I am not sure if this topic got the discussion it deserves. Perhaps we are
all tied of contemplating our navel and just want to get on to the
application. Certainly designing and implementing training packages is a lot
more fun that spending time on curiculum development. But perhaps what this
thread, and the accompanying one on 'Building in a system bias against CRM',
showed me is that CRM doesn't have a clear focus. CRM is many things to many
people and it is dragging a whole host of baggage along with it.
The name CRM promises more than it delivers. To start with what are the
resources we are managing?
Some possibilities are:
* people
* communication
* psychological/physiological stress (or perhaps more correctly strain)
* knowledge/situation awareness
* sensation and perception
* memory
* decision making
* workload
* attention
* time
* errors
* organisational objectives such as retention, job satisfaction
* ...and so on.
These are just some of the resources that are called into play in aeronautical
(and all other) decision making. Few, if any, CRM programmes deal with all
these aspects in a convincing way. 20-25 years ago, human factors training
would try to cover many of these topics - now CRM covers off just a few. The
emphasis to date has been on the softer aspects of human performance
(interpersonal relationships, teamness etc.) that have little theoretical
support (and so we can argue about them all day), rather than than some of the
harder topics that we actually know more about (workload, decision making
biases, error correction etc. with good theoretical models and some validation
to back them up). So I see CRM as part of more comphrehensive human factors
training rather than the other way around. I do not want to see current
generation CRM, or even 5th generation CRM a la AQP, given the HF name. I,
along with all HF practicioners, have been fighting for the ligitimacy of our
discipline for many years now, I don't want to go back to square one!
Even the emphasis on teams muddies the water. Teams do not make decisions,
individuals do. Certainly a decision maker can and should take input from a
variety of sources (other humans, the automation etc. - this must be manged in
light of the time pressure) but in the end individuals make their decisions at
the levels that correspond to their responsibilities. In this sense the
concept of team SA mysterfies me. Only when the pooled knowledge of the group
is resident in an individual, can it be used to shape a decision. So a theory
of teams for me is a theory of individual decision makers, collectively
managing their workload, controlling a series of critical loops and making
decisions based on the best available knowledge that time pressure will allow
(remembering that time pressure is often under individual control and so can
be managed - this is the concept of being self-paced rather than machine- or
scenario-paced).
I do not agree that a focus on "what to teach" is misplaced. In fact quite
the contrary. It doesn't matter on how well we teach, and who we teach, if
the stuff we teach is wrong or has no effect on performance. Performance
itself is probably some weighted sum of mission effectiveness (weapons on
target, passenger miles, seats sold, etc.) and safety (injuries and deaths,
assuming we place an intrinsic worth on these). The weights will be different
for commercial and militar,y and will change with external environmental
preassures (war or peace, good economics poor economics, lots of competition
little competition). I suspect these are the top level variables rather than
retention, job satisfaction etc which I see as intervening variables.
To further beat this 'what to teach' horse, say we started with the premise
that the ritual offering of a small aircraft-shaped artifact to the god of
lift, before each flight, would improve the chances of an incident free
flight. We could build a whole industry around this, arguing whether those
artifacts made from paper were better than those made of wood, the nature of
the most appropriate ceremony that should accompany this ritual, tail-less
versus multiple lifting surfaces, into wind versus down wind throw, best angle
of launch etc. But if the basic premise was flawed it wouldn't matter which
school we adhered to, or how well the message was taken to the operators,
system performance wouldn't change (except technical skills might erode a
little because many of the operators were off for several days a year learning
the inticacies of paper plane folding). To me the 'what' is important.
Over the months a few of us have tried (well I guess it was mainly me :-) to
put the position that the human acts as a closed loop control system. This is
interesting in light of the current 5th generation emphasis on error
management/correction. A feedback loop is an error correcting system. In
fact ALL error correcting systems have to be feedback systems (at least that
is my current position). So if the human is to be error correcting, they had
better start acting in accordance with this theory or be candidates for next
year's Darwinian awards.
Cheers
Keith
--------------------------------------
Hello group
I was waiting for this to finally occur. I've expected it for some time.
Mike recently wrote
"We are abandoning the acronym "CRM" entirely. The program will be
called the "###### Flight Department Safety Program" or "Flight
Standards Program" or something similar. We are also going to ask
them
to name the program."
It appears that we may have come full circle from "CRM is the savior"
to "CRM has gotten such a bad reputation that is has become the symbol
of everything wrong in our human factors training programs -- the
enemy." The godfathers and godmothers of CRM are moving out of flight
operations at an alarming rate, to bring the gospel of teamwork,
communication, and conflict resoIution to the medical, space, and other
fields. I recently reviewed a journal article for a major publication that
challenges the validity of the entire CRM approach.
Is this the first distant echo of the death knell of CRM as we know it?
If
so, where did we go wrong along the way. Over the past year we have
hit some hot button topics that indicate we may have forgotten the
operator along the way. Focusing on "what we teach" and "how we
teach" we may have lost track of "who we teach." The discussion on
"what is professionalism" was trivalized into statements such as
"professionalism to me is the smile of a satisfied customer." If that is
the best we are capable of, no wonder we have lost our way. What about
OUR CUSTOMER, the flight personnel and maintainers we train? How
many smiles do we see on their faces?
I began a project about this time last year to define the "next
generation" of CRM. I got sidetracked into the literature and haven't
moved out as smartly as I should have here, and I apologize to those of
you who signed on for the tiget team for a lack of follow-up. I am more
and more convinced that I posed the wrong question then. Instead of
how will CRM be taught in the future, perhaps the better question is "In
the next ten years, what will be the most effective way to accomplish the
objectives that are currently met by CRM?" Which begs another, more
fundamental question -- what ARE the the objectives of CRM? Safety
certainly, but what about effectiveness, efficiency, job satisfaction,
retention, recruitment? Are these not legitimate human factors
concerns? Is fifth generation CRM the MOST effective method for
accomplishing these goals? Where is the RECENT research on CRM
effectiveness? Not in terms of student satisfaction -- but rather of
performance. Dr Nullmeyer and a few others are pushing this side of the
equation, but more serious performance based criteria and inquiry needs
to be done if CRM is not to crumble faster than the Berlin Wall.
All of these questions need to be answered -- and soon -- if we hope to
reinvigorate CRM into its full potential before more jump ship and move
to "something else" -- whatever that may be. One of the greatest
philoshophers of our age -- the great Mel Brooks -- stated (in History of
the World Part 2) "Gentlemen, we must protect our phoney-baloney
jobs." Let's not have it come down to that.
Tony Kern