The Goal Setting Challenge
By CatalinaNJB
Everybody
makes their Safety Management System (SMS) goals, but nobody knows how to reach
these goals. When any aviation regulatory oversight authority conducts SMS
inspections of your operations and accepts your written airport or airline
goals as conforming to regulatory requirements, they are actually accepting
your wishes or dreams. Unless you have strategy in place for how to reach your
goals, these goals are nothing else but wishes to be randomly achieved. When
the regulatory oversight authority, in any jurisdiction, conducts inspections
of your goals and establishing the validity of your goals, they could be
inspecting for wishes and not for goals. A goal without a plan is only a
wish.
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| A team of random goal achievers |
Canada
was one of the first countries to regulatory implement an aviation Safety
Management System. Part of the SMS regulations states: “A safety management system shall include a process for setting goals
for the improvement of aviation safety and for measuring the attainment of
those goals.” There is no definition in the Canadian Aeronautics Act or
Canadian Aviation Regulation of what a goal is. It therefore is up to each
operator to define what a goal is, or for an operator to conform to the opinion
of an oversight inspector of what a goal is. One of Transport Canada
expectation for goal is stated in their expectation document, or document
review guide as: “Objectives and goals
are consistent with the safety policy and their attainment is measurable.” It’s
a simple task to write a wish that is consistent with the safety policy.
However, it becomes a project task to write a goal that is consistent with the
same policy. A goal without a commitment is just an emotion.
SMS is a businesslike approach to safety. When a
business sets their goals, they also make plans how to make these goals happen.
Imagine if the CEO of a business delivered to the board of director a business
plan where the plan for achieving goals was to do nothing. If the CEO of any
organization presented a plan that goals were to be randomly achieved, the
board members would most likely not accept the plan. A business goal comes with
defined actions, timelines and preferred, or expected results. If the goal is
not reached, a business generally doesn’t change the goal to a lower bar but
would change the approach of how to reach the goal. A goal without an expected result is only a
random chance result.
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Goal setting challenge.
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Management
and employees of an airport or airline may believe that do not have control
over their own goals. This is as far from the truth or facts as it can be. You have
full control over your goals unless you deliberately set an unattainable goal
that someone else must reach for you. Take a few seconds and think about what
the regulations requires when stating that the attainment of goals must be
measurable. All it says is that you as the operator must document if your
wishes came true or not. If the regulations required that you as an operator
actually had control over your goals, it would include a statement to that fact.
But it doesn’t. From a regulatory oversight point of view, the SMS regulation
has failed SMS itself by not including this requirement. Compliance with a
regulatory requirement is for the purpose of compliance only and not for
operational result. However, by the omission of this regulatory requirement any
airport or airline operators have been given an opportunity to establish your
own goals and how to reach these goals. Without interference from the
regulatory authority to determine if you are qualified to set your own goals or
what these goals should be, your SMS has been given an opportunity to succeed
by taking advantage of a 3-day personal development and goal setting challenges
in a boardroom setting.
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