Jarvis: Reflections on leadership post-Katrina
Ten years ago, Hurricane Katrina blasted onto the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts, devastating everything in its wake. The largest employer in Mississippi, Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, a division of Northrop Grumman Corp. (but since 2011 operating as Ingalls Shipbuilding and owned by parent company Huntington Ingalls Industries), had nearly 20,000 employees across the Gulf Coast region. Twelve thousand of those employees worked at the shipyard in Pascagoula, which was over 6 feet underwater and suffered hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. Most of the employees endured devastating losses as well. The yard was completely shut down for two weeks, and it took years to fully recover. I was director of the recovery program at the time and want to highlight five steps the company took in its natural disaster plan that had the greatest impact on our recovery.
1. Put employees first. Make sure their needs are being met and that you understand what they are going through. We immediately authorized two weeks of pay, served 74,000 meals, and provided 7,500 gallons of fuel to employees. This wasn’t about building ships. It was about sustaining the people. They were as dependent on us as we were on them.
2. Look for unexpected leaders. Crisis leadership takes a different skill set. We discovered employees who stepped up the plate and became natural leaders overnight. One standout leader set up a MASH unit in the middle of the shipyard that became the nerve center of the recovery. It was a place to log in, find information, get routed and provide some welcome relief, even if that was nothing more than a cold bottle of water.
3. Use every resource for help. Getting the infrastructure and supplies we needed to get back up and running was one of our greatest challenges. We called on our sister shipyards, corporate headquarters, government organizations, and nearby and faraway communities. The nearby Chevron refinery started sending us much-needed fuel each day. Company IT teams came down and set up a mobile communications system. We, in turn, engaged our own human resources teams in FEMA services, supply centers and other support elements so they could meet our employees’ needs on site and out in the communities. We didn’t let obstacles stand in our way or slow us down. The shipbuilders sighed, took a deep breath, hitched up their pants and went to work doing whatever it took.
4. Don’t be afraid to improvise. We looked at creative and unique ways to solve problems, and everyone played whatever role was needed. When we had to get newsletters and paychecks out to our employees, we handed them out at Wal-Mart and other central locations because we knew many of them could get there. Our VP of engineering became our leader for rental property searches to find new office space. When we discovered we had lost almost all our employees’ toolboxes, we sent out teams to scour the region and then rebuild toolboxes from wherever they could find tools tailored to each type of craft.
5. Look at the silver lining. We used this disaster to build a stronger and more durable shipyard than ever before. It’s all in the attitude. We had employees who came to help when they had no homes left. I’ll never forget one worker who lost his house but still showed up the day after the storm and immediately started cleaning up debris. I asked him why he was there and he said, “You don’t understand. If we don’t get this shipyard up and running, the whole community will never come back.” The resiliency of the people of Mississippi will never cease to amaze me. Without them, I don’t know if we would be here today.
Today, the shipyard remains the largest private employer in Mississippi, with an annual financial impact of $1 billion to the state.
Our president, Brian Cuccias, said it best: “Our recovery could never have happened without the great quality and character of the men and women at all of our facilities of Ingalls Shipbuilding. These shipbuilders comprise the finest workforce in the world, and I am proud to work next to them each day building the finest war ships the world has ever known.”
It wasn’t just about the shipyard. It was about all the people dependent on us — employees, suppliers, our Navy and Coast Guard customers, and the local community. We had a responsibility to all of them.
Kevin Jarvis of Ingalls Shipbuilding was the company’s director of recovery following Hurricane Katrina.