We can change!

I recently read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.  I highly recommend any books by him.  I don't have the book in front of me, so I'm making this point from memory.  Please forgive me for the inevitable mistakes in details.

Anyway, about 3/4 of the way through the book Gladwell talks about how for a period of time in the 80's or early 90's when Korean airlines had an amazingly high crash rate.  The pilots and crew were all well trained, the planes were all well maintained, and there was no apparent reason as to why so many Korean planes ended up in emergency situations.

So, some researchers went and listened to cockpit recordings and recordings between pilots and the air traffic controllers of planes that had gone down.  They discovered that there were huge communication issues within Korean airline crews and then more communication issues between the crews and the tower.

Korea has a very reverential culture.  You do not overstep the bounds of your position.  You also never insult the intelligence or capabilities of a superior by suggesting that they aren't fully aware of a situation.  So, if a flight attendant sees fuel leaking out of a wing, it would be supremely rude for the flight attendant to mention it to a pilot.  If the first mate sees something askew with a meter, they must never directly point it out to the captain.  That would be insulting the captain's position.   The captain would never confront a New York City air traffic controller by saying, "We're running low on fuel.  I need to land now!  Put me at the front of the line!"  That's just shockingly rude and inappropriate!  Akin to spitting on someone's grandmother.

See the problem?  There are all these societal cues that one has to learn to navigate Korean society successfully.  They're crucial rules if you want to be part of life in Korea.  But those rules don't work when a Korean pilot is faced with a plane in distress and an air traffic controller from Laguardia.

As some say (or threaten) in the South, "Y'all don't get above yur raisin'."  Or, "Don't step out of the bounds of what you've been taught.  Don't try to be different than the people you come from."

But, Gladwell goes on to say that the Korean flight crews did learn how to deal with this specific situation of being on a plane.  They needed to protect their passengers and themselves and learn a completely new way of communication that they could use in that context.  So the researchers started putting Korean flight crews through a communication boot camp.

The flight crews accomplished one of the hardest things for a person to do: go against ingrained patterns from family, friends, society at large, and personal experience to cultivate new patterns of behavior.

And it was hard as hell.  But they were motivated and over time they were able to do it.  Korean flight crews learned to be pushy as appropriate and the number of crashes went down. 

I hate it when people think they can't change.  I hate it more when "experts" imply that people can't change.  Yes, people can.  But it takes strong motivation and discipline and support.  To be fit and healthy we've got to fight against all sorts of ingrained patterns: from family, from friends, from personal history.  And it's not easy.  But we're the pilots of our planes.  There are people that depend on us to show up and stay healthy.  When I go home to visit my parents in SC and they give me grief about getting up early to exercise.  I've got to push back.  When I go to family events and try my hardest to avoid deep fried goodies and massive servings of dessert, I've got to be motivated to change that pattern of piling my plate high.  It's hard, but it's not impossible.

We've got to find what it is that motivates us, build support networks, and realize that we can change!