Survival of the adaptable

Similarly, isn’t it the ultimate goal of a pilot to be able to survive any unknown — and unknowable — future operational conditions? As discussed in a previous article in Australian Aviation April 2012, a pilot is part of a complex adaptive system that includes the aircraft, its systems, the weather, ATC, the geography they are flying over, other crew member inputs and interactions and their own cognitive architecture.

The emergent properties of such systems are that while they may seem benign and in equilibrium, they can suddenly and unexpectedly turn malevolent, where they become non-linear, discontinuous, and obey power laws.

As such any observed equilibrium is punctuated at best, outputs can be totally disproportionate to inputs and our limited capacity working memory where all processing takes place can become unexpectedly and abruptly overloaded.

Hence being the ‘fittest pilot’ is essentially a meaningless term as it is relevant only to a specific set of conditions. A pilot’s goal is not only to be a suitably ‘fit pilot’ but also to be a very adaptable pilot. It is this adaptability that will determine your survival if and when that totally unexpected nasty surprise comes your way.

A suitably fit pilot implies adequate manipulative and HF skills, a thorough knowledge of relevant SOP’s, aircraft systems and importantly, a constant drive to continue to improve these skills — after all, evolution never stands still. At a bare minimum the term implies that any cyclic check and training tasks can be competently completed.

The basis of the amazing success of evolution is the simple algorithm — ‘differentiate, select, and amplify’. Replicated over epochs along with some lucky environmental changes, this algorithm is what has taken us from some murky primeval soup to the ‘intelligent’ beings we are today.

What’s more, evolution can perform its magic in any system that has the right information processing and storage characteristics. As a result, it’s attracting increased attention as a way of creating novelty, knowledge and growth at an organisational level. After all, history shows that the evolutionary algorithm does work!

Using the evolutionary algorithm of ‘differentiate, select, and amplify’ with the specific aim of developing adaptability in aviation leads to the following: the algorithm’s continuous loop begins with differentiation. If you simply keep doing the same things the same way with the same thought processes, you will undoubtably get very good at them but in a mindless ‘monkey sees – monkey does’ sort of way.

To progress past this you must do things differently. This doesn’t mean you need to operate outside of SOPs and industry norms, which clearly is unacceptable. Rather you must think about what you are doing and why — constantly trying to think about routine and non-normal procedures from different angles and how these can be applied or may need to be adapted for different scenarios.

So, differentiating is about getting your mind out of the rut that the principle of cognitive frugality — mental laziness — virtually guarantees it will fall into unless you take steps to counteract it.

Playing mind games with imagined scenarios or ones you read about in accident or incident reports also is useful, as research shows this can produce the same cognitive results as reality. In short, simulators are fantastic for physical simulation but your mind is always available for mental simulation.

But not all your ideas are going to be worthwhile so you need to actively select those that are, although this selection should not be based solely on your current operation but rather also on possible future scenarios — normal, abnormal or emergency, as the case may be.

What’s more, don’t think about your job and flying in isolation: amplify your thoughts and see how they impact on other things you have taken for granted or misconceptions they have hidden. Take a hint from the Santa Fe institute, which deliberately promotes cross-fertilisation — throwing together open-minded experts from different fields to see what new ideas can be generated.

In other words, amplify by continuing to build on the new insights and corrected misconceptions that differentiation and selection has produced.

To have the time to amplify you also need to be fit enough to survive and prosper in your existing operating environment, so closing the loop in the continuous and never-ending evolution algorithm.

As the history of many great companies — and airlines too — shows, we have to continually prepare for and adapt to changing fitness landscapes in the complex adaptive world we are part of to ensure our continued ‘fitness’ to survive.

Unfortunately, as front-line operators in a high-risk industry, your ability to adapt in seconds rather than evolutionary time frames will be a function of your preparation — you can’t expect your instructors or training departments to do all the heavy lifting for you.

At a recent Airbus flight safety conference, Airbus neatly illustrated the concept of increasing operational resilience — read survival — with vignettes of three types of non-normal operational events they have categorised.

First there were ‘By the book’ events, such as a landing gear problem resolved with standard use of SOPs. Next there were ‘Use the book’ events, such as another landing gear problem where SOPs had to be adapted. Finally, there were ‘What book?’ events — for instance, a fuel contamination situation for which there were no SOPs but where the crew handled the situation very well.

The Qantas 380 engine disintegration in Singapore or the Hudson River ditching are other well-known and well-handled examples of ‘What book?’ events.

Survival of the fittest will help you with the ‘By the book’ and to a lesser degree the ‘Use the book’ problems. But by virtual definition, in the new jungle of ‘What book?’ problems, survival of the most adaptable is the key skill — provided you are fit enough to survive long enough to be able to adapt.

Interestingly, these events also sit neatly on the continuum that extends from the ‘routine expertise’ needed to satisfactorily handle ‘By the book’ events to the ‘adaptive expertise’ required to satisfactorily solve ‘What book?’ events.

So, if Charles Darwin was to study flying as a profession rather than turtles perhaps he might specify that to professionally survive and prosper you must be fit enough to prosper in your existing environment and that your continued survival is dependent on your ability to adapt to any future changing environments.

As previous articles in Australian Aviation in September 2009, November 2009 & May 2011 have discussed, this cognitive adaptability, which the expertise researchers refer to as ‘adaptive expertise’, takes years of focused ‘deliberate practice’ to build.

It’s your choice whether you want to fake it, take it’or make this learning happen. Mindlessly doing the same old thing, the same old way will send you the way of the Dodo if things change unexpectedly.

* While this article is specifically aimed at individual pilots, changing the words slightly makes it directly applicable to other domains, to teams and in fact to whole organisations, the latter being the original research basis of the article.