For line personnel and managers to understand the focus of a program, I
believe that the definition needs to be one declarative sentence written in
language that non-scientists really use.
CRM Definition:
The "management skills" used to direct, control and coordinate all availabe
resources for safe and effective operations.
CRM Program:
A program that builds and delivers management skill training.
Everyone uses a different categorization for the "management skills". It
really doesn't matter how everyone slices the pie because the "management
skill" contents are generally the same. The U.S. Air Force uses 8
different categories, Delta uses 6, Northwest uses 4, UT-Austin uses a
dozen or more.
The 6 management skills that Delta uses are:
Communication
Coordination
Planning
Workload Management
Decision Making
Situation Awareness Management
Through classroom awareness training, simulator training, simulator
assessments, and line assessment, we build and reinforce the desired
management skills.
You will find many people who try to make CRM more than it really is. They
are usually the folks who cannot clearly define where CRM stops and Human
Factors begins. For many years, CRM suffered from ill-defined boundaries
and a cure-all orientation. There is a huge difference between a CRM
program and a human factors program, yet many within the CRM community
referred to them as one in the same. Pilots still refer to them as one in
the same. In January 1997, I did a study at Delta to assess perceptions of
human factors and CRM and the pilots generally perceived them to both be
"training to get along better".
Human factors is the study of what contributes or detracts from human
performance. Human factors programs identify and respond to the conditions
that lead to error. A CRM program is the training component of a larger
Human Factors or Error Management program.
The next generation of CRM programs is not really CRM, it's error
management that recognizes that CRM is just one tool in a larger toolbox
for reducing error. To confuse error management and CRM is just as
dangerous as confusing CRM and human factors. Throughout the 1980's, as
developers and managers who build programs to reduce error recognized the
inherent limitations of trying to reduce crew error with only CRM training,
they begun looking to other methods and industry best practices. The
industry was developing these error management programs long before the
"visionaries" were writing papers about the next generation CRM program
based on "error management". It's been kind of humorous watching all the
parade marshals appear after the parade has already started. The U.S.
Army, for example, has had a mature Operational Risk Management (ORM)
program in place since the early 90's. The Army dramatically reduced and
sustained a low mishap rate the first year they put the program in place.
The military has lagged the airlines in CRM development, but the military
has far exceeded the airlines in risk and error management programs. The
seminal work on error management upon which most of this recent refocusing
has occured is from Professor Jim Reason. There are two Navy researchers
named Shappell and Wiegmann who are doing cutting edge work on reporting
and classification systems for error management using Reasons model as the
framework. I would highly recommend reading their work if you are
interested where the next generation of error management is heading and
where CRM training programs will fit in this larger effort to reduce error.
Best Regards,
Vince Mancuso, Ph.D.