In my previous post I discussed the implications of “scan” and why it was important to scan effectively to spot those nasty conflictors that are going to ruin the day.  I shared an anecdote about how as a trainee Air Trafficker I nearly lost separation on the simulated aircraft that I was controlling and how poor scan allowed the problem to “sneak” up on me.

In my introduction to this series I wrote about how the core skills of the Air Traffic Controller could potentially be adapted and embedded into business.  In this part I will introduce some of the fundamentals of what these core skills are and how they may relate to you and the world you work in.  If you haven’t seen the introduction you can access it here

It would be easy to write these posts if each of these skills are exclusive and that if you don’t use one you would be OK.  The fact is that each of the core skills is reliant on the other, so I would suggest giving these posts a read and a re-read to fully appreciate how they link together.  The first core skill I’m going to talk about is “scan.”

Whilst writing this piece I can still hear my Air Traffic instructor’s voice on my first Radar simulation session.  One of the scariest words a trainee Air Trafficker may hear from an Instructor is “Scan” …  Normally a sign that they have seen something and you haven’t!

I recall my instructors broad Yorkshire accent resonating in my ears as I hear the word “Scan!”  Now at this point being a complete newbie I’m only controlling one simulated blip on the screen and he was prompting me to look around…  to look around the whole radar tube… look to the east, the west, the north, the south…  I was being given a BIG hint…  look for the conflicting blip that was going to erode separation with my aircraft and make the situation unsafe.

“Scan Lad!” comes the Yorkshire accented voice again… a cold, yet sweaty feeling grows in the palms of my hands…  The second time that word is said to you, you know for definite there is a big threat to your aircraft…  eyes now on stalks you look around and around, face getting closer and closer to the radar tube (like that really helps?)  Then, in a slightly more agitated tone I hear the word “SCAN!!!” again… For what only seemed like nanoseconds (but was probably nearer to five) I search around the screen again and then I spot it!

Oh “@£$#!!” goes through my head as I issue a rather frantic “AVOIDING ACTION” transmission to my simulated blip...  The blip (under the control of a simulator “blip-driver” at the end of the “radio”) initiates the 90 degree turn as requested and I just get away with the 5 miles’ horizontal separation that is required as the conflicting simulated aircraft that “sneaked” up on mine from behind passes safely.

In reality this aircraft that “sneaked” up hadn’t actually been “sneaking” at all.  It had been there since the start of the simulator session, gradually tracking up the screen and closing in on my aeroplane.  Despite the helpful hints provided by my instructor I had simply failed to spot it…  Obvious to the experienced controller, but not to me at the time.

My “aircraft” of course is now heading in completely the wrong direction and I’ve actually created a whole host of new issues for myself, not to mention delaying my “aeroplane” by sticking in a right-angled dog-leg and giving it a tour of the simulated airspace over the “Vale of York!”  Why?  Simple really, poor scan and a healthy lesson learned in a safe simulated environment.

But what has this delightful (and slightly painful from a personal point of view) anecdote got to do with a Business Leader?

Scan is fundamental to safety.  Yes, in the case of aircraft this is so very important so as not to end in a catastrophe, but it is important to an organisation too.  Scanning effectively can be applied to a number of areas in the business world both inside the organisation and externally.  Just knowing how far to scan is also a skill and very much dependent on the pace that you are moving at, the pace of the business and the pace of your competitors.

Applying scan to your business means looking at what is going on around you now (short range scan), what can affect in a few weeks or months (medium range scan) and what is coming in the future (long range scan.)  That means, looking at it from a 360-degree perspective and also maybe from three dimensions!

Pace alters how you scan.  It is fair to say that in the digital age there are new innovations coming on to the market daily and operating in a global landscape that alters 24/7 is challenging, even to the corporate giants.  However, adjusting your scan range to your own circumstances or market is very important and ideally being able to manage your scan effectively between short, medium and long-term will undoubtedly produce the best results.

What do I mean by this?  Well, for example if you are operating in an IT product arena, it could be that you are having to innovate at a rapid rate.  With changes in the digital landscape, competitors will also be travelling at a fast pace.  Reacting quickly to new product innovations is probably essential and scanning the fast movers all around (including those that you thought were behind you!) will keep you a few steps ahead.

So how does safety fit in?  Without effective scan and adjusting your business course according to the “conflictors” that may be out there, could result with your own business catastrophe.  There are many cases where a business has kept with the same tried and tested product or model failing to look at what is happening in the medium and long term and they have reacted too late, resulting with catastrophic business failure.

For example, a well-known wet-film photographic services company that failed to recognise the impact that digital photography would have on their market found themselves playing catch-up, and there was an equally well-known high street video renting retailer that failed to see the onset of on-demand or film streaming services and suffered hugely.  Admittedly, there were other factors that led to these companies having such difficulties, but failure to scan effectively was almost certainly a contributing factor.

Short range scan is equally important.  In Air Traffic terms the conflictor that appeared from nowhere and was conflicting with your aircraft was known as “pop-up” traffic (all to do with the levels that radar can see down to which increases with distance… but I won’t go into the theory of primary radar limitations here!)

In business terms, there may be “pop-up” threats that just seem to appear from nowhere, a company that starts offering the same product, a new innovation that suddenly makes your product less attractive, one of your key suppliers going bust, a critical systems failure in the office.  All of these sort of scenarios need immediate action.

In the example of the simulated blip, a good “avoiding action” turn managed to save the day… but at what cost?

In business, a 90-degree turn to the left or the right (ie change of strategic or operational direction) when the business problem appears may just be a little too late to be fully effective.  That isn’t to say that the business wouldn’t get away with it, but the risks increase as does the potential impact.

To use another aviation analogy, imagine you are sat on your Jumbo Jet, on your way to somewhere exotic, G&T in hand and not a care in the world…  If the pilot put in a tight 90-degree turn, it wouldn’t feel nice, you may even spill your G&T!  Now imagine you are sat there and the pilot does a gentle 10-degree turn, you probably wouldn’t even notice!

A huge business change is unsettling, like a 90-degree sharp turn for an aeroplane, the change in direction for the business is uncomfortable, anything unforeseen causes unease for all those involved and it may leave your customers and staff feeling slightly bemused… not to mention, a lack of confidence in the organisations ability to spot a problem earlier!

Having an effective scan, helps to minimize that risk.  Sure, in the case of a supplier going bust for example, immediate action would be required.  But this is also linked with planning and division of attention (see later posts on those topics!)

It is worth adding that in the Air Traffic “avoiding action” instruction, the direction was given followed immediately afterwards by “…traffic was [position, height]” This is important and worth taking into the business world.  It is all about good communication ie the pilot was given the reason for the change and understands the importance!

So often in businesses there are major changes of strategic or operational direction and the reasons for the changes are not communicated to those affected.  Communicating the reason for a change is embedded in every change theory that you can read, yet organisations still fail to communicate effectively.  I will leave the subject of good communication to a later post as there is far too much to cover on the subject here.

Of course a much better solution to reduce the number of hard turns is to employ good scan continuously.  Spotting the problem early could mean only having to do a minor course change, which later down the line reaps greater benefits and positions you or your organisation well away from the problem.  A minor change of direction should still be communicated but is likely to be less disruptive and gives you more time to plan the next step…  Not to mention preventing G&T spillage!

There is much more to add to scan and in the next post I introduce another of the core skills “Division of Attention” and build on what I’ve discussed in this post.

To gain access to the full series I ask you to visit the Contact Page of this website http://www.chameleogenics.co.uk/contact.html  fill in your details and select “Subscribe to Blog” from the drop-down.  It is totally free and you have my guarantee that I won’t be spamming your inbox repeatedly.  What you will get is access to all of the articles and extra information and diagrams not available on the blog page.  Over the course of the next few weeks I will be building this series of “Air Traffic Control and Leading a Business – Similar?” and of course I welcome your feedback.

Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any agency of the UK Government. Examples given are from personal experience and should be viewed as only examples.Assumptions made within the analysis are not reflective of the position of any UK government entity.

Introduction

Whilst in the process of leaving the Royal Air Force I attended several seminars and workshops that were going to help me equip myself for life outside of an environment that I had existed within for 23 years.  Aside from the normal stuff like re-learning how to register with a GP, discovering that you actually have to pay for work clothing and finding out how the world on the outside actually works, I went through a number of assessments to understand what transferable skills I actually possessed as an Air Traffic Controller that would equip me for the world outside.

I strongly believed that I had a range of these transferable skills, but what did they transfer to?  It soon became clear after a couple of job interviews that “lack of commercial” knowledge was pretty high on the gap-o-meter!  However, (after some sound advice and feedback from a Director that interviewed me – Thanks… you know who you are!) I persisted, became employed and have since honed new business skills and forged a career away from the Air Traffic Control environment mainly in external and internal consultancy, leading change and business process redesign. 

Although the cut and thrust of daily Air Traffic life now seems a life-time ago, I haven’t forgotten the core skills that a good Air Trafficker requires to conduct their business on a daily basis and this knowledge has helped me whilst working with business clients from around the world.

One of the most common things said to me when I reveal that I used to be an Air Traffic Controller, apart from the question, “Was you the guy that waved the table-tennis bats?” (NO!), is “Wow, that must have been stressful.”  Now, I’m not going to lie and say that it was all plain sailing… believe me, it had its moments, but the stress of an Air Traffic Control situation is very much “in the moment” and once it has been resolved, most of the time the stress factors diminish and at the end of shift, you go home knowing that the job was done well.

That’s not to say that you never reflect on a particular situation that has arisen.  Generally, any “stressful situation” would/should be thoroughly debriefed and of course there may be occasions where you feel stressed for a longer period afterwards (it’s a very personal and individual thing.)  But, as a rule, once the moment has passed… there’s not much you can do about that particular situation apart from take in the learning and apply to the next time should it occur!  Lots of experiential learning!  A part of the management of stress in aviation relies heavily on training, supervision, debrief, feedback, sharing and learning…  more about that in a later post. 

So with all that in mind, when I first considered writing this series I was going to focus on stress and performance under pressure rather than the core skills.  My initial thoughts were to research the top-ten most stressful jobs and show how Air Traffic Control was right up there in the list.  To my surprise, in the lists that I checked out for 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016, Air Traffic Controller as a profession did not feature in the top-ten… not once, which made me wonder why people naturally made a statement like “Wow, that must have been stressful.”  Public perception?  Maybe?  The same perception that drives people to think that Air Traffic Controllers wave table-tennis bats maybe?! (I say again, they don’t… apart from occasionally for leisure!)

Surprisingly, Executives that I have worked with have often been amongst the ones making the comments about stress to me, yet Corporate Executives feature on the top stressful jobs list year on year!  It is also probably not surprising that as there are so many lists to choose from that originate from all over the world there is no real consensus on what THE most stressful job is.  From what I can gather Corporate Executives, Healthcare Professionals, Enlisted Military Personnel, Prison Officers, Police Officers, Fire-fighters and Airline Pilots all feature fairly consistently in the top twenty-five.

So after the research and finding that according to the many lists that Corporate Executives were in fact in much more stressful jobs than an Air Traffic Controller, I thought it would be more interesting to examine what similarities there are between Air Traffic Control and the Corporate Business World and whether the Corporate Executive, Business Leader and Manager can learn from the Air Traffic Controller!

What I discovered was not hugely surprising to me as I explored this when leaving the Royal Air Force, but I thought it may be time to share wider.  In my view many of the core skills and competencies of an Air Traffic Controller are in fact directly transferable into the business landscape.  In fact, I would go so far to say that by working on these core skills, Executives, Business Leaders, Managers and their organisations could improve their performance greatly and become more productive.

The Air Traffic Control skills do not only relate to personal development, but can also be applied to how teams function, how products are developed, markets are managed and all round business operations.

So this article is the introduction to a mini-series of blogs focussing on how the skills and competencies of an Air Traffic Controller may be translated into business terms.  I shall discuss core skills and specific skills - translated from Air Traffic Radar Control and Visual Control, I shall share some anecdotes and share some practical advice on how you may be able to apply these skills into the business world.

Whether you are an established Business Leader, Corporate Executive with years of experience, Manager of any level or a budding entrepreneur building your first business, there is something here for everyone.

During the next few posts I’m going to introduce the core skills of the Air Traffic Controller, skills that I was regularly assessed upon and regularly had to prove that I was satisfactory in, I will introduce the fundamentals of the specific skills used in radar and aerodrome control, that when transferred into a business may improve your effectiveness and I will give some insight into how you may embed these skills into day-to-day working.

The first part – “Scan…Scan!...SCAN!!!” looks at the first of the core skills and its importance in safely navigating the business landscape.

To gain access to the full series I would ask you to visit the Contact Page of this website http://www.chameleogenics.co.uk/contact.html  fill in your details and select “Subscribe to Blog” from the drop-down.  It is totally free and you have my guarantee that I won’t be spamming your inbox repeatedly.  What you will get is access to each article before it is released on the web and extra information and diagrams not available on the blog page.  Over the course of the next few weeks I will be building this series of “Air Traffic Control and Leading a Business – Similar?” and of course I welcome your feedback.

Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any agency of the UK Government. Examples given are from personal experience and should be viewed as only examples.Assumptions made within the analysis are not reflective of the position of any UK government entity.

A few weeks ago I was TV channel hopping trying to find something that would stimulate the brain rather than shrivel it up.  After flicking past another portion of “Man vs Food”, several shopping channels and a repeat of a Top Gear road trip, I finally landed on “Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares – USA”.  Resigned to the fact that any intellectual stimulation was not going to be provided courtesy of my “Idiot Lantern”, I started to watch the programme…

What happened next rather surprised me.  For those of you that have not had the pleasure of televisual entertainment provided by Chef Ramsay need to know a few things.  Firstly, Chef Ramsay is an expert chef, he was the first Scottish chef to be awarded three Michelin Stars.  He was nearly a professional footballer, until injury forced him to change career.  He has many restaurants in the UK and abroad.  Americans love him and respect him.  He has had (and continues to have) a successful TV career.  He is a family man.  Oh and he swears…LOTS!

The format of the Kitchen Nightmare show is pretty simple.  There is a real-life restaurant that has some sort of issue, Ramsay visits it, swears at the staff and owner, they change a few things and the restaurant becomes a success!

But actually, there is rather more to it than meets the eye!  If you break down each episode of this show there is a pattern that emerges time and time again… and whether Chef Ramsay knows it or not, him (and the production team – let’s not be so naïve to assume that he is doing this alone!) are applying some basic change management and process redesign methodology.

Before the initial visit Ramsay is aware of why the owners have called him in and what the vision of the restaurant is, or was.  Multitudes of reasons, but normally that the restaurant, once popular and profitable, is now underperforming and losing money.

Chef Ramsay makes an initial visit.  He samples the food, looks at the ambiance and décor, staff and cleanliness…  He then does a second visit, watching the kitchen, the staff, the process and environment.  What he is doing is Gemba or “going to the work”.  Ramsay is observing, noting issues and taking stock of what is going on.  Interestingly, all he does is observe.  He offers limited feedback at this stage (apart from not eating the food when it is gross… which is more or less always)…  Oh and yes, he swears a bit!

Next, in this “Nightmare” journey, Ramsay gets the staff together and gives specific feedback, he gets the owners and gives them feedback.  He shoots from the hip, tells them as it is… Oh and yes, he swears a bit!

Now usually what happens at this stage, is that some partial redesign is completed.  The menu amended, the kitchen cleaned or re-vamped, then he watches them again.  Normally, it is pretty diabolical.  Changes are small and don’t stick, the kitchen and front of house staff revert to the old methods of working and it is pretty horrendous…  Oh and yes, he swears a bit!

The next stage is truly transformational.  After going to this pit of despair, Ramsay reinvigorates the staff and owners, the restaurant is modernised, kitchen becomes sparkling, uniforms changed and Ramsay has a special “Re-opening Night” set up (the restaurants featured are always packed!) 

Interestingly, Chef Ramsay changes stance….  Not much swearing, if any at all, but he becomes the coach, the mentor, the trusted advisor…  Change occurs!!

Sometimes, they do a re-visit 6 months later to see if things have sustained.  Often they have and everyone is happy, business thriving.  So how?

Ramsay and the team follow a methodology and I’ve translated it using the Chameleogenics Transformation Framework

So here is it, my recipe for Process Redesign a lá Ramsay Nightmares:

Ingredients:

1 Vision

A heap of Business Issues

4-5 Medium sized objectives

An amount of urgency

Healthy portion of Diagnosis

A Portion of Soul Searching

A level of Motivation

A helping of Creativity

A Sprinkle of Innovation

Elbow Grease

Some F Words (Optional)

Equipment:

People with open minds

A mould to break

Step 1.  Examine your vision…  If your vision isn’t matching reality extract the business issues and set to one side.

Step 2.  Take your business issues extracted in step 1 and examine what they are.  Take time to understand what issues you have (although no need to strip them down yet) and Formalise them with the objectives.  Mix in a good amount of urgency.  (TIP:  Always good to share the mix so far with anyone that is going to see the completed recipe, let them taste the urgency!)

Step 3.  Analyse the issues, apply some diagnosis to each of the areas.  This may take a bit of time as some issues are thicker than others and may need a bit of persistence.  Don’t rush the diagnosis or else there is a risk that you won’t get down to the roots, and it is normally at the roots where the juiciest issues are!  (TIP:  If you add in some soul searching here, it may be easier to get to the roots)

Step 4.  Time to Enterprise.  Mix the roots with a generous portion of creativity and blend in a sprinkle of innovation.  Add a good level of motivation… you can never add too much!  Don’t be concerned if your mixture looks nothing like the raw ingredients at this point… that is probably a good thing!  (TIP:  Always useful to break the mould at this stage!)

Step 5.  Time to get Organised.  Don’t just splatter your recipe everywhere, plan out where you need to put it first so that it will flourish.  (TIP:  Worth telling everyone that the recipe is ready!)

Step 6.  Take your mixture and spread it where required.  You will need some more motivation and possibly some elbow grease to make the recipe work.  Keep your eye on the mixture and watch it grow.  Make sure that you pay equal attention to all elements of the mixture to prevent it going flat.  (TIP:  Have someone help you at this stage)

Step 7.  Enjoy the completed recipe.  However, make sure that it is stored correctly and not ignored.  Ignoring the recipe could result in the innovation and creativity that was mixed in splitting from the recipe and before you know it you’ll just be left with a messy vision and a load of issues!

Lastly, I personally don’t recommend using the F Words in this recipe…  but it seems to work for Chef Ramsay!

Enjoy!