For the past few months, I have been working with Air Force Reserve Command
headquarters, the Chief of 10th Air Force Stan-eval, the Pentagon Air
Staff, and other outstanding individuals throughout the Air Force to craft
a plan that addresses the concern that you succinctly stated below:
"How do you make it a living breathing way of life rather that trying to
implement another "program"?"
First, I will explain a couple attributes of a straight forward, yet "out
of the box" approach that is being proposed, then I will highlight some of
the principles underlying the plan.
Attributes of the Plan:
1. Outline a clear set of management skill expectations (roles) that are
mission specific and structured according to a common Air Force framework
(Air Force Instruction 36-2243). AFI is the acronym used for Air Force
Instructions.
2. Publish a set of CRM expectations for each primary mission as
appendices to the Air Force CRM AFI so they become the clear focal point
for leaders, squadron aviators, contractors, trainers, standardization
pilots, and inspectors (Including the inspector general).
3. With the official endorsement of each command's Director of Operations,
every briefing and debriefing guide has a placeholder for addressing a
small subset of the CRM expectations on every mission. The CRM roles are
briefed within the context of the operational mission that the aircrews
will conduct that day. Note: The Air Force has had a "special topics"
placeholder in the briefing guides for as long as I have been associated
with military aviation so this is not a paradigm shift. Upgrade training
ensures that all CRM expectations are covered somewhere in the course of
the upgrade.
4. The command Director of Operations outlines the small subset of CRM
expectations each month or quarter that are to be briefed on every mission.
5. The contractors (or military personnel if you have enough of them)
provide courseware that is tailored to the mission and addresses the
commanders subset of CRM expectations. The courseware is crafted
specifically for mission commanders and flight leads to use in support of
their daily briefings (1-2 minutes max in the briefing). The daily mission
debriefings would include a review and critique of the 2-3 CRM expectations
(objectives) stated in the briefings. Note: The civilian community uses
the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) extensively to derive lessons
learned and to craft courseware. There is no equivalent in the Air Force.
A NASA operated ASRS for the military would be a tremendous enhancement to
this plan.
6. The standardization pilots would specifically evaluate the performance
of the expectations stated in the Air Force AFI. The stan-eval shops could
do "supplementary evaluations" for the command stated monthly focal points.
The supp-evals are non-jeopardy but they give the commander and the
aviators and idea of how they are doing.
7. Individual Squadrons and Wings use the AFI expectations to assess their
own performance using Stan-eval shops and unit self assessments. The IG is
the outside entity that assesses CRM performance across wings. There was a
plan in the first generation of CRM in the Air Force where pilots would
self report their performance and submit this information to a third party
so comparisons between units could be used. This altruistic plan for
self-reporting of performance was riddled with fundamental faults and never
worked. The IG is already in-place with the authority and responsibility
to do assessments across organizational boundaries. Its just a matter of
giving the IG a clear set of expectations that they can include in their
evaluation criteria.
8. Quarterly or annual courseware for 1-2 hour courses specifically
tailored to the mission are created by contractors (or military personnel
if you have enough of them) to be presented in annual ground training or
during wing/squadron safety briefings. This ground training would address
some of the priority human performance issues outlined by the command and
would fulfill the annual requirement for CRM ground training.
Keep in mind that what I have outlined above is proposed and the concrete
is still wet (in fact, it hasn't been poured).
Underlying Principles:
With the plan outlined, lets look at some of the underlying foundations.
There is one fundamental philosophy about shaping human behavior along with
one fundamental philosophy about training that I used as distant guiding
stars to craft my input to the plan.
Philosophy #1. To shape behavior within an organization, we need:
A) Clearly outlined expectations -roles-.
B) Clearly communicated.
C) Clear accountability.
Philosophy #2. The further we make an input (training, briefings, etc.)
from the controls of an aircraft in operational setting, the less learning
transfer we will experience.
The simplest, most effective, and least expensive plan for reinforcing CRM
in the operational setting is to set a command policy to brief and debrief
specific CRM objectives on every mission. It essentially costs the command
nothing and is no more obtrusive than the current policy to brief command
special interest items on daily missions.
CRM training that is based soley on classroom briefings and video vans is
built on the assumption that there is transfer of the lessons into
operational skill. I have never seen a scrap of data to show the transfer
of these lessons into sustained operational skill. The most effective way
to build operational CRM skill is to do it in an operational setting in the
context of upgrade or continuation training.
One inherent advantage the military has over the civilian flying
organizations is that there is a unwavering expectation to brief and
debrief operational missions in detail. This cultural orientation to brief
and debrief is a solid foothold for success in military CRM that should be
leveraged. Many airlines have a very high percentage of military pilots
who grew up in an environment where comprehensive debriefs were the norm
yet the norm within the airlines is not toward comprehensive debriefs. The
same people in a different setting exhibit vastly different behavior. (
This is one of the cultural issues that might provide rich fields for
interested social science researchers.)
I have written enough for today...
Vince Mancuso, Ph.D.
Air Force Reserve Pilot