I would like to comment on Vince Mancuso's definition of CRM:
"The "management skills" used to direct, control and co-ordinate
all available resources for safe and effective operations".
Developing and practising skills is the essential part of any
CRM-program. If you cannot give people behavioural tools they can bring
with them and use on the flightdeck, your training is worth nothing. My
point is that if you want a CRM-program to be successful, you have to do
some other things besides building the skills.
First of all, it's important to give CRM-training participants a
theoretical framework to build these skills on. In my company, as in
many others, we do this in the awareness phase. We tell pilots and cabin
attendants about stress, fatigue, sensory process's etc, and use this as
a foundation for building CRM skills. If we agree that some theoretical
human factors oriented knowledge fosters the development of CRM skills,
then I think it's a bit artificial to sharply divide between where CRM
stops and human factors begin. Developing CRM skills is the result of a
process that includes human factors knowledge.
Second, mastering a skill is has only value if the skill is
used. To make sure that pilots really use their CRM-skills, it's
important to work with their attitudes, their predisposition's to act in
certain ways on the flightdeck. In order to establish a pro-CRM attitude
in a company, you have to work with instructors, check-airmen and
management, with procedures and rules and regulations.
Because of factors like this, I feel that a CRM-definition that
emphasises skills only is to narrow and static. It does not give any
room for process - the process necessary to help flightcrew develop and
train CRM-skills or the process that's constantly going on in the
airplaine.
Comments appreciated!
Best regards
Jens Rolfsen