News - The University of Montana

The typical airplane accident involves seven consecutive human errors, writes Malcolm Gladwell in his newest book Outliers: The Story of Success.

“One of the pilots does something wrong that by itself is not a problem. Then one of them makes another error on top of that, which combined with the first error still does not amount to catastrophe. But then they make a third error on top of that, and then another and another and another, and it is the combination of all those errors that leads to disaster.”

The interesting thing is, the errors are rarely problems of knowledge or flying skill, Gladwell says. They are invariably errors of teamwork and communication.

“One pilot knows something important and somehow doesn’t tell the other pilot. One pilot does something wrong, and the other pilot doesn’t catch the error. A tricky situation needs to be resolved through a complex series of steps–and somehow the pilots fail to coordinate and miss one of them.”

If technology disasters caused loss of human life, they would prompt in-depth investigations and analyses, and I suspect we’d come to the same conclusion. Teamwork and communication failures are the main reason minor issues escalate into major problems.

Teamwork and communication can break down for any number of reasons:  too much to do, too little time, lack of awareness, personality conflicts and organizational culture all contribute to the problem. None of these issues are easy to solve. But simply being aware that teamwork and communication are essential to success is a good start.

Listen to air traffic communication from Chicago