Focus On Failure

When focus is on failures in a safety management system, the mind becomes attracted to failures and seek failure opportunities. The simplest way to misuse a safety management system (SMS) is to only focus of failures, incidents, hazards, and occurrences. A successful SMS focuses on what goes right, and what the reason is for a successful outcome. 

The law of control is how a person feels positive about themselves to the degree to which they feel that they are in control of their job performance. This is called a sense of coherence, a sense of control. It means that when they feel that they are in control they feel happy, and they feel at peace with themselves. A person also feels negative about themselves to the degree to which they feel they are not in control of their own job performances and keep making mistakes. Job results are not necessarily their mistakes but are issues they were involved in and reported to the SMS. There could be a hazard, or incident reporting daily. A person who does not feel they are in control could become highly stressed.

Every person has an internal locus of control where they are happy, and they have an external locus of control. The internal locus of control is when a person feels that they are in charge and make their own decisions. A person is making their own decisions as opposed to being micromanaged. Everyone starts off in the middle with neutral control and then every decision that are made are either taking a person towards an internal or external locus of control. Control begins with thoughts, which then determine feelings, and feelings, or emotions, determine your actions. When a person controls their thoughts, they can control everything else, and thoughts are the guidance mechanism to a level of job performance. Thoughts come before feelings because it is a thought that creates feeling, and it is how a person think about something that is happening in their life that triggers the emotion. We are exposed to this daily and by the hour from commercials, promotion and marketing that plants a seed of thoughts in a person’s mind. 

The way a person explains things to themselves largely determines their emotions. 
When a person explains things to themselves in a positive and constructive way then what happens is they respond positively and constructively and they feel differently, they take different actions, and they get different results.

There is a law called the law of accident, which is a law of excuses. A large part of the population lives like this. It is a metaphysical law that says that everything just happens by accident, and it is not what a person knows, but who they know.  The law of accidents believes that it is impossible to fight City Hall and that the cards are always stacked against you. In society, an enormous number of people are led to believe that they are victims, that there is nothing they can do about their situation. The greatest enemy of human success is passivity, it is that people feel passive and helpless. This is learned helplessness, they feel helpless, and that there is nothing that they can do about it.

The law of accident is completely opposed to the law of control. We say that failing to plan is planning to fail. If a person does not have a clear specific written plan of goals, actions, and priorities, then their existence drifts around in circles. A ship without a rudder will just drift completely but a ship with a rudder and the compass will go straight and true to its destination through any type of sea. Once a person has a clear rudder and compass, then suddenly they will start to make incredible progress at a faster rate than they could imagine.

The law of cause and effect is the law that really changes a person. For every effect, there is one specific cause. Everything that happens to a person happens for a reason even if the reason is unknown. A successful job, or a successful SMS is not an accident, just as failure is not an accident. Both success and failures are founded on a specific root cause. Success or failures of an SMS enterprise is a symptom of their systems. A successful SMS leaves track. When it is discovered other successful SMS enterprises do, then their principles and systems could be adapted, and tailored to each specific operation. When the same systems and processes are applied, eventually they will yield the same results. 

These laws are neutral, they work for an organization, or they work against an organization, and therefore known as being neutral like a just-culture. When an SMS enterprise does what other successful enterprises did, then they will get the same results. Successful people do what is called a harmonic convergence. Thoughts are causes and conditions are effects. A person’s thoughts are the primary moving force, and thoughts, or goals, create the conditions. 

The law of belief is that whatever a person believes with feeling becomes their reality. Whatever a person believes with feeling, with emotion and intensity, it becomes their reality because a person always acts on the basis of their beliefs, and the more intensely they hold the belief the more the belief becomes true for them.

The turning point for an SMS enterprise SMS performance, is when they challenge old beliefs that an SMS that goals happen only by random chance. There are two sets of beliefs, conscious and unconscious beliefs. 

People has a tendency to develop blind spots. Once they have decided to believe certain things, they do not see anything that contradicts it. Their biggest obstacle is usually self-limiting beliefs. They have obstacles within their own mind that they create. An accountable executive (AE) must have an unshakeable belief that their SMS will succeed.

The law of expectation is that expectations, especially about outcomes, become self-fulfilling prophecies. When a person expects something to happen it usually happens, because a person will act consistent with it happening. When a person expects to be successful it totally transforms their attitude and results. A person can manufacture your own expectations, and whatever they expect of themselves with confidence becomes their journey. 

The greatest of all attitudes, the catalyst that causes a person’s potential to unlock like a chemical catalyst, that causes an explosive effect is confident expectations, with an attitude of confident expectation transforms their attitude towards positive results. 

The law of attraction is that any person is a living magnet, and they attract into their life people and the circumstances that are in harmony with their dominant thoughts. A person’s mind is incredibly powerful, but it is a neutral law. If you think negative thoughts, you will attract negative things into your daily life. However, it takes hard work to be successful, and to build a successful SMS, along with thinking in the right manner.

The more emotion that is attached to a thought the greater the intensity is. Human nature is to resonate with other people, resonate with ideas, resonate with conversations, and resonate with subjects that we like to study and learn about. This is the law of attraction, and it means that there is something within everyone that is resonating within something outside of us. An accountable executive who wants to improve their SMS, and operate with a successful SMS, should resonate with others who has accomplishments this successfully. 

The law of correspondence reflects what is going on in a person’s inner world. What a person sees is a self-image and your own thoughts reflect that back. The great requirement of life is for a person to create within themselves the mental equivalent of what you wish to enjoy on the outside. Reading, thinking, planning, visualizing, with all these things we do to create within our minds a mental equivalent of what is wanted to enjoy on the outside. The greater vividness with which you can see it on the inside, the faster it becomes reality on the outside. Successful people have a crystal-clear picture of what they want and as a result, it comes into reality quite quickly. A person becomes what they think about most of the time. Everything a person can see in the material world around them began with a thought in the mind of a person and that thought turned into a goal which turned into a plan which began to take physical reality. The most important principle of all, change your thinking about SMS, and you change your SMS to an unbelievable success. When a person controls their thinking, everything else will change for them. This is well known in the advertising business. It is time for airports and airlines to take advantage of the same knowledge.  

Hazards are tangible, and safety is intangible. Hazards have physical presence, and safety is an idea. Hazards are tangible and sensed by the five senses, eyesight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. Safety in aviation is intangible, without an end, and is competing with tangible hazards. 

Between 33% and 40% of all people experience some form of anxiety when it comes to flying. Charter operators have been known to reduce the fear of flying because people feel more in control of their surroundings, and they can get one-to-one attention from the flight crew should they start to worry. 
When advertising an idea or a feeling, professional advertising agents focuses on the end result pleasure. Ski resorts do not focus their advertising on the fact that the ski lift could get stuck high above the ground. They focus on the pleasure of skiing downhill, enjoying the company of family and friends, and the pleasure of a relaxing evening in friendly locations. Ocean resorts do not focus their advertising on the fact of drowning accidents but focuses their advertising on the joy of playing in comfortable waters and enjoy a relaxing time in a beautiful resort. Far north recreations do not focus their advertising on the fact that there are grizzly bears, wolf, lynx and other wildlife danger, or wilderness hazards. They focus their advertising on the joy of experiencing fresh air, the joy of listening to the sounds of nature, the joy of fishing, joy of taking pictures, and the joy of memories. Air travel may be required to these places, and advertising professionals still use the pleasant outcome and experience when including air travel in their advertising. 

It is not until aviation SMS takes over and the passengers are stuck on the aircraft that threats begin. The travelling public are told if they do not comply with orders from the flight crew, they may go to prison. If they change their mind and wish to deplane, they are forcefully told they cannot leave because the captain already closed the doors. They are forcefully told to turn their cellphones off, or the airplane could crash, and their cellphone would be the reason. Passengers become worried and confused, and some begin to panic and fistfight and struggles between passengers and flight crew begin. People do not understand how a cellphone can down an airplane when it has the technology to fly at 41,000 feet, it has the technology for intercontinental navigation, and it has the technology to autoland in zero visibility. If someone should dare to ask, the answer is that it is for their own safety, it is to save lives, and their needs must be sacrificed for the greater good of the other passengers.  

Aviation SMS continues with their safety threats that all passengers must fasten their seatbelts, or they could be severely injured if they do not comply. The flight crew is correct in that turbulence and aborted takeoffs could cause harm to people, but this fact is not presented in their advertising when travelling to a pleasant destination. A traveler was traveling intercontinental on a major airline and their seat belt was missing, and not installed at all. This was mentioned to the flight crew who replied that there were no other seats available, and it would disrupt hundreds of other passengers if they called someone to repair the seatbelt. 

Safety is selective, and used when it is convenient and in the interest of an authority to use it as a threat. As a pre-takeoff briefing SMS in aviation then continues to present a visualization of the possibility of a horrific outcome and crash if an aircraft experiences an emergency on takeoff or landing. All emergency exits are pointed out, and travelers are told to find the exit nearest to them and head that when after the aircraft comes to a full stop. Passengers sitting in the exit rows are asked to assist the captain to open the emergency exit. These same passengers are then served alcohol during the flight and are still expected to assist the captain while intoxicated, and they are often sleeping it off while on approach and landing. The flight crew continue their scare-tactics that when an aircraft loses pressure, everyone only has a few seconds to live. They tell you that an oxygen mask will drop from the ceiling and that every passenger needs to place it over their mouth and nose. What they do not tell you is that it might be dark in the cabin, the masks might not be visible, and the masks are swinging and bouncing and difficult to catch. 

Aviation SMS is focusing on tangible hazards, which are actual and existing hazards and there are possibilities that they will occur. Aviation SMS is using threats of fines and prison time if someone dares to be scared, or panic, or question the integrity of the captain’s demands. However, the probability that any of these scares would happen is so low, and the risks are accepted by both the regulator and the operator. The probability that any of these hazards would occur is so low that it would not be necessary to present probabilities as hazards and scares to passengers.    

      
Aviation SMS continues with hazard discoveries. Flight crew, airside crew and the public are asked to submit hazard reports when they observe them. An example of the public reported a hazard.  “A Piper PA-31 flew directly overhead the airport northbound, at an altitude of approximately 1000 feet above ground level (AGL) and a rate of 151 knots (kts) ground speed without making any radio calls. Video evidence is available.” The public view this as a hazard, when the aircraft flew overhead without making radio contact at an airport without a mandatory radio frequency, and at an uncontrolled airport where overflying is commonly used to inspect the runway prior to landing. It is extremely difficult for aviation SMS to compete with hazard reports, since they are real hazards in the mind of the person who reports. 

Statistical process control (SPC), reading control charts, interpreting the chars, and assess operations for special cause variations is a step in the right direction for an SMS to function effectively, and turn the negativity in safety to something positive. Common cause variations are integrated parts of processes, but when interpreted as special cause variations they become detrimental to safety. 

Aviation SMS must focus on the positive to be successful and make air travel pleasant for their customers. If pre-briefing hazards were a real threat to the flying public, every passenger should be required to take a 5-hour aircraft specific course prior to purchasing a ticket for them to assess the risk and give them an opportunity to accept or reject the risk. However, these hazards are not real enough to implement pre-purchase training requirements. In many organizations where risks are high, the public is required to sign a waiver should an incident occur. If aviation SMS delegated their risk authority to the flying public, they would have the same opportunity to accept or reject the risk. Aviation SMS works today as an enforcement tool after all passengers are detained in an aircraft, without an option to reject the risk as presented, without being charged with disorderly conduct.

Airlines and airports with a goal to operate with an effective SMS must operate with objectives to focus on the things that goes right every day, and with every flight, as opposed to focus on what might go wrong. When focusing on the negative all day long, a person’s mind becomes attracted to the negative hazard, and their attention is moved away from focusing on their task at hand for a pleasant outcome. When focusing on what goes right, the mindset has a positive outlook of the future. Maintaining a positive outlook and neutrality is vital for successful airline or airport operations, and private charter operators have discovered this secret. 


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