Who's Talking to Who?

July 19 2021
By: Shawn M. Galloway

I fly a lot - hundreds of thousands of miles each year. From arriving at the airports to leaving them, the experiences of commercial air travel is far from a study into the art of efficiency. Often, I will experience combinations of the following: A delayed arriving flight sits at the gate waiting on ground crew to show up to prepare the flight for disembarkment, staring at the display stating the flight is taking off on-time, yet it is ten minutes past departure time and you are still standing near the gate waiting to board; A flight sits too long dealing with a maintenance issue and runs low on fuel, only to find the fuel crew has had a shift changeover and finding someone to fuel is difficult. A three hour delayed flight waits further, because the gate agent has left and they can't find another one to pull back the ramp. See the pattern? Who is talking to who? Or not?

Internally, our employees, supervisors, management and contractors are all customers and consumers of our safety efforts. What are we doing to frustrate our internal customers, making it difficult to love their work, see the role safety plays and pursue safety excellence? Not all progress is made from throwing more at it. Often, improvement occurs from removing the things currently demotivating the very people whose motivation is critical to be successful. What should you stop doing?