Something for the Weekend - Why do planes crash?

I had the great pleasure of attending a lecture by Martin Kalungu-Banda on Wednesday and I wanted to share one of the stories from his talk which I thought was fascinating. Malcolm Gladwell conducted some research into why planes crash and the findings were astonishing. The obvious causes that we all think of are things like bad weather, engine failure, pilot error, etc but they found something different when they listened to the black boxes. 90% of plane crashes happened due to what he refers to as 'High Distance Power' - quite simply, peoples inability to challenge the expert (in this case the pilot) - especially in cultures where hierarchy plays a bigger part than here in the West.

One of the examples Martin shared related to a flight with a faulty altimeter. The co-pilot informed the captain of the fault and the captain responded that it was nothing to worry about as the co-pilot was used to this familiar route. The co-pilot acknowledged this but then explained that in his experience around about this time they should be approaching a high mountain range. Before any action could be taken the plane struck a hillside. The co-pilot didn't feel he had the right to instruct the captain that they must climb and quickly. A very brutal story but it really illustrates a deep rooted reluctance to step outside official roles even in the most desperate and critical cases.

I suspect this plays out in much lower risk scenarios too and in cultures with 'Low Distance Power' like ours in the West.

• There are cases when we must all break with protocol and inform superiors not just what we 'know' but we 'know the answer to be' before it's too late to recover the position. (the captain didn't want to fly into the hillside).
• It's vital that we always remain open to others being able to set direction when needed.
• When working with different cultures (esp. those with stronger social hierarchies) around the globe we should be more sensitive and open to information veiled as a course of action.

Sources and Credits
Thanks to Martin Kalungu-Banda
Malcolm Gladwell- best selling author of The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers

Something for the Weekend - Whilst the Bonnet's Up

Our use of clichés in general language and specifically business is fascinating. The source of the word cliché comes from the days of the manual printing press when words were formed from individually carved letter blocks 'clicked' (hence cliché) together to form words, the typesetters found that certain words and phrases were used so frequently that they retained them in blocks rather than individual letters to form stock words/phrases.

The thing that particularly strikes me is how strings of words can often go unquestioned because they're generally understood to have good or bad connotations. Let's take an example, when someone says "you'd be putting all your eggs in one basket" you automatically assume it to be a bad thing… it normally is… but is that always true?

One particular well used phrase that often falls into this category is 'Whilst the bonnet's up' - and the assumption that it makes anything else in that area inherently easier. It's true, there are often synergies and efficiencies that can be gained by colliding similar initiatives but it is important that we never assume that's always the case. In fact if we play with the car analogy a little further we'd all agree that the only thing we'd save by getting other things done on our cars 'whilst the bonnets up' is the second trip to the garage. The cost always changes and the time always changes.

Whenever that phrase is employed I'd urge that we all step back and consider if it applies in this case, remembering that all things are not equal. Do the additional initiatives really justify the cost, resource implications and complexity risk? We risk de-LEANing our delivery cycles by loading lower-priority development and adding more potential failure points.

Of course, if the value stacks up against the cost, time and risk, congratulate yourself on some synergies realised!

Something for the Weekend - Trim Tabs (Bucky Fuller)

About this time last year I had the good fortune of spending a few days in Montreal. Whilst I was there I visited the Biosphere designed by Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller for the '67 World Fair Expo. A truly impressive structure even today, located on the Île Sainte-Hélène.

Fuller was ahead of his time in many ways not least on environmental issues - much of his work focused on using technology to do more with less. Self supporting Geodesic structures are just one example of his widely inspirational work.

Trim tabs, which if you’ve never heard of them are found on large ships, are also a great example of technological efficiency. Using something small to move something much bigger through another force. Basically they are smaller flaps (at the rear of the main rudder) that through the drag of the water and the ship’s own population make the steering much more efficient. They're manoeuvred via a small 'push' force in the opposite direction to that you're trying to move in causing a much larger 'pull' force in the direction in which you want to go. You can see an example here. Next time you see a large ship in dry dock look out for them!

Trim Tabs are a great analogy for driving cultural change, so much so that Buckminster Fuller actually has 'call me trim tab' engraved on his headstone. I guess partly a reflection of both his efficiency based design outlook and partly the change his thinking helped to impress on the world.

I think that analogy scales into our world too, in order to influence thinking and bring about cultural change we may not always need to do something big to effect a change in direction. A series of smaller actions to create a 'pull' may be much more efficient than 'pushing' all the way.