I find the butterfly effect to be
an endless prediction of outcomes based on a situation that is changed, even by
the slightest of factors. In my career field, air traffic control, I often
think about certain situations that I have encountered and wonder what the
outcomes might have been like if just one thing went a different way. It is
often times associated with some sort of wrong doing or an accident. In a way,
I find myself always thinking about the butterfly effect. Our reading points
out that “the butterfly effect is very significant as, on the face of it, it
seems to break the first law of thermodynamics, sometimes known as the Lay of
Conservation of Energy, which can be summarized as: the effort you put in will
dictate the result you get out” (Obolensky, 2014). I find that interesting as I
couple it with the “what-if thoughts”. What if something would have changed
just slightly because of the input of effort? I find myself always thinking
about the example from our reading about the butterfly flap causing a tornado
in Texas .
Thanks a lot Obolensky!
Example One
In the last year, the Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) has changed a procedure know as Taxi Into
Position and Hold (TIPH) to Line up and Wait (LUAW). The line up and wait
procedure changed the TIPH to a ICAO standard, adhering to international pilots
and making the phrase universal globally. In basic terms they changed the way
air traffic controllers implement a departure sequence to pilots. This
procedure tells the pilot to go out and park on the runway while the air
traffic controller waits for another aircraft to 1. land and turn off the
runway or 2. Take off and adverted from the same runway. Now implementing this
one small change in phraseology is not a big deal to the public but to the
aviation industry it is. First all air traffic controllers, managers, pilots,
crew members and so on have to learn the term and drop using the old term.
Checklists are changed, operating procedures are updated and everything has to
be done on the same day, at the same time. You can only imagine how hard that
is to do for the entire flying public. One small implementation/change affects
the whole industry basically over night. So when the FAA determined that LUAW
was better then TIPH, they essentially implemented a small change that effected
millions of people. We can only speculate what incidents or issues arose from
that one “little” change.
Example Two
A couple of years ago, there was another
change with the FAA that trickled down to have a major effect on the contract
air traffic control industry more than anyone else. If you can recall from the
news, air traffic controllers were falling asleep on the job. They linked this
to overtime, lack of sleep, and crazy schedules. The FAA regulated that:
-Controllers will now have a minimum of
nine hours off between shifts. Currently they may have as few as eight.
-Controllers will no longer be able to swap
shifts unless they have a minimum of 9 hours off between the last shift they
worked and the one they want to begin.
- Controllers will no longer be able to
switch to an unscheduled midnight shift following a day off. (FAA, 2011).
Now these changes did
not reach the contract air traffic control environment right away. Sometimes
what works for one organization will not work for another. It also takes time
for the rules to apply themselves downward on occasion. When the schedule
changes did reach the contract world, it changed a lot of things. Like the
things listed above from the FAA, our company also had to implement the changes
to our needs while following their direction. Overnight, controllers schedules
changed, the time they come and go from work changed and the overall schedule they
worked drastically changed. In that event, people had to change the way they
operate within their family, how they schedule their free time and work around
the demands of the new system. Although we often face changes at work
procedurally, we often times do not face things like this that change things
that much. The ramifications are endless. Imagine how many things changed
because of those rules being implemented in the contract tower world.
Conclusively, there are
numerous implications for complexity and changes in our industry. When a small
change occurs, there has to be some detailed look into how big that change is
actually going to have on the system and the operators in the system. Sometimes
what seems small is rather large, hence the butterfly effect. I can’t speculate
on how large the actual ramifications are at this point because this is a
rather new procedure and we have not felt the full change yet. I can’t imagine
how vast the reach of these changes actually were.
References
FAA.
Press Release – FAA Announces Changes to Controller Scheduling. (2011, April
17). Retrieved August 21, 2015.
Obolensky,
N. (2014). Complex adaptive
leadership: Embracing paradox and uncertainty (2nd ed.). Burlington , VT
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