, Care and Easy. Simple words, but with enormous depth and relevance.

Trust is the most invisible of them. We all rely on trust but rarely take the time to evaluate it. We trust in our partners, our colleagues, our cars, in chefs in restaurants, nurses in hospital, airplane mechanics, it’s in everything we do. Seafarer’s have perhaps more need for trust than anyone. The vessel that sustains them might be ten, thirty years old, but they silently trust and thank the guy they’ll never meet who riveted the hull plates in place all those years ago.

Trust is hard earned and easily lost. It is something that airline, television and car manufacturers, build up over the years and then perhaps through a tragedy, a failure to keep up with the times or major a design fault, find it ripped it all apart in an instant. Pan Am, Kodak, Nokia to name but three.

At Danish Pilot Service we respect that your trust in us is the only element that ties one booking to the next. That’s why I picked it as the first word. It is the word that allows the other two to function. It is the word that enables us as a company to grow and mature.

Care starts with the people you employ. You cannot effectively teach or demand care, it must be an automatic part of each person’s DNA, especially if they want to work for the Danish Pilot Service. Seafarers need it, their lives, and those of all around them, depend on it. Guidelines and practices onboard demand care and we have brought this aspect ashore and placed it firmly into our daily organization.

We are not a big company and that is a bonus when you come to care. Any minuscule lack of attention to detail does not get hidden in a myriad of bureaucracy, a sea of scheduling or an excess of Excel. When you book a DPS pilot, the person at the other end of conversation will be the one responsible. It is a bespoke operation.

Then finally – Easy. It is a commitment built on removing the barriers. Keeping it simple, the contact with the bridge, the means of booking, the flexibility of choice, the easing of front office involvement, allows everyone to concentrate on just what’s needed and no more. We call it Clearwater, where you can see to the bottom and there’s nothing hidden or lost in the murky depths.

So, there we have it, three words that are core to our organization and our commitment to you. Our goal is service with safety; our method, trust and care made easy. It’s the sort of mission we value.

Bo Mathiesen, Spodsbjerg, on a sunny day.