Since the mid-1970s NASA has run the Aviation Safety Reporting System for pilots and other aviation workers. A pilot who files a report within 10 days of an inadvertent violation is, under conditions, spared the civil penalty or suspension of the license.
The system has received more than 2.3 million reports. Identifying data is removed from every one.
When Alan Mulally became Ford’s chief executive in 2006, the company was losing billions. He held a weekly Business Plan Review where each executive reported the status of his area by color. At first every status in every meeting was green.
Then Mark Fields showed red. He had stopped production of the Edge over a problem with the tailgate. “When I showed that first red, there was a lot of tension in the room,” Fields said. “Then Alan clapped.” Mulally said: “Great visibility, Mark. Is there anything we can do to help you?”
After the 1977 Tenerife collision, in which a captain began his takeoff roll despite warnings from his first officer and flight engineer, NASA psychologist John Lauber coined the term at a 1979 workshop. United Airlines ran the first airline programme in 1981, and the FAA later made it mandatory.
CRM keeps the command hierarchy and changes what may cross it. Junior crew are trained to question the captain, and — in the phrase used in the training — to advocate for critical information until it is acted upon.
An American industry concluded that its aircraft were failing because information was not moving, and rebuilt its training around the flow rather than around the flying.
Advance warning, given unprompted, about something the other person will otherwise meet without preparation. The metaphor is physical — lift your head, something is coming. It is offered as a courtesy, and it is expected as one.
The American word for being harmed by information you were not given, borrowed from football, where the hit comes from the side the player cannot see. The word places no fault on the person hit. All of it falls on whoever saw what was coming and said nothing.
Why am I just hearing about this now? Nobody told me. A heads up would have been nice. I had to find out from someone else. I was the last to know.
Five standard American complaints, and every one of them is aimed at the person who held the information rather than at the person who failed to ask for it.
Stated openly by American managers as a standing instruction: I don’t like surprises, tell me early, bad news does not improve with age. The instruction concedes that the news may be bad, and asks for it anyway. What is being forbidden is not the problem but the concealment.
Wall Street Journal, February 2014. “The High Cost of Avoiding Conflict at Work.” Joann S. Lublin
David Dotlich, a leadership and succession coach, has identified eagerness to please as one of the top reasons that executives fail.
Keen to innovate faster, employers increasingly choose bosses astute at dealing with conflict rather than ducking it, says Judith Glaser, an executive coach and author of the new book, Conversational Intelligence.
It’s not that firms want contentious leaders, but those who retreat from confrontation tend to postpone hard decisions and allow problems to fester, according to Ms. Glaser.
And with more businesses relying on teamwork, top managers’ conflict-resolution skills are in greater demand, adds Theodore Dysart, a vice chairman of Heidrick & Struggles International Inc., a major executive-recruitment firm.
Southwest Airlines Co. leaders wanted to shake up what they viewed as a culture of artificial harmony among staffers. The company now promotes middle managers to executive positions partly based on their ability to spark conflict among staffers.