Resiliency: Recovering from Unrecognized Complacency, Naval Aviation's Silent Killer

Resiliency: Recovering from Unrecognized Complacency, Naval Aviation's Silent Killer

By LCDR Tim “Pickle” Dinsmore, USN (Ret.)

One of the hardest challenges any aviator will ever have to overcome is complacency. Overcoming it becomes harder as you gain in experience and flight hours. Recognizing it, fighting it, and recovering from it is much easier said than done.

What is complacency? Merriam Webster defines it as a sense of unaware and uninformed self-satisfaction. But it is much more than that, it is a mindset that affects individual behavior, decision-making, and error recognition. Psychologists know what causes complacency, ask any, and they will generally list eight reasons:

1. Previous success breeds a sense of overconfidence and invulnerability.

2. Routinization causes familiarity and predictability that prevents people from seeing deviations that affect safety - too many sets and reps.

3. Lack of constructive feedback creates a mindset that performance deviations are acceptable.

4. Group think inadvertently promotes deviations, by tolerating them.

5. Monotony and boredom - not enough sets and reps.

6. External pressures, especially time restrictive deadlines, cause people to prioritize efficiency over thoroughness.

7. Lack of accountability fosters complacency, especially for minor deviations.

8. Becoming too comfortable in a single role that a person no longer finds challenging.

A quick look at any job in Naval Aviation, and you can quickly see, any aviator, no matter how great they might be, is susceptible to complacency. There are two issues at hand that will cause an aviator to not realize they are complacent. These two issues work together and sometimes work against each other, but always lead to complacency.

The first is normalization of deviance. Normalization of deviance is a socially learned behavior. There is a correct way to complete any task. As aviators we know this. We are held to a standard, tested against that standard, and as experts, we know the standard by heart. In many cases, the standard might be impossibly narrow, for example 500' AGL and 100 KIAS. We all know that those numbers really mean "about" or "around"…right? "Sure the course rules manual says 500' and 100 KIAS, but these winds are crazy and turbulent." "Yes the precision approach speed for helicopters is 90 KIAS, but it's VFR and we both need 6." If you ever entered into this type of informal social contract, then you normalized deviance. You have deviated away from the standard. Normalization of deviance always starts with the smallest most insignificant deviations that are easily justified socially to one another. But, over time, as a group (especially as you add new members to that group) those deviations become normalized. Once the normalization of deviance ball starts rolling, the group will continuously deviate further from the standard. Five years on someone will say "We've always flown these course rules at 500' AGL and 120 knots, but we need to get there, are you good with pulling max torque?" "Every time it's VFR, we fly these approaches at 120 knots, it's efficient." Until robots take to the skies, aviators will suffer from the pressures of social conformity and normalization of deviance.

The second is drift. Drift is an attitude. Like normalization of deviance, drift manifests itself in tiny, nearly imperceptible errors that are easily justified to yourself. "I didn't follow the checklist and recharge the APU accumulator because I needed to get off the spot. I'll get it on external power." "I was all over the place on the numbers today, but I'm knocking off some rust." In this case, drift is insidious. Drift is so easily explained away, that as soon as you justify it to yourself you forget you drifted. The million dollar question is when does it stop? You are the only person who knows you drifted. How far do you allow yourself to drift? For most aviators, it’s the first time they scare themselves half to death.

When you pair drift and normalization of deviance to the eight reasons aviators become complacent, you have a recipe for disaster. The result is unrecognized complacency, and it will kill you. Can you learn to recognize it in yourself and your squadron-mates? How can you recover from it?

The adage, there are two types of aviators, those who are complacent and those recovering from it rings true. If you find you are complacent, attack your complacency with grace knowing you aren't alone. Here are some questions to ask yourself to see if you are being complacent:

1. Are you too comfortable with certain tasks? Do you go through the motions of the preflight, or do you still look at every single item in detail with the fervency of your first day at the FRS?

2. Are you still learning on every flight? Do you come home from a flight and think you are just a little bit better? Do you have a mindset of constant improvement, no matter how small?

3. Have you ever asked another trusted aviator if you have any blind-spots? Have you ever asked your best friend in the squadron if they think you are complacent?

4. Do you guard yourself against personal drift by not making excuses (to yourself) for errors/deviations?

5. Are you cynical or apathetic about your cockpit environment, crew, mission, or squadron? Do you non-maliciously choose to not to do something because it doesn't really make a difference, isn't that important, is there to make someone else look good, is doing someone else's work for them?

6. Do you always feel like you are clubbing alligators closest to the boat, pressed for time, forced to accept ambiguity? Will you let things slide a little to get a task done?

7. Have you ever thought about where you started, where you are now, and where you want to be as an aviator?

8. Do you make minor, easily justifiable errors, frequently?

9. Are you willing to accept deviations from standards if someone else agrees? Or, is that how your squadron has always done it?

10. Do you know the correct procedure, and also have some workarounds ready in case you need them?

Resilient aviators deal with their complacency and overcome it. Admitting to yourself you have been complacent is a hard pill to swallow, and for most aviators it’s a constant career-long struggle. Here are some strategies to overcome complacency if you recognize it in yourself:

1. If you find yourself skipping a checklist item, or not looking hard enough at a preflight, or deciding the numbers are impossibly strict, then become an expert at that thing. Teaching yourself the why and how will cause you to be more conscious of that task. You can also set a goal for yourself and hold yourself accountable. "The next ten times I do this, it's going to be as close to the standard as I can get."

2. Practice self-discipline. Are you following a routine or are you falling into a rut? Question if your actions and habits are standardized, and safe. Be deliberate, and know why you do what you do.

3. Talk about your drift with trusted friends, verbalize your plan to correct it, ask them for their feedback.

4. Set specific personal limits and challenge yourself to meet them.

5. Maintain your momentum with mindfulness. Recognize self-success in correcting the area you became complacent. Compare the past you, to the current you and acknowledge your self-improvement.

6. Question your priorities. Why are you focusing on this one task, are you forgetting about another equally or more important one.

7. Recognize small errors as a sign of complacency. Do not justify them to yourself or your peers, instead state how you are going to not make the mistake again.

8. Challenge the status quo / normalization of deviance with thoughtful, non-threatening questions. How come we always do it this way when the manual says we should do it like this?

Complacency is a hazard of the job, but it is not an acceptable part of the job. Complacency affects safety, and unrecognized complacency certainly kills. Overcoming it is a personal choice. At brief time, no one ever asks you about your complacency level. It is your responsibility to fix it. Knowing how, when, and why you have the potential to be complacent is part of learning to recognize it. If you find you have become a little complacent, with one or many tasks, it doesn't mean you are a terrible aviator, it just means you are a human.