Responding and adapting to the unprecedented challenges of the current crisis is key to survival - ‘change or die’ will be the organisational mantra that will take us through to 2010. Every industry and sector has its own brutal truths. In this article, Oliver Nyumbu discusses the lessons to gain from the examples of other business environments.

Confronting Brutal Truths

First, consider the airline industry. A decade ago, before the advent of Crew Resource Management (CRM) and team skills training, the phenomenon of ‘Atlantic Barons Syndrome’ prevailed. The term described the culture of dominance by bombastic captains whose opinions were inviolable to the extent that co-pilots would sit on their hands and allow the plane to crash, rather than contradict the word of the pilot.

In June 1972, less than three minutes into its flight from Heathrow, flight British European Airways Flight 548 (BE548) crashed near Staines.  All 118 persons on board died. Allegedly, the captain retracted the leading edge droop devices  at too low a speed without being challenged. The investigating British Airways Air Safety Committee concluded this was a case of having over-powering or dominant senior members or officers. 

As a result of this, and other similar ‘brutal truths’, CRM training was introduced to address the fatal flaws in air safety. This new regime heralded a radical cultural shift - moving away from the stigmatising effect of blame and autocracy. Pilots now accept that CRM competence is as important as technical capability.

The Staines crash could serve as a reminder that as leaders in organisations we have the privilege and responsibility to tap into the wisdom, intelligence, and experience of those around us.  After all, why employ them for their intelligence and then behave as though that intelligence does not matter?  Indeed, we should consider calling people to account for the quality of their thinking and the effectiveness of their decision making.

One environment that has many parallels with the finger-pointing, autonomous Altantic Baron culture is healthcare. High expectations and legal and regulatory complexity in the modern health service promote a culture of individual blame and challenges the development of effective team practices.

In the US, Kaiser Permanente Medical Group, the country’s largest non-profit healthcare organisation, has adapted practices from aviation to fit its own environment in a bid to improve patient safety. This is based on the understanding that accidents nearly always occur from systems failure, not incompetence or stupidity and the recognition that training in patient safety is equally important to reactive analysis in the aftermath.

Team Lessons from an F1 Pit Stop

The second learning point demonstrates the importance of helping our teams become outrageously effective by learning from other sectors and industries. It is easy to be ‘domesticated’ by our sector to the extent that we begin to behave like a house trained puppy.

Many management teams are capable of far more than their current contribution to the success of their organisation. It is far easier to complain about the difficulty of their collective job than to collaboratively attempt to learn from a Formula One pit stop team.

Consider the words of journalist Tony Borroz in Wired Magazine:

“In the seven seconds it takes to complete an average Grand Prix pit stop, a driver will get four fresh tyres, a tank full of fuel, an inspection to remove debris from nooks and crannies, and new parts to parts to replace any track casualties”. 

As Borroz points out,  in seven seconds, the pit stop team accomplishes 115.8 man-seconds of work.

When you think of your management team, what leadership tasks are being transformed by economic and other pressures into pit stop tasks as opposed to whole afternoon routines?

Habitually confronting the reality of brutal truths, on the one hand, and pit stop miracles, on the other, are just two of the many leadership learning points that could contribute to transforming team effectiveness.

© Caret, 2010. All Rights Reserved
 

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