Seven Core SMS Principles

Seven Core SMS Principles

By OffRoadPilots 

A safety management system (SMS) is not about what to restrict, how to restrict,

or what to eliminate from operations, but what can be added to operations for a

successful business venture. SMS is an adaptable system which adapts to both

written and unwritten processes. Adapting processes are also called drift or

deviations. When a process adapts, the process might need to get back on track for

compliance with the process text in the SMS manual, or the SMS manual text

might need to get back on track for compliance with the practical application of

the process. Rigid processes may not produce desired outcome and human

behavior is to adapt to practical processes as viewed by frontline workers.

Adaptability is the capacity

to be modified for a new use

or purpose. Adaptability is

resilience, flexibility,

versatility, and adjustability.

Adaptability is not to waver,

but it is to stay focused on

the goal when special cause

variations interrupts. Just as

a lion keeps its eyes on the

goal and its vision remain on

the target in a turn, on a

straight track, or when it tumbles and fall. When Orville and Wilbur flight took place on December 17, 1903, they used car gas to run the engine. The process worked fine until one day at 8,000 feet the engine quit due to a vapor lock, which

left them with two options. Option one was to remain rigid and faithful to the

process using car gas, or option two, to change the airplane engine requirements

text in the operations manual to use the newly invented avgas. Adaptability to

avgas reduced the likelihood of harm to pilots and passengers or destruction of

property to an acceptable level.

SMS principles are the foundational guidelines or rules that are beneficial for

assessing risks and making sound decisions. It is common for departments, teams,

and organizations to implement principles that serves as valuable guidelines in an

extensive range of interactions and processes. Principles are intended to state SMS

structure and influence or control the conduct of a safety management system.

Principles are helpful in describing definitions, constraints, and operations that

apply to an SMS enterprise. SMS principles can be functional to processes, people,

systems, organizational and human behavior, and are put in place to aid operators,

both airports and airlines, to reach goals and objectives.

Principles are different from policies. Policies include visionary statements of the

path an organization has chosen, policies are long term-term visions, policies are

leading an organization from ahead, and stake out the path for an SMS enterprise.

A policy is the foundation where goals and objectives are anchored. Principles are

responsibilities accepted by individuals when performing their operational roles. As

an example, an airport may operate with an icy runway since airport manager

believe in a principle that they are not responsible for decisions made by pilots to

use an icy runway. Another principle is how an accountable executive (AE) lead

personnel to maintain regulatory compliance with performance-based regulations.

There are seven core principles of a safety management system. Without these

seven principles in place an SMS becomes an administrative task only in an

environment without opposition, and where there are no operational

consequences. The seven core principles of an SMS are Trust, Learning,

Accountability, Information Sharing, Training, Just Culture, and Customer-centric

Approach.

Everything begins with trust. Goals cannot be designed, built, or be reached in an

organization with suspicious minds. There are just a few elemental forces that hold a safety management system world together. The one that is the glue of an organization is called trust. Its presence cements relationships by allowing people to get together in an office environment daily, to work together, feel safe and that they belong to a group with a purpose.

Trust in a leader allows organizations and communities to flourish, while the

absence of trust can cause fragmentation and conflicts. An SMS enterprise has a

responsibility to build trust by example and begins at the top-level in the

organization. Trust is about reliability, ability, confidence, and vision, where reliability is a

performance measurement, ability is a skill measurement, confidence is an

ownership measurement, and vision is an ambassador measurement.

When trust is lost, the

energy level of engagement

is diminishing. In some way,

a reactive human behavior

is to go on an internal strike

searching for justification to

oppose organizational

principles and the line of

hierarchy. As a result, a

person pulls back from

initiatives and engagements and no longer feel part of the organizational culture. A

sure sign of an organization where trust is without action, is when there are no opposing views, there are very few reported suggestions, and suggestions are

aimed at pleasing manager’s, or owner’s opinions, and personnel suppress their

natural instinct to help out and to go above and beyond. An organization without

trust operates as a prescriptive and rigid organization. When non-prescriptive tasks

are ignored, or non-approved initiatives are suppressed, there is no punishment to

any person for making a mistake. A non-punitive policy under the safety

management system is not a guarantee that there will not be any punishment, or

non-punitive actions. During the course of a day’s work, an AE can always find a

special cause variation contributed to a person’s work behavior. Special cause

variation is not bad or good but is neutral. A special cause variation could be the wrong color shoes. The purpose when applying punitive actions to special cause

variations is to divide and find common grounds and silently attack from within.

On the positive side, trust makes people feel eager to be part of a successful SMS

enterprise, with a shared purpose and a willingness to depend on each other.

When trust is intact, we will willingly contribute what is needed, not just by

offering our presence, but also by sharing our dedication, talent, energy, and

honest thoughts on how the SMS enterprise is working.

When the level of trust is low in an organization, people limit their involvement

and what they are willing to do or share. They might think to themselves, “This is

all you deserve,” or, “This is as all I am willing to give.” In contrast, when the trust

level is high, people reward it by giving more. But, more often than not, people feel

that their distrust is not safe to share. So, a leader may be slow to discover that

they have lost a person’s trust. Remember, trust is earned, everything else can be

enforced.

Learning is a process that leads to change, which occurs as a result of experience

and increases the potential for improved performance and future learning. The

change in the learner may happen at the level of knowledge, attitude, or behavior.

As a result of learning, learners come to see concepts, ideas, and the world

differently.

Learning is not something done to candidates, but rather something candidates

themselves do. Learning is the result of how candidates interpret and respond to

their experiences. For learning to be effective, candidates need to have significant

opportunities to develop and practice intellectual skills, thinking processes, motor

skills and attitudes and values that are important for a successful safety

management system. In addition, candidates need opportunities to develop

interpersonal and social skills that are important for professional and personal

success. These skills include teamwork, communication, conflict resolution and

creative thinking. Instructors need to keep in mind that there is much more tolearning than content and that should pay attention not only to the content but

also to thinking processes and other types of learning.

Accountability is vital for a successful SMS. It is impossible to create a high-

performing team when there is lack of accountability. When no one takes

ownership of making decisions, addressing issues, and solving problems is a sign of

an unhealthy SMS enterprise. Accountability is when people take responsibility for

their own actions withing their organizational roles and responsibilities.

Accountability is about taking initiative and recognizing not only that individuals

have the power to cause problems, but also that individuals come with resilience

to bounce back and make things right when there are unexpected occurrences.

Accountability within an SMS

enterprise is forward-looking

accountability. Organizational

leadership or other

personnel do not possess

skills, tasks, or abilities to

predict forward-looking

occurrences, but they have

the ability to perform roles,

responsibilities and tasks in

the manner in which they are

successfully trained. When a

person performs their tasks as expected but still things go wrong, accountability within an SMS enterprise is not to hold that person accountable for performing

tasks as expected, but it is to assign a root cause to the special cause variation which interrupted the process. An SMS enterprise then assigns the root cause to either human factors, organizational factors, supervision factors, or environmental factors. By applying these root cause factors, an SMS enterprise are establishing organizational reliability and forward-looking accountability. It is practical impossible to create an acceptable performance level without accountability.

Information sharing is to share data and analyses internally and externally as

decided by the accountable executive. It is essential that information sharing is

without bias and opinions to promote a pre-determined outcome. There are two

“red flags” frequently associated with information sharing. One is when

information is shared only for the purpose of elevating their SMS enterprise above

an emotionally acceptable safety level, and another is when information shared is

only for the purpose of operational contract agreements compliance. An

emotionally safety level sharing could be to minimize a special cause variation as

irrelevant to operational safety, and contract agreement compliance sharing might

exclude organizational factors in a root cause analysis.

Data was formerly frequently kept in silos and often not shared among other

entities due to its proprietary, non-portable format or the inability to import and

export data. Even simple items such as dates were stored in a whole range of

different formats, making online sharing of a simple field almost impossible. The

same applied to a whole range of data, and even if it was compatible, it was often

not possible to physically transfer the data from one platform to another. Today,

information sharing is relatively simple, and it is publicly accessible. Don’t forget

that information sharing is also to share information in paper format, or by a

simple telephone call.

Training and development are integral parts of a successful safety management

system. Conventional wisdom is that training is that training is “busy time”, or a

waste of time since personnel were trained at some point in the past and

therefore competent to perform their duties years later. In the past training was

only viewed as a disruption to operations to maintain regulatory compliance.

Training and development initiatives are educational activities within an

organization that are designed to improve the job performance of an individual or

group. These programs typically involve advancing knowledge and skill sets and

instilling greater motivation to enhance job performance. One purpose of training

is to detect organizational drift, while learning is to detect changes in individual

human behaviors.Training programs can be created independently or with a learning administration system, with the goal of personnel long-term development. Common training

practices include orientations, indoctrination training, classroom lectures, case

studies, role playing, simulations and computer-based training, including e-

learning.

Benefits from training are increased productivity, reduced micromanagement,

training of future leaders, increased job satisfaction and retention, attract highly

skilled personnel, higher level of reliability, positive relationships within an

organization, bolstered safety, ability for upgrade, or cross-training, and support in

strategy development.

Training and development also improve organizational social connectedness,

which is the degree to which people have and perceive a desired number, quality,

and diversity of relationships that create a sense of belonging, valued, and

supported. Social connections are critical for a safety management system to

perform with reliability.

A just-culture is balancing safety in operations and accountability. In a just-culture

environment reactive or proactive actions are justified by consensus within an SMS

enterprise. Simply said, a just-culture is to justify actions. Justification of actions

are not the same as excuses for behaviors but are justification to establish a root

cause and implement changes as needed for process reliability.

For those who run organizations, the incentive to have a just culture is to learn

what is going on. A just culture is necessary if you want to monitor the safety of an

operation. A just culture is necessary if you want to have any idea about the

capability of your people to effectively meet challenges that will come their way.

For those who work inside an organization, the incentive of having a just culture is

to feel free to concentrate on doing a quality job rather than on limiting personalliability, to feel involved and empowered to contribute to safety improvements by

learning why thigs goes right most of the time, but also by flagging for weak spots.

For those in society who consume an organization’s product or service, just

cultures are in their own long-term best interest. Without a just culture, an easy

trap to fall into is to prioritize short-term measures to limit exposure over long-

term investments in safety.

The opposite of operating within a just culture is to operate within a blame-

culture. A blame-culture is without accountability since it is an environment where

people, groups, and teams, are singled out and blamed and criticized, and fault is

allocated to individuals for mistakes and errors.

A customer-centric approach

is a business strategy based

on putting customer first and

at the core of the business in

order to provide a positive

experience and build long-

term relationships. A

customer-centric approach

does not necessarily include

the word “safety” to define

their safety management

system. An airline had

operated by this principle for 30 years without major incidents but was required by

regulator to change their priority from a customer first approach to a safety priority approach. Just a few years later they experienced a fatal accident. Under their customer-centric approach they had a system in place for winter operations at remote airports, which in the opinion of the regulator was not required to the same degree and level of safety when operating with a safety management system.

When operating with a customer-centric approach the focus is that of customer’s

needs and experiences. A customer needs an event and accident-free flight, they

need a well-maintained aircraft, they need friendly crew, a relaxed atmosphere,

and a clean environment. After arrival at their destination, their recent experience

should trigger a desire to board their next flight with the same operator. When

operating within a customer-centric environment people are informed, they are

treated with respect and dignity, they receive guidance, and they feel integrated

with the team as opposed to being segregated as a paying customer.

When an SMS enterprise is guided by the seven core SMS principles, Trust,

Learning, Accountability, Information Sharing, Training, Just Culture, and

Customer-centric Approach, their safety management system is operating with a

vision, a reliability strategy, and a desire to succeed.

When assessing a safety management system level of success, don’t make the

mistake to equal accountable executive and operational managers behaviors to

front-line workforce behavior.

OffRoadPilots