Of course, you are right. My 'budget neautral' CRM (and SA for that
matter) training is what the person does when not involved in the
formal stuff, or actual 'live' practice. We all have plenty of down
time that can be used to strengthen skills and attributes. In my view,
flight crew preparation for flight should be a whole-of-lifestyle
practice. It should be the case for anyone involved in the management
of flight operations.
Steve
David Bair has addressed the dilemma you raised as well as I can. Mark
Pitt says, (in a private note to me) 'It's champion teams we are
trying to achieve, not teams of champions'. There is no doubt that
when synergy is attained, the whole result is greater than the sum of
the individual contributions -- but it is nonetheless the sum of those
individual contributions. Is each of those as good as its contributor
can make it?
In flight training, the first major objective is going solo. After
that, a whole lot of consolidation work is done alone. Many airline
pilots have spent years, thousands of hours, in single pilot ops
before getting recruited. Somewhere in all of that individual
experience-gathering will have occurred a little testing of the edge
of the containment envelope, the discovery of how soft and porous are
the boundaries.
For many pilots, learning to fly takes place in the impressionable
years, a time when much of the personality might be taking shape
around the work being done. That's the time to implant the right
habits, the professional's commitment to self-regulation, for example,
along with the skills needed to function to the optimum as a team
member. I'm not sure that's presently being done, in my part of
Australia, as well as it could be.
Hope that clarifies my intended contribution to Tony's sweatshop.
Cheers
Doug