A Shaky Alliance
Most of us live and work in a world where safety and security is primarily provided by others. Even those of us who fly airplanes, fight fires or work in other so-called high risk industries are surrounded by devices, processes, and procedures that have been developed and refined over decades to keep us safe and secure while we go about working and playing in our day to day lives. The world seems stable, so our situational awareness grows dull, and we lose our respect for things that can bite. We trust that the world will stay tame – as it always has for us up to this point. This is a shaky alliance at best, but one we grow increasingly reliant upon as we gradually lose our edge. When it goes bad, it goes bad quickly, ends badly and usually leaves a humbling epitaph.
For those of us who work and play in lower risk environments, the problem is even worse. We become so far removed from the mental possibility of having to perform at our best – we can’t comprehend that danger lurks nearby. We text as we drive, ignore dark corners of the parking lots, and allow our skills and awareness to atrophy as if tomorrow is guaranteed.
It is not.
Over the past few weeks, I have reviewed a few tragic endings where good men were overwhelmed by conditions they should have been able to handle. Out of respect for their memories, I will not go into further detail here. It is sufficient to say, that they had the training and technology to handle the situations they were put in, but when the world turned on them, they did not respond with their best - or what should have been their best based on their training and experience - and they died ingloriously. They also took others with them.
To put a somewhat finer grained analysis to this line of thinking, I believe many of us have lost the distinction between accuracy (good enough to get by) and precision (as good as I can be). Or perhaps better said, we have lost sight that precision is important in life - or worth the effort. Or maybe, in a world where competition is devalued and every kid in Little League gets a trophy - we never understood the importance or value of staying at the top of our game the first place.
In truth, striving for precision is seldom critical to either safety or success. Good enough is usually good enough. But not always, and the time of reckoning is not of our choosing. The world is not bound by any law to stay stable or safe for us or those we protect. Rogue waves – once thought to be a myth of drunken sailors – exist everywhere in our world. There are times when the alliance will be broken and we will be given one chance to respond with our best judgment and our most refined skills.
On the back side of this challenge – we will be judged.
posted by Jefe, Global War On Error at
9:56 AM
2 Comments:
Dear Dr. Kern:
I've been reflecting on your recent posting for a day or so and would like to share some thoughts. I agree with the core of your thesis but have some problems with the terminology you've chosen. (If I were inclined to be a wiseguy, I'd say that your thesis is accurate but that you haven't expressed it with precision.)
I take your point to be that operational circumstances can change rapidly, unpredictably and unexpectedly in ways that render a quality of performance that was adequate to the need at time T woefully, perhaps catastrophically, inadequate at time T + 10 seconds. You feel that to avoid unhappy consequences from such changes in operating circumstance one must strive at all times to achieve a quality of performance that will be adequate when faced with the most stringent conceivable set of requirements. So far, so good.
You contrast accurate performance (which you characterize as "good enough to get by") with precise performance ("as good as I can be"). I infer that you see accuracy and precision as two points on a quality spectrum:
Uncontrolled>Inaccurate>Marginal>Accurate>Precise
I'd like to suggest that this is not the best way to view the distinction between accuracy and precision. It is a difference in kind, not just in degree. Let me offer some examples:
If I say that Pi = 22/7 that is accurate but not precise. If I say that Pi = 3.24159 that is precise but it is not accurate. Sometimes an accurate but somewhat imprecise solution is ideal. If my task, for example, is to use a piece of lifting gear with 5 ton capacity to raise a full cylindrical fuel tank of known diameter and length so that the foundation can be painted and I don't have a calculator handy, I can use Pi = 22/7 to calculate the volume of the tank in my head quite quickly and arrive at a fair estimate of the tank's weight in short order. The precision that would be achieved by insisting on Pi = 3.14159 would be neither practical nor useful.
Accuracy is not just a debased form of precision. It is conceptually different. Consider the collision of the Gol 737 with the Embraer business jet over the jungles of Brazil a while back. Both aircraft were being navigated by their onboard systems with nearly unimaginable precision. But well over 100 people died because an inaccurate traffic control system allowed them to be at the same precisely controlled altitude. GPS has given us precision but taken away the big sky theory. Therefore we must be procedurally accurate (making correct operational decisions) in order for our great precision to be an asset and not a curse.
If a momentarily dyslexic Forward Air Controller fumbles a set of grid coordinates, and the JDAM destroys a kindergarten instead of a munitions cache then the exquisite precision of the weapon will have abetted the horrible consequences of inaccurate targeting information.
If a surgeon performs with great precision in excising the left kidney of a patient whose diseased organ is on the right side -- again, all of the precision in the world cannot make up for lack of accuracy in "targeting".
I have arrived at some axioms (and I thank you for provoking me to think about this):
1. Accuracy is the product of procedural rigor. ("Know that you are aiming at the right target with the right technology, training and experience.")
2. Precision is the product of maximum effort in execution. ("Execute as carefully and methodically as you can...knowing that the resulting precision can multiply the benefits of accuracy...or the consequences of inaccuracy.")
3. Performance quality is the product of accuracy and precision. Poor performance can result from either inaccuracy or imprecision. Excellent performance requires procedural accuracy first! Then, precision in execution. Without the former, the latter will not save your hide.
Best regards,
Frank
Thanks for your comment Frank. They are are well thought out and presented and I agree completely. Stimulating deeper thinking and dialogue is the entire purpose of the Global War on Error effort. As I have said in another post, I think much of the world has gone brain dead on the topic of personal accountability. You are obviously not among that group!
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