Improve Your SMS By 10
Times
By Catalina9
If you could improve your Safety Management System
by 10 times, would that be a good thing for your organizations? Most will agree
this is a good thing. Most will also agree that improving SMS is beyond
operational control, since safety is a part of the daily activities…but that’s
not true. You are in control of your SMS. Since the beginning of aviation SMS,
the question is asked Why does the Global Aviation Industry, being Airlines or
Airports, need a Safety Management System (SMS) today, when they were safe
yesterday without an SMS? There are a million answers to this question, but one
fundamental reason is that airlines and airports did not understand how to
apply a businesslike approach to their Safety Management System. Only safety
wishes were applied. You can improve your SMS by 10 time when applying a
businesslike approach to the Safety Management System.
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| It might be complex or it might be simple, but there is a formula for everything |
It’s a very simple formula with 7 daily steps for
success. For the SMS to be successful an enterprise must increase their SMS
productivity to match up with their goal achievement plan. A successful SMS is
based on the law of incremental improvements, or the law of accumulation. According
to ICAO document Safety Management Manual one of the elements of the safety
assurance component is the principle of the continuous improvement cycle.
After you have decided to improve your SMS by 10
times, the first question is if you could improve you SMS by 1/10th
of 1% every day for five days a week. If you could do this, you would be 1/1000th
more productive that day. Most people could even double their productivity in
one day by simply focusing on the most valuable use of their time every
morning. However, doubling the productivity is a heavier load and you will run
out of steam before you reach your goal. When applying the 7 steps, after a
week you will be 0.5% more productive in a week. If you could do this for one
week, could you do the same for the next week and so on. After four weeks, you
will be 2% more productive and after a year you will be 26% more productive. Is
this possible? And the answer is of course it’s possible. Since you could do
this for one year, and compounding after 10 years, you will be 1004% more
productive. You have just increased your SMS effectiveness more than 10 times.
If anyone sold you SMS to be easy and that SMS would take care of itself, they
did not understand compounding effectiveness. Since the first day of SMS there
were no guidelines and we have to some degree improved today by winging it.
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SMS is project solutions quality
leadership and hard work.
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Here are the 7 steps
to increase the value of your SMS.
1)
Arise two hours before you go to work each morning and spend 30-60
minutes reading in your field. Start the day, it’s called the Golden Hour, by
investing the Golden Hour in yourself mentally. You can combine physical
exercise while you are reading. Decide to make it a habit. If you read 30-60
minutes a day, you’ll read about a book a week, which translates to about 30-50
books a year and you will get the equivalent knowledge of a PHD in one year. An
average adult reads one non-fiction book in a year. You never know where you
get the insight to learn effectively abut your SMS so you need to keep reading
lots of material. Every so often one chapter will jump out of the page at you
and you know that’s what you need to learn about. I learned SMS in dept when I spent
12 weeks in bed, more or less, after a complex surgery. All I did, all day
long, was to read and learn about the Safety Management System. Reading is to
the mind as exercise is to the body.
2)
Rewrite your major goals in present tense each day. Use a spiral notebook
and every day you turn the page and rewrite your goals. You don’t rewrite your
goals from the previous page but write them from memory. As you write down your
goals with pen and paper, (not printing, not typing) it engages your mind. Everything
you write down is automatically recorded in your mind’s hard-drive and into
your subconscious mind working 24 hours a day.
3)
Plan every day in advance. In aviation, every day is a project solution
day. Work from a list and make a list of everything you need to work on. Make
your list the night before. Planning saves you 25-50% of your time every single
day.
4)
Focus and concentrate on the most valuable use of your time. Select your
most important tasks and start working on those tasks. Work only on these tasks
until they are completed.
5)
Listen to educational, technical or operations audio programs when you
travel or move around. Turn driving time into learning time. Turn exercise time
into learning time. Keep feeding your mind with new ideas. You never know where
the million-dollar idea will come from, so you have to expose yourself to lots
of ideas.
6)
Ask two questions after every event of importance, whether it’s after a
regulatory oversight inspection, non-compliance findings, sales call or a
meeting. These are the magic questions.
a. Question number 1 – What did I do right?
b. Question number 2 – What would I have done
differently?
Write down everything you can think of what you did right and what you
would have done differently. Don’t analyse your answer, or how it will affect
operations, but write it down as it comes. This is your after-action report
where you go through every single step. This must be done immediately after the
event or you will lose the facts. It is astonishing how fast you grow when you
do an after-action report immediately after you have completed the event or an
action.
7) Treat each person like
a million-dollar customer. Treat each person that you meet as if they are the
most important person in the world. (Because they are at that time when you
meet them). Start with your family, your co-workers, employees or contractors
and every person you meet that day. Make everybody you meet feel important.
(Because they are when you meet them). The mark of a superior person is how
they treat a person that cannot do them any favors or any good. Productivity
and effectiveness improve when people are appreciated for who they are and not
for what they do.  |
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A runway is an SMS tool for both the
airport operator and airline.
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Your toolbox are the components, elements and the
expectations of your SMS. Operating a Safety Management System is a specialized
field and you now have been shown an opportunity to capitalize on this unique,
user-friendly and very attractive opportunity. Can you imagine if you knew 10
years ago what you know now? What mistakes would you have avoided? What
opportunities would you have capitalized on? Start the seven steps now to
support a 10 times better SMS.
Catalina9
