Guilt Cannot Fly

The vast majority of people believe that air accident investigations are aimed at determining liability or finding guiltiness.

Not quite, or not at all. The primary function of these investigations and the reports they generate is to learn,  to determine what was done wrong so that the experience serves as example and to prevent the event from repeating itself, because the Aviation environment is what is called a “non-punitive environment”.

And it is from top to bottom, from the corporate perspective, by virtue of which aviation companies develop and adhere to this non-punitive culture, to the daily practice of the crews that operate each flight.

Pilots do not use the word "guilt" when we reflect on an incident, whether it happened to us or not, because that word just doesn’t exist in our professional vocabulary. A pilot's practice is more focused on trying to understand what happened, why it happened and what can be done so that the future does not bring a similar situation, or on how to improve our reaction to it would it occur again.

This is precisely one of the many characteristics that make air transport an industry made up of so-called High Reliability Organizations (HROs) But above all, the non-punitive environment is a fundamental pillar of high-performing institutions and teams.

This culture, this aspect of our daily professional lives, is perfectly transferable from the cabin to the office, from the left seat to the desk of any business leader.

We are not talking, of course, about systems that punish malicious, negligent, ignorant of regulations, reckless or volitionally fraudulent behaviors. We refer to environments where errors are endorsed with a sanction.

Guilt, its use, is a human tendency, we must admit. But its exile produces tremendously beneficial effects, so eliminating it from the corporate culture has a double positive consequence: the bad uses that are abandoned and the good customs that are implemented.

Guilt generates fear and refers to past events, that is why leaving a punitive culture and evolving to what has been baptized as a “just culture” focuses people on the future and on improvement. Guilt also ends up inhibiting the ability to take risks, even if they are calculated, and blinding the capability to recognize, accept, and correct system failures. In these types of contexts, people tend to hide their mistakes, which no one knows about and from which no one learns.

The abandonment of punitive environments has as a result on people their transfer from a mechanical or merely functional mentality to a creative one, involves them in the common project and fosters participation. It is infinitely easier for anyone to feel part of a business organization and make its success a triumph of their own when they operate in a framework in which their mistakes are not going to penalize them professionally. And in the same way, new and good ideas are much more likely to sleep an eternal dream when their author fears the consequences of a mistake if put into practice.

Punitive Culture generates obedient people focused on the clock that marks the end of their day. Just Culture generates involved people focused on their personal development through the organization they work for.

Of course, guilt exists for a reason and it has its place, but that place is no other than the courts. That is why when managing or forming teams, we may choose between having disciplined people or having responsible people.

We pilots practice this Just Culture in our cockpits, and extend it to the entire crew, because we know that a non-punitive atmosphere results in effectiveness and makes safety levels soar. We do it through communication tools of our own, eliminating guilt as discourse and, above all, through a humble and honest attitude in our leadership. We need it to be that way, as it is our task to build a team from scratch every day we go to work, sometimes of as many as 30 some people that have never met before, and very often inclusive of those many nationalities and cultures.

Our daily operations, our techniques to create a climate from minute 1, everything we have learned, in fact everything that Aviation as an industry has learned based on not looking for culprits, is of tremendous use for any business organization.