I apologize for taking so long to respond to your comments. I've been quite
busy lately.
>>Skip appears to support a broad systems approach to CRM. In fact, it
appears that Skip is supporting a Life approach to CRM.<<
No, not at all, our management system is designed, taught and targeted to the
specific duties and responsibilities of today's flight crews. Applications
outside of this environment have arisen quite unintentionally — this is just
another benefit to our flight crews, which in turn reinforces the desired
behavior on all flights, from the normal or routine, to abnormal or emergency
situations as well as all training and evaluation flights.
While most "traditional" CRM programs are developed primarily by
psychologists and sociologists, with the support of pilots. Our Quantum
Management System is just the reverse. It was designed and created by pilots
and then reviewed by social scientists in five relevent fields — all
nationally and internationally recognized authorities in their respective
areas of expertise. As one of our clients once said, "it's about time pilots
took back their cockpits."
Our course is the end product of a thorough task analysis so that only those
behaviors which were observable would be identified and incorporated into the
system. This work produced some 240 Specific Behavioral Objectives, Specific
Informational Objectives and Specific Attitudinal Objectives. These SBOs were
the the building blocks of our five Professional Responsibilities and ten
Standard Management Procedures. Since they are observable, these SMPs can be
required, monitored and backed up, as are SOPs. There is never any doubt, on
anyone's part, as to what is expected and required of each crewmember.
As part of our initial, "pre-training" work with our clients, we begin with
what we call the Five Ps. Essentially, it is a process by which we gather
data on the corporate and departmental culture and values desired by and
practiced by all levels of the organization from senior management, to the
individuals involved in the training. One of the things we do with this data
is ensure that our training is consistent with the client's current or
desired value system. This process continues throughout our initial training
as well as our recurrent training programs. It provides the client with a
management system which incorporates the best of both worlds — a proven,
standardized management system, which can be easily assimilated into, and
throughout, the company, and is, in some ways, uniquely theirs.
If you have a management system that has successfully solved problems, reduce
risk and eliminate human error in the cockpit, and then find that it also
works in other situations in which you must solve problems, reduce risk, and
eliminate human errors, why would you not use it?
>> Skip, could you share with us your definitions of CRM and Human Factors?
<<
We really don't differentiate between these two. If I were to define them, I
would have to say that Human Factors is a broader discipline which
encompasses CRM. I see Human Factors as the study of basic factors which
affect human performance. This includes ergonomics, operational issues (such
as SOPs, FARs, manuals, etc), interpersonal relationships/communications, and
the intellectional processes (judgment, decision making, etc). Whereas CRM,
in our context, refers to the procedures which develop out of Human Factors
studies. It is the method by which a crew identifies and optimizes all their
resources to consistantly make and implement the best possible decisions.
Skip Mudge
CMR, Inc.