Summer 2011 National Board Agenda

Started by FW, August 02, 2011, 07:26:49 PM

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FW

Here it is....

Anyone wish to discuss the uniform issues?  >:D

RiverAux

Item 9 - a well-researched common sense proposal to change required interval for safety training from monthly to quarterly.  Good job Col. Vazquez!  NHQ likes it.  CAP-USAF doesn't.  It will be interesting to see who prevails. 

Sure is a lot of old business to finish up. 

JeffDG

Quote from: RiverAux on August 02, 2011, 08:06:36 PM
Item 9 - a well-researched common sense proposal to change required interval for safety training from monthly to quarterly.  Good job Col. Vazquez!  NHQ likes it.  CAP-USAF doesn't.  It will be interesting to see who prevails. 

Sure is a lot of old business to finish up.
I'm with CAP-USAF on that one, at least frequency wise.  For record keeping, I don't see any reason to restrict who can input the data the way that it is.

The proposal mischaractarizes what happens out in corporations.  I know where I work, we do a safety topic in every single meeting we have, whether it's 3 people  sitting down for a 15 minute discussion, 20 people getting ready for their day on a jobsite, or 100 people on a multi-continent conference call.  I can have 3 meetings with the same people on a single day, and each of those meetings WILL begin with a safety discussion.  Personally, I'd like to see that made a rule that every activity, meeting, etc. begin with safety, period.  Then record-keeping would be much simpler:  on the roster for the event, you received a safety briefing.

davidsinn

Quote from: JeffDG on August 02, 2011, 08:13:10 PM
Quote from: RiverAux on August 02, 2011, 08:06:36 PM
Item 9 - a well-researched common sense proposal to change required interval for safety training from monthly to quarterly.  Good job Col. Vazquez!  NHQ likes it.  CAP-USAF doesn't.  It will be interesting to see who prevails. 

Sure is a lot of old business to finish up.
I'm with CAP-USAF on that one, at least frequency wise.  For record keeping, I don't see any reason to restrict who can input the data the way that it is.

The proposal mischaractarizes what happens out in corporations.  I know where I work, we do a safety topic in every single meeting we have, whether it's 3 people  sitting down for a 15 minute discussion, 20 people getting ready for their day on a jobsite, or 100 people on a multi-continent conference call.  I can have 3 meetings with the same people on a single day, and each of those meetings WILL begin with a safety discussion.  Personally, I'd like to see that made a rule that every activity, meeting, etc. begin with safety, period.  Then record-keeping would be much simpler:  on the roster for the event, you received a safety briefing.

What an incredible waste of time. Unless your industry is actually industrial safety you would be better off to spend that time producing a product.
Former CAP Captain
David Sinn

JeffDG

Some organizations believe that the safety of their employees is actually worth something.

davidsinn

Quote from: JeffDG on August 02, 2011, 08:48:47 PM
Some organizations believe that the safety of their employees is actually worth something.

I've worked for some that only make noises about safety but don't actually fix the problems. Safety is not about talking safety, it's about actually being safe. If you waste time talking endlessly about it you remove time to actually do the mission and that frequently causes people to rush to meet deadlines thus causing the very thing you try to avoid.
Former CAP Captain
David Sinn

JeffDG

Quote from: davidsinn on August 02, 2011, 09:11:34 PM
Quote from: JeffDG on August 02, 2011, 08:48:47 PM
Some organizations believe that the safety of their employees is actually worth something.

I've worked for some that only make noises about safety but don't actually fix the problems. Safety is not about talking safety, it's about actually being safe. If you waste time talking endlessly about it you remove time to actually do the mission and that frequently causes people to rush to meet deadlines thus causing the very thing you try to avoid.
The point with repeated safety discussions is to instill a culture of safety.  It is always top-of-mind for you.  Safety isn't a course you take, or a meeting you have to go to quarterly, it's ingrained as part of every work process, and every activity you do.

Moving safety education in CAP to once a quarter makes it just another box to check off, it does nothing to ingrain a culture of safety.

davidsinn

Quote from: JeffDG on August 02, 2011, 09:16:47 PM
Quote from: davidsinn on August 02, 2011, 09:11:34 PM
Quote from: JeffDG on August 02, 2011, 08:48:47 PM
Some organizations believe that the safety of their employees is actually worth something.

I've worked for some that only make noises about safety but don't actually fix the problems. Safety is not about talking safety, it's about actually being safe. If you waste time talking endlessly about it you remove time to actually do the mission and that frequently causes people to rush to meet deadlines thus causing the very thing you try to avoid.
The point with repeated safety discussions is to instill a culture of safety.  It is always top-of-mind for you.  Safety isn't a course you take, or a meeting you have to go to quarterly, it's ingrained as part of every work process, and every activity you do.


I understand what you're saying but I still disagree. Too much of it makes people blow it off. How many times can you hear the same briefing about winter weather before you tune it out? Talking about driving just bores the younger cadets.

Quote
...safety education in CAP...just another box to check off, it does nothing to ingrain a culture of safety.

That's more like the truth.
Former CAP Captain
David Sinn

Eclipse

#8
Quote from: JeffDG on August 02, 2011, 09:16:47 PMThe point with repeated safety discussions is to instill a culture of safety.  It is always top-of-mind for you.  Safety isn't a course you take, or a meeting you have to go to quarterly, it's ingrained as part of every work process, and every activity you do.

Yes. Mission First, Safety Third.

"Safety" is really about the core values of Integrity and Excellence - doing things properly because it's the proper way to do them and is respectful
of resources, life, and property.  In almost all the 79's I read, and most unsafe situations I have encountered and caused in my happy life, the majority
were avoidable and ultimately caused by someone taking a shortcut or disrespecting their situation.

i.e...

"I know better..."

"Watch this..."

Quote from: JeffDG on August 02, 2011, 09:16:47 PM
Moving safety education in CAP to once a quarter makes it just another box to check off, it does nothing to ingrain a culture of safety.

Sadly, that is what it is today.  Made worse by Safety Officers and others with no field experience and/or no ability to link a briefing to current operations, so we get 30 minute root canals of someone reading slides he's never seen about a topic he knows nothing about, to a room full of adults who understand to wear sunscreen and drink water when it is hot.

Then those same adults get into "heated" (pun intended) discussions about whether cadets should "man up" to the obstacle course even though the base is black-flagged.  We cant instill common sense in adults, but we can insure people without it are removed from positions which put CAP at risk.

CAP will never get to the culture of Safety the USAF wants for us until it starts invoking visible ramifications for
inappropriate "unsafe" behavior.  I would say that, for the most part, the performance expectations of our members are relatively clear, however
there is no anticipation of any negative consequences when thing go bad. 

"That Others May Zoom"

AirDX

Quote from: davidsinn on August 02, 2011, 09:32:02 PM

I understand what you're saying but I still disagree. Too much of it makes people blow it off. How many times can you hear the same briefing about winter weather before you tune it out? Talking about driving just bores the younger cadets.

15 minutes/MONTH is such a minimal requirement that I don't understand the reluctance.  NHQ has made it SO easy to meet the requirement, as well.  And if you are talking about driving to the younger cadets, you are not tailoring your message.  Put some effort into making a lively, engaging safety conversation with your group once a month.  It's not hard.  Why are you repeating topics over and over?  That's just lackadaisical.  Read the news, look for items that illustrate safety points and use them.  Be topical, be current.  No one's bored in my briefings.
Believe in fate, but lean forward where fate can see you.

AirDX

And by the way, I think CAP-USAF tears down the time argument perfectly:
Quote
Individuals involved on a full-time basis, such as the 40 hour per week employee, are daily immersed in the work environment and safety culture. Conversely, CAP members that participate on a less frequent basis are more reliant on recurring training to maintain their safety focus and perishable skills. The less frequent a CAP member participates, the more vulnerable they become to mission related risks.
Believe in fate, but lean forward where fate can see you.

jimmydeanno

To me, the "safety education" aspect of what we do during the month interrupt the flow of the operations we conduct.  Going through encampment, safety briefings were just integrated into the activity.  Doing an obstacle course?  This is how you do this obstacle, here, wear these gloves, the water is over there. 

There was a living breathing safety culture.  Flag condition changed, it was announced, the commanders made modifications - and the mission still got accomplished.  The ONLY safety that people were rolling their eyes at was the one that interrupted the normal operational mission (i.e.  "general safety briefings").

Integrating safety into what you are doing is a safety culture.  Having "checkbox safety briefs" isn't. 

Thousands of activities under my belt, safety is always on my mind.  Of those activities, I've never had a mishap occur.
If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law. - Winston Churchill

davidsinn

Quote from: AirDX on August 02, 2011, 10:55:20 PM
Quote from: davidsinn on August 02, 2011, 09:32:02 PM

I understand what you're saying but I still disagree. Too much of it makes people blow it off. How many times can you hear the same briefing about winter weather before you tune it out? Talking about driving just bores the younger cadets.

15 minutes/MONTH is such a minimal requirement that I don't understand the reluctance.  NHQ has made it SO easy to meet the requirement, as well.  And if you are talking about driving to the younger cadets, you are not tailoring your message.  Put some effort into making a lively, engaging safety conversation with your group once a month.  It's not hard.  Why are you repeating topics over and over?  That's just lackadaisical.  Read the news, look for items that illustrate safety points and use them.  Be topical, be current.  No one's bored in my briefings.

How do you tailor a message to a group that runs from 12-60? There are only so many safety topics out there.

Quote from: AirDX on August 02, 2011, 10:58:11 PM
And by the way, I think CAP-USAF tears down the time argument perfectly:
Quote
Individuals involved on a full-time basis, such as the 40 hour per week employee, are daily immersed in the work environment and safety culture. Conversely, CAP members that participate on a less frequent basis are more reliant on recurring training to maintain their safety focus and perishable skills. The less frequent a CAP member participates, the more vulnerable they become to mission related risks.

I'd say they've got it backwards. Familiarity breeds contempt. At my previous job I was more safety minded around the equipment when I went out on the floor than the people running it. They had weekly safety meetings too. Most of them were only tangentially related to work if they were related at all. It did little to nothing to stop injuries. Only when they started walking through the plant and writing people up for stupidity safety violations did it start to have an effect. You want safety? Stop wasting my time in checkbox briefings and have real consequences for unsafe behavior.
Former CAP Captain
David Sinn

AirDX

QuoteF. September 2010 National Board Meeting: Agenda Item 23
Extension of Professional Appointments and Promotions to Include Homeland Security and Emergency Management Professionals
A big non-concur from me.  In fact, I'd tighten all the professional appointments quite a bit, adding a requirement to complete ES quals/specialty track requirements before getting a promotion.

For example, the Comm/CFI pilot that joins I would give at the completion of Level 1, 1LT on completion of a Form 5, and CPT on being appointed a CAP Instructor Pilot.

Health/Finance/Legal - link the promotion to completing the specialty track (if there is one) or serving in the staff position. 
Believe in fate, but lean forward where fate can see you.

AirDX

Quote from: davidsinn on August 02, 2011, 11:33:08 PM

I'd say they've got it backwards. Familiarity breeds contempt. At my previous job I was more safety minded around the equipment when I went out on the floor than the people running it. They had weekly safety meetings too. Most of them were only tangentially related to work if they were related at all. It did little to nothing to stop injuries. Only when they started walking through the plant and writing people up for stupidity safety violations did it start to have an effect. You want safety? Stop wasting my time in checkbox briefings and have real consequences for unsafe behavior.

Blaming a program because individuals execute it poorly is a fallacious argument.  We expect a pilot to be able to operate an aircraft safely throughout the envelope of its performance, and test to that standard.  Why do we allow safety officers to present boring, irrelevant briefings?  Demand performance from them - demand it from yourself.
Believe in fate, but lean forward where fate can see you.

AirDX

Quote from: davidsinn on August 02, 2011, 11:33:08 PM

How do you tailor a message to a group that runs from 12-60? There are only so many safety topics out there.



Use your imagination, man!  There are all kinds of ways.  Read the newspaper.  Read the Internet.  Use News of the Weird.  I love those stories where some idiot gets stuck in a chimney trying to burglarize a house.  Use that - conduct an ORM analysis of burglarizing a house through the chimney.  Get some audience participation going.

Did you use the Zombie Apocalypse briefing from CDC? http://www.bt.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp  That was a godsend, an instant briefing just in time for hurricane season.

Did you use the Fukushima problems to talk about radiation hazards and safety?

Be topical, be current, and remember that 90% of your audience are not pilots, so detailed briefings on GA vacuum pumps are not that appropriate... EXCEPT you can rope in the AE aspect and discuss WHY the vacuum instruments are important.  Bring it down to an appropriate level.

Be enthusiastic, use audience participation and your 15 minutes of monthly fame will fly by for you AND your audience.
Believe in fate, but lean forward where fate can see you.

RiverAux

The safety requirement in particular is one that has good intentions, but there is no real way to analyze whether it is actually doing any good.  All we care about is that some sort of monthly safety "training" is done but have no care at all at the organizational level about what that training is.  It would be perfectly ok by CAP if the squadron safety officer gave a briefing every month on chainsaw, ATV, motorcycle, skateboard, etc. safety that have no relevance to CAP.  So, we've got 1000 different safety briefings going on every month that could be covering anything under the sun rather than things that can actually bring down CAP accident rates. 

Basically we're throwing every possible safety topic against the wall and hoping that some of them stick and actually reduce CAP accidents.  The program needs more focus.  And if we switch to quarterly briefings, it should be a breeze for NHQ to develop a series of very high quality and very CAP-relevant briefings for use across CAP. 

Eclipse

A good start for briefings would be to simply pull the 79's from your wing and discuss. 

"That Others May Zoom"

JeffDG

Quote from: Eclipse on August 03, 2011, 03:15:36 AM
A good start for briefings would be to simply pull the 79's from your wing and discuss.
That, right there, is far better than a formal presentation on some pre-defined topic.

I would suggest actually loosening the safety topic restriction somewhat to eliminate the need for it to be tied to CAP operations.  The goal is to get people thinking about safety, and such topics can come from home, work, school, anywhere.  Want to get people thinking, try looking up the latest nominees for the Darwin Awards!

Of course, if you're doing the in-brief for a SAREX, the safety topic that is obvious is a discussion of the hazards and mitigation strategies for that event, but for a weekly meeting, more variety is called for.  A culture of safety is about making safety integral, not a box you check off.  A culture of safety means that safety doesn't stop when the event does, so your topics of discussion shouldn't be boxed in either.

BillB

I get Safety emails from FAA or AOPA almost daily. These should be considered as qualifying for the monthly or quarterly safety sessions. There are several external to CAP Safety subjects available to CAP members if they only look around and such briefings would qualify for the current CAP requirements.
Gil Robb Wilson # 19
Gil Robb Wilson # 104