Miracle on the Hudson: The Group Dynamics Angle

Like everyone else, I am just tickled by the astounding story about US Airways Flight 1549 and the heroics of Captain Chesley Sullenberger.  Clearly, the guy deserves to be a national hero and he is the model for the pilot that we all want on our flight.  But I noticed something interesting in an AP story today, "The flight was supposed to have been the last leg of a four-trip day. The crew had begun the day in Pittsburgh, flown to Charlotte, N.C., then to LaGuardia, and were to head back to Charlotte in the afternoon."

Immediately, I thought of the research on airplane cockpit crew dynamics and effectiveness done by Harvard's Richard Hackman and others.  Richard is the world's expert on group effectiveness and I am lucky to count him as one of my mentors, as I worked on a group dynamics project that he led when I was in graduate school. I have also seen him now and then over the years.  Some people in the groups area are more well-known in business circles, but Richard is the best, especially if you care about evidence rather than faith-based practices.

One of Richard's biggest research projects was on the dynamics of airline cockpit crews, and he devoted many days -- for over a year of his life -- sitting in the jump seat of the cockpit and observing and coding the dynamics if the dyad or triad. One of the main lessons that came from this --and related -- research is that the less time that a crew has been together, the more group dynamics problems they have and the more mistakes they make.  In his book, Leading Teams (see pages 54 through 59), Richard cites research based on National Transportation Safety Board data indicating that 44% of the errors (called "incidents")that pilots make are on their first flight together and 73% happen on their first day together (although the incident on Flight 1549 happened their first day together, it was their fourth flight). Richard also cites an especially interesting study done at NASA Ames Research Center in flight simulators.  It compared the performance of two different kinds of crews that were put through some very challenging problems -- bad weather, closed airports, mechanical problems and so on. These were pairs of pilots, just like Flight 1549.  One kind of crew was fresh, and as often happens on commercial flights, they had never worked together. The other crews had just come off several days on duty, but had flown together during that period --so they had established their group dynamics.  The tired crews made far fewer errors than the fresh crews -- because they he had worked out their roles and routines. As Hackman writes, he sometimes has the impulse, when boarding a commercial flight, to stick his head in the cockpit, and ask the crew if it is there first flight together -- the odds against an incident are very low even on first flights, but Hackman points out that your risk as a passenger would be far lower if you avoided first flights together. 

To return to the Miracle of the Hudson, besides fitting Hackman's research in general, the AP story provides hints of good group dynamics. Fir example, good groups instantly divide up tasks so the best people are in the best positions. Note that the role switch and quick division of labor reported by AP:

In the cockpit, Sullenberger took over flying from Skiles, who had handled the takeoff, but had less experience in the Airbus.

"Your aircraft," the co-pilot said.

While the pilot quickly leveled the plane off to keep it from stalling and thought about where to land, Skiles kept trying to restart the engines. He also began working through a three-page list of procedures for an emergency landing. Normally, those procedures begin at 35,000 feet. This time, he started at 3,000.

Indeed, to take this a step further, an astounding book by Scott Snook (who was one of Hackman's students) called Friendly Fire examines why U.S. Black Hawk Helicopters were accidentally shot down over Northern Iraq in 1994, and one of the contributing factors he identifies as a cause of this problem was that the crew of the plane that had made the decision to shoot down the Blackhawks has only two prior flights together, despite Air Force policy (based partly on Hackman's research) that, whenever possible, "hard crews," those who had flown together many times before, had developed themselves into a team, and were "tight cohesive and stable" should be used whenever possible, and especially during combat missions.

To go beyond the cockpit, as Hackman's suggests, and I discussed here, there is also evidence from product development teams, top management teams, and surgical teams that being together awhile -- or having worked together on teams in the past -- is linked to greater performance.  The research on product development teams suggests that they do eventually go stale, but that takes several years -- at which time, some "musical chairs,"  rotating people among different teams, may help refresh the teams.  The implication is that familiarity seems to breed performance, not contempt or laziness.  And if you are designing teams, err on the side of assembling them with people who have worked together before and on the side of keeping them together longer.

Of course, there are many many angles on the Miracle on the Hudson, but this one caught my eye because Hackman and Scott Snook make such a big deal out of it.  And it has implications for so many other settings.

Comments

[dblwyo]

Bob - there's a great story hiding behind this about major efforts over the last 20 years to analyze and reform crew training and cockpit procedures to improve the teamwork. A HUGE effort that's paid off last week but in vastly improved safety accidents. My introduction to these histories (hattip Nick) was in this Q&A with Malcolm Gladwell on his new book which I highly recommend:
http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=10059&SectionName=

[Wally]

It's worth noting that Captain Sullenberger was a lifelong student of flying, including accident investigation and cockpit psychology. He was one of the developer's of US Airways Cockpit Resource Management training and taught the course many times.

[Bobsutton]

Nathan,

Thanks for pointing out the typo. But the point is correct. The tired teams -- who had spent several days working together -- performed far better than the fresh teams, who had not worked-out their group dynamics yet.

Thanks

Bob

[Nathan]

Edit needed?

"The tired crews may far fewer errors than the fresh crews."
(Bottom of third paragraph).

This statement doesn't seem to make sense. Maybe it's just me, but if they are tired, it seems that fatigue would diminish even a group with good dynamics.

[Nick Donnelly]

Great article - echoes of Malcolm Gladwell's new book outliers...