Telling Stories: The art of passing on tacit knowledge in aviation
We hear from Captain Finn Zwager today. He has provided us with an article he wrote on LinkedIn a few months ago. It’s very good. He discusses that pilots learn as much from word of mouth stories as they do from manuals - especially as manuals get more prescriptive and sterile.
I think the story of Sully who successfully ditched in the Hudson is an excellent example - we all know it and gave pilots a moment to evaluate if they could do it. If the story hadn’t been told as a story but rather only as a report from the FAA, the nuances that allowed success would likely have been lost.
Finn Zwager - MSc, current A380/A350/A330/A320 - Experienced flight operations and flight safety manager
Aviation knowledge and experience, especially in large, well-resourced airlines with excellent teaching facilities, is mainly passed on through structured, documented and auditable training. After all, no professional pilot nor the general public would ever stand for pilots relying on ‘aero club bar talk’ to get them to their destination safely. However, there is considerable knowledge to be gained that is not in the manuals nor always covered in the classroom or simulator. Getting this non-codified or tacit knowledge to line crew is an area where aviation organisations may be able to make some ‘marginal gains’ on flight safety. Beneath the rocky surface of the ‘I learned flying from that’ bar or hangar talk, safety and efficiency improving tacit knowledge nuggets are waiting to be mined.
In this write-up I use a recent article from the Economist about research conducted by Professor C.G. Myers titled ‘Storytelling as a Tool for Vicarious Learning among Air Medical Transport Crews’ as a take-off point adding an aviation perspective en-route.
Marathons, not beers
Among other sports, I’ve run several marathons including ten as part of an Ironman race. These activities and the hours of training involved have a social element for sure, but socialising over a pint instead would have made me a safer pilot faster, especially in my early aviation career. The members of the Aeroclubs in the Netherlands, where I learned to fly like a Heineken or two and the Aeroclub of East Africa in Kenya, where I gained my first commercial flying experience, has seen many bottle-to-throttle legends pass through. While a few talked a good flying talk but never seemed to leave the bar much, many others were full of knowledge and advice. Only yesterday had they turned North at the large baobab tree to make it into the correct valley. Did I know the Kenya 611 AM radio station was the most powerful ADF beacon for hundreds of miles? Did I realise Mount Marsabit airstrip was usually in the cloud, but the strip in the flat terrain just next to it is always clear and easily accessible by road? This was all ‘tacit knowledge’ I didn’t have and could have gained a lot quicker by taking up drinking as a hobby.
Barriers to tacit knowledge spreading
The alcohol and ‘the bar’ are not the actual point here. Socialising and talking shop over a coffee, shisha, or a glass of water works just as well. But, as I used to tell new joiners when introducing the flight safety department, pilots, especially in large organisations, may not ‘talk shop’ to each other that much. The main reason is that crew are ‘remote workers’ who only tend to meet in small groups of 2 to 4. Unlike office or site workers, there is no opportunity for them to meet at the water cooler or canteen. Other barriers to passing on tacit knowledge at scale include pilots working pretty hard and needing their time on layovers to rest and spend most of their free time on family, friends, and hobbies. Or, they may not be keen to share their most valuable experiences where things didn’t go as planned for fear that sharing this could hurt their career. Lastly, they may just not be terribly talkative or sociable. After all, flying is predominantly an individual pursuit that attracts its fair share of characters who are happy with their own company. In this regard, it is interesting to note that the study underlying the article was about flight nurses, a profession with a high percentage of women. Women are often found to be easier and better communicators than men. I can testify that flight nurses are generally not short on things to say, and I mean that very positively.
Ideally, knowledge is not tacit but obvious, and the examples I mentioned from my ‘bush flying’ days above should all be included in a route guide. But guides are hard to write and even harder to keep up to date. Also, because what is written can be used in a court of law when things go wrong, organisations tend to be careful in what they put to paper, and they understandably may be reluctant to print much beyond black-and-white rules.
Tacit knowledge is stories. Stories are what we remember.
While it may sound professional to ‘stick to the facts’ and it is the reliable risk-averse way to operate as a manager or trainer, it may also miss out on what connects those facts. It is in those connections between facts where the tacit knowledge often lies. Facts, numbers, names, and call signs are hard to remember. Understanding how the system works or what the procedure tries to achieve already helps a lot in recall, as do mnemonics (GUMPF: Gas, undercarriage, mixture, etc...). A form of mnemonic is the ‘story method.’ Perhaps because it is the oldest way humans have remembered and passed on knowledge by several thousands of years and our brain is pretty good at, at least a lot better than a cold list of facts. Try memorising ten random items and most of us will struggle. Connect those items through a story and this becomes much easier and successful.
Managers facilitating bar talk
So what is the flight safety or training manager reading the above supposed to do? Send all pilots to the bar to swap ‘war stories’ or tell them to be more sociable? That is not going to fly. Here are three ideas that might help.
1. Where possible, teach, speak and write ‘storied.’ As I pointed out in my last LinkedIn article, ‘Safety Squeeze’, communication must be contextual. Provide the story behind the event or instruction. How did it come about? What happened? With a story behind it, tacit knowledge is much easier to remember and pass on to the next crew member. While some organisations run very readable internal publications with outstanding narratives beyond the manuals or the facts of an event, many struggle to put out even an understandable instruction. If you are one of those, copy and steal from the good ones. For those organisations that use evidence-based training and have a database of events: Publish the whole thing with the evidence, i.e. the background stories. Often, training events are put in place because of something that has occurred. Please do not lose this tacit knowledge by keeping it behind closed doors; put it out there.
2. While online training and Zoom sessions have their place as they are a very cost-effective and efficient way of delivering required content, it is crucial to retain a good percentage of in-person or classroom teaching and meetings. Ensure the non-virtual sessions differentiate themselves by selecting instructors or speakers with a story to tell from their own experience and/or are well-read beyond the manuals. If it is not feasible to choose good ‘storytellers’ as instructors, at least ensure they do not read out the PowerPoint but have the confidence and ability to let the participants share their tacit knowledge.
3. Nobody will share stories unless the organisation is a ‘safe space’. Creating a safe space does not mean opening up the floor to the pilot’s complaints and grievances, which are always numerous. Instead, a safe space means that stories of good and bad experiences are accepted by the organisation and not judged by their peers. Creating an atmosphere where this is possible likely starts with the leader, speaker, or instructor sharing their own stories, especially those experiences from which they learned a lot. It takes personal courage to share where you f-ed up, but there is often more valuable knowledge in failure than in success.
For pilots
If you’re not the social type, or rather not talk shop during or after work, gain your tacit knowledge by looking over aviation magazines, websites, social media (has Insta/TikTok replaced the bar for the next generation of pilots?) and other aviation-related content.
And for the boss
The closing paragraph of the Economist article is the best advice for CEOs on how to promote tacit knowledge: “It starts by recognising the importance of retaining workers. You can’t share experience if no one has any.”
TACIT KNOWLEDGE EXAMPLE STORY: THE CENTRE LINE LIGHTS
A sample I have used when speaking to crew about the importance of ‘sharing stories’ is the following. At 4 AM (!), after completing the inbound leg uneventfully, the PF captain in the left-hand seat was taxing out to the runway. When the PF turned right to line up on the runway the PM first officer shouted, ‘Stop’. The PM explained to the PF that the aircraft was about to leave the taxiway to the right onto the grass. The PF straightened the aircraft and then turned to line up on the runway centre line. After take-off the crew chatted about what had just happened, and they realised that the PF had mistaken the righthand runway edge lights for centre line lights. Besides the different perspective from the left-hand seat while making a right-hand turn, the less-than-perfect visibility and the poor quality of the taxi and runway lights, the main reason for his slip was that he had not realised there were no centreline lights to begin with! To make the example stick as a story, I would usually add: Imagine you are this crew. During your flight to this destination you do a thorough chart brief, noticing the lack of centre line lights. You try to think about what threat this poses, but all you can think is that it will likely look a bit different on landing from the usual. Now that you have been told the story about this crew nearly taxing into the grass, which would likely have resulted in ‘tea and biscuits with the chief pilot’, you will never forget the line-up trap of not having centreline lights where you may expect them. After sharing this anecdote for many years, the Airbus FCOM these days contains the sentence: “Be careful that in low visibility, edge lights could be mixed up with the center line lights.” Good information and it is somewhat related, but it is not as easy to recall as a story.
Some references:
Search for Kaizen (Japanese manufacturing) or Dave Brailsford (British cycling) to learn more about marginal gains philosophy. An example of a link or story method for remembering can be found here:
www.mindtools.com/a0tzgns/the-link-and-story-methods
The Economist article is here:
www.economist.com/business/2024/03/07/how-can-firms-pass-on-tacit-knowledge
and they refer to: Myers, C. G. (2022). Storytelling as a Tool for Vicarious Learning among Air Medical Transport Crews. Administrative Science Quarterly, 67(2), 378-422. //doi.org/10.1177/00018392211058426
