It's not just in aviation. I was hired a decade ago to set up a 'CRM
program' for lawyers. The cost of errors was about to double the
premiums for indemnity insurance. The underwriter agreed to hold off the
increase for a year on the understanding that training to reduce 'office
failures' took place. Enter me. I followed usual ISD practice and came
up with a plan that had knowledge-learning delivered through distance
education packages and 'live-in' seminars for skill development. That
part would be costly, I told my client, as it'll comprise experiential
learning. You'll need to set up an 'office simulator' and get a whole
bunch of stuff together by way of scenarios and 'props'. Rubbish, they
said, these are lawyers. Everything they have learned has been delivered
in lecture format, so can this stuff. Exit me. The underwriter took a
bath, the premiums continued to rise (still do), and so on. You'll find
it in every profession, medicine, engineering, accounting, the quest to
innoculate people against making mistakes (alone or as a team) on the
job.
I can recall when my Air Force brought in physical fitness standards.
There was to be an annual test. Fail, and you're grounded. The
announcement led the test by a year, time to get into shape. (The usual
cautions, check with the doc...) Some started training right away. Most
didn't. The two weeks before the test was hilarious ÷ all these
roly-poly types huffing and puffing around the airfield. Lots failed.
OK, we'll give you another year, the system said. Eventually the program
just settled in, everyone having got the message, most ÷ certainly all
the pros ÷ just got into the habit, stayed in shape all year round.
Fatigue is an error-producing condition. Asking pilots to be as
physically fit as they can be, so that at the end of a long flight, they
are as competent as possible, would seem to be unexceptional. No airline
that I know of asks for it, which I've always found odd. But that's a
side issue.
The key to physical fitness is regular exercise. It's an individual
program, fuelled by the motivation to tolerate discomfort in the pursuit
of a higher goal ÷ perhaps the determination to bring as many positive
qualities into your performance as a pilot ... doctor... anything ... as
is humanly possible. 'Professional dedication', perhaps.
Those personal attributes that can be defined as comprising the
consituent parts of your 'good CRM behaviour' are also susceptible to
enhancement through practice ÷ exercise. Keith Hendy's 'attention
switching time control' routine can be practised pretty well anywhere. I
do it while driving the car, hone my SA skills. In a brave experiment ÷
in the name of science, you understand ÷ I recently gave it a workout
while arguing with a pilot mate while we were on to our second bottle of
wine. Talk about skill degradation.
Our histories record instances of extraordinary bravery in battle, men
charging machine gun pits, and so on. Now there's motivation. Why would
they do that? I think 'leadership' is at least part of the answer. Maybe
CRM innovation and propagation won't really get anywhere until the CEOs
show the way.
While we're waiting for that, there's plenty we can each do as
individuals to render ourselves more capable in the cockpit ... or
wherever else we might be working. And those things can, indeed, be
defined as Distance Education.
Cheers
Doug
PS I don't feel any sense of despondency about getting to a future we
will all be proud of. There's enough 'gold' been posted on this site in
the past year to enable construction of any number of terrific programs.
And it needs to be kept in perspective. In this country, last year, 54
lives were lost in light 'plane accidents. There were 363 accidental
drownings. (CRM in the bathroom?) I guess the challenge is that 85% of
the aircraft losses were avoidable. If they can be avoided, they can be
prevented. Let's go.