Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a business in flames

At 3.25pm on January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 conducted its take-off and climb-out from New York City's LaGuardia Airport. Shortly after this the Airbus A320, piloted by Chelsey 'Sully' Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles, struck a flock of Canada geese just northeast of the George Washington Bridge and consequently lost all engine power. Unable to reach any airport, they glided the plane to successfully ditch on the Hudson River. All 155 people aboard survived, with few serious injuries. It was truly a great save by the Captain, a story worth being told, which Hollywood did in “Sully: Miracle on the Hudson” starring Tom Hanks. .

Worth highlighting is that a state of the art aircraft, capable of flying at close to supersonic speeds, being piloted by some of the best pilots and crew in the world, was brought to a dramatic end by a small Canadian bird.

What is my point? And how can we correlate this drama and its positive outcome with our businesses and how we treat our systems and staff?

In every facet of life and business there is a potential for failure, but it is how we respond to that failure which sets us up to win or lose. I recently delivered a Risk/Crisis Management workshop to a group of exceptional businessmen in the UK. Key to our content was exploring how we can know and prepare the right response.

If you have heard Tony Robbins or similar motivational teachers, you have possibly heard the concept of being ‘in state’; where you mentally prepare yourself, feeling the emotions, feelings, thoughts and physicality of a situation before you enter the reality of that situation, task or mission.

In the military aviation world, we use a similar preparatory concept, called ‘simulation’ in order to think, feel and physically prepare ourselves for missions.

To find and identify how to deal with potential issues or accidents that could occur in your business, borrow from the military and ‘simulate until failure’.

Believe it or not, often times when a pilot enters a mission simulator, they crash. This is not due to poor piloting, or a lack of competency, rather it is because the instructor in charge throws ‘curve balls’ at them, until they become overwhelmed and eventually crash. These ‘curve balls’ allow for an increase in limits and capacity to act as a quasi ‘high-tide mark’ for the pilots ability.

So, how many times have you ‘jumped into the simulator’ and practiced a high-risk task or process that you and your staff do on a daily basis and completed that task until failure? This could include the use of a vital piece of machinery, a manufacturing process, a major PR issue or even the company sales process.

Simulation needs to be as close to reality as possible in order for the members to think, feel, touch and have the emotions that they will feel, should it actually occur. In order to simulate correctly, you need to structure the exercise precisely.

When I conduct mission critical simulation exercises for organisations, I ensure the following points are understood and communicated to the team prior to pressing the ‘go’ button.

All members should:

• Have clear understanding of what the simulation aims are. For example machinery breakdown drill response, or winning a difficult client at a sales meeting.
• Understand what completion of the exercise looks like and what the probable timings should be.
• Have a checklist of all immediate action drill responses they need to undertake.
• Be debriefed post exercise and given any re-training in order to improve effectiveness and efficiency for the next drill.

The exercise mediator should:

• Ensure that any positive outcomes from the exercise are re-deployed into company policies and procedures.
• Be very clear as to the starting point of the exercise and maintain control of the simulation through to its logical or stated conclusion.

If you simulate your critical processes, for example; sending a difficult ‘fake buyer’ through your sales pipeline to monitor sales staff responses and adherence to company values, you will find that when/if the critical incident occurs in real life, your staff will carry out the instinctive and trained response effectively without fear, in line with company values.

When staff experience that they can successfully fulfil their roles under pressure, having been supported, trained and provided with checklists and procedures, trust between colleagues and leadership is inherently improved.

As written in previous articles, trust always comes before engagement. Apart from the obvious outcomes of greater proficiency and reduced risk, trust in the organisation is a great outcome from simulation.

As was outlined in the post crash report, the cause map from the US Airways Flight 1549 flight was as follows;

In every one of these causal cases, the flight crew would have previously practiced their responses by simulating to the point of failure, leading ultimately to the successful landing on the Hudson River. The crew were not only able to carry out this procedure ‘on auto’, but also had the mental capacity to think through all options within a very short amount of time.

Many thought it may have been possible to glide the aircraft back to the runway, but post incident, when the NTSB used flight simulators to test the possibility that the flight could have returned safely to LaGuardia or diverted to Teterboro; only seven of the thirteen simulated returns to La Guardia succeeded, and only one of the two to Teterboro. Furthermore, the NTSB report called these simulations unrealistic: "The immediate turn made by the pilots during the simulations did not reflect or account for real-world considerations, such as the time delay required to recognize the bird strike and decide on a course of action." A further simulation, in which a 35-second delay was inserted to allow for those, crashed.

In my experience of running company-wide simulation exercises, practicing to the point of failure allows all team members to increase in capacity and wisdom, which, similar to Captain “Sully”, allows them to use their experience and confidence to make the correct decision in an otherwise difficult situation.

To summarise; when a seemingly innocent ‘Canadian Goose’ causes your business ‘engines’ to flame out, you have 1 of 3 options;

1. Hope for the best and hope that your staff make the right decision.
2. Assume that staff know what to do and risk the possibility that they attempt to ‘turn the aircraft back to the runway’ and potentially crash.
3. Simulate to failure; embed procedures and immediate action drills and give staff the confidence to land the company safely ‘on the Hudson’.