As a leader, it is important to always recognise the source in good times, and the bad. When everything’s going right and you’re succeeding – what is the cause? and when stats crash – what changed? Where did it go wrong? Why?
Not handling something at the source is the root cause of all future problems since you’ll only be applying band aid solutions and not truly confronting what is occurring.
Air crash investigations are unfortunate that they need to occur, but are so interesting as they are so thorough and the situation is always investigated from so many angles to find the cause.
An analysis on a database of 1300 fatal commercial aircraft accidents between 1950 and 2009 showed human error to account for 56% of the main cause of the accidents. Followed by the mechanical failures at 22%. What causes mechanical failures and maintenance issues? Something to do with people once more.
You may remember the Überlingen mid-air collision in 2002. Bashkirian Airlines with 69 people on board and DHL Flight 611 collided over the town of Überlingen and all 71 people on board both aircraft were killed.
Causes?
- Only one air traffic controller – Against regulations.
- Ongoing maintenance work disabled critical systems.
- Ground-based warning system was switched off.
- Wrong instructions from air traffic controller.
- Inconsistent training for the pilots; they had a choice to follow an instruction or not!
You can easily look at some of the above and see maintenance issues. Important to point out however, that every one of those maintenance or mechanical factors would have been impacted by a person at some point.
The purpose of this article is not to cancel your next flight – but to always check that you have the right people in the right seats, regardless of how small of an impact you feel the role can make, or how low risk you might feel it is.
Performia can help you to know more about your existing team as well as know how effective or destructive someone could be, before you hire them. It’s important to emphasise that you need to know before making the decision.
It’s incredible how easy it is to create disruptions with minimal effort and how much more effort it takes to create and build something. Don’t risk all your hard work.
On a positive note – see this video of an absolute Top Performer pilot who saved the day when everything was going wrong.
Miracle of the Hudson.
I hope you enjoy the video and please feel welcome to contact Performia to assist with your team requirements.