Where Birds Don't Fly

The vital few or trivial many is the bumper-car process and found in a non-structured environment where priorities becomes to work on the "trivial many" rather than the "vital few", or the 80/20 rule.  In a Safety Management System (SMS) an enterprise establishes Policies, Objectives, Goals and Parameters. A Safety Policy in aviation is an assurance to the flying public that the air operator maintains regulatory compliance and does not compromise aviation safety. A Safety Policy is a commitment that every time the public go flying, they can expect a safe and uneventful flight. Bumper-cars is a messy process, but in control as expectations to the objectives.  Regulations are performance based, or in other words, established objectives. The first step in a regulatory based environment is to ensure regulatory compliance by establishing the regulations as objectives. Everything else is incidental to the operation. One regulatory objective is to have procedures for repor...

Changes are often difficult to accept and to put in effort to make it work. When new things are introduced there are often skepticism and opposition. At times these arguments make conflicts within an organization. It might be tempting not to make changes just to keep peace in the valley. Personnel who don't like changes make their own changes by making hurtles to stop the new process. That's in itself is a change and an ineffective process.  Process Matters – Get the material first and then build. The process matters to everyone, for or against. It matters to the ones who want a change in the process and it matters to those who opposes. If processes didn't matter there would be no need to plan, do act and check. Processes are how we do things. Most of us have a process of how to get dressed in the morning. Some of the steps may not be in the same order each day, while there are other steps that must conform to a required process. Socks must come on before the shoes. When...