PAPod 494 - Decoding Cultural Diversity at Emirates Airline with Nicholas Dahlstrom

So what do you do if your company has, oh, I don't know, let's say dozens and dozens and dozens of national identities, and yet you're one company and you have to get really important, highly reliable work done? done. Music. Hey everybody, tiny Todd, old baby Conklin. Oh, that's my old radio name. Did I just do that? That was a slip of some kind. This is Todd. It's the Pre-Accident Investigation Podcast. You know, know, I was a disc jockey all through college and grad school.

Well, not all of grads, not like the PhD part. I was, I had a real job. Not that radio is not a real job. Oh. The slope I'm on is so slippery. But yeah, I did that. And I was tiny Toto baby Conklin. And we were famous for tractor traffic. Yeah. Yeah. Traffic that was done from a tractor. Yeah. It was quite a, it was quite a deal. It was fun. I got fired seven times. The seventh time finally stuck.

But the first six times, in radio when you get fired, just, I don't know, why are we talking about this? But in radio when you get fired, it's almost always because you said something that made somebody mad in sales. Because sales kind of ran everything. And they would fire you, and then they'd think, oh, who's going to get up tomorrow morning at 4 and do the morning show?

And no one would volunteer. And so they'd call you back. And when they called you back, you'd always negotiate for more money. So it was kind of a weird thing. It was incentivizing the wrong thing. I will tell you that. Because you kind of wanted to get fired. But then the last time, it sort of stuck. But it was fine. It was time for me to leave. How are you? How are things going? Well, I hope. That's my hope. Today's going to be an interesting pod. I'm very excited.

Partially because I'm just excited. because you're going to love Nicholas Dahlstrom. You may not know who he is. Some of you may because he's on the faculty at Lund, but most of us probably won't. But he's an interesting person to talk to. And so that's going to be the pod for today. We should check in, though, and make sure everything's going okay. How is it going?

Because for us in North America, specifically in New Mexico, and even more specifically in Santa Fe, you know, we're heading to spring, but this, these, these late winter, early spring months are tricksters. There's a dark side because we'll get a lot of snow. It just won't last very long. So it'll snow a bunch. And then the next day it'll be pretty warm and it'll all go away, but it's still, I'm not sure if it's good or bad for the psyche.

That's, that's kind of, that's kind of where I am in the, uh, in the whole scope of things. I'm a little freaked out that that I'm this fixated by weather. But I think it's because during the winter months, I feel trapped. And I can't go out and zoom around on my bicycle. And, you know, my New Year's resolution is to keep the same bicycle all year. And so far, so good. Okay, we've made it this far. But also, you know, it's just, it's an interesting time.

Travel is hard because you never know when you're going to get snowed out in Denver or stormed out in Houston or rained out in Dallas. I don't know. The whole thing is kind of a drag. But it's all going to be fun. Get to see a bunch of people soon. So that will be fun as well. As far as me, things are going swimmingly. It looks like we've got a conference worked out. It looks like actually we have a couple conferences worked out for you guys to put them on your schedule if you want to.

I'll give you more details and dates. But one conference will be just a deep dive hop meeting where we do fundamentals and we bring in five or six speakers. And it's really a fun meeting. Everybody has a great time at that meeting for sure. And then as promised, it's going to actually happen. I know it's unbelievable. We're going to do investigation theory or learning theory, event review theory. Or E, we're going to talk about how to look at things that happen.

And so that one's in the bag too. Everything, papers are signed. So it's all going to happen.

So that's going to be real and that'll be fun as well. So I think that'll be a good time. As for me, man, just things are kind of punching along kind of normal. I mean, so that's good because no news truly is good news. Although green should give you pause. But I wouldn't say everything in my life. If you looked at my dashboard, not everything's green. So that's a plus. I've got lots of weak signal warning signs out there that I'm working on.

And I'm trying to, you know, I'm trying to do some different stuff because it's time to do different stuff now. And have as much fun as I possibly can. I would actually invite you to join that same theory. Try saying yes a lot and have as much fun as you possibly can. That will become really obvious. So that kind of leads perfectly into my conversation with Nicholas. This conversation is great. So Nicholas is the human factors manager at Emirates Airline.

And special thanks to Emirates for allowing Nicholas to be on the pod. pod. That's always a good thing. And it's so interesting to talk to somebody who is in a complex organization. And by the way, we all are. So you qualify for that as well. But this is especially complex because they have so many national identities on the flight deck. They have so many national identities in the maintainers. They have so many national identities in flight service.

So there's a really interesting discussion around that. But I really like where where this discussion goes. And that's the part that I'm excited for you to enjoy and listen. I'm more than pleased to have this conversation with you. And I think you're going to enjoy it immensely. So let's not belabor it too much longer. Let's sit back and just listen. This, my friends, is Nicholas Dahlstrom. And he's going to tell you all about the world in which he lives.

So, I'm Niklas Dahlström, human factors manager at Emirates Airline and also part-time working for Lund University School of Aviation in Sweden. I feel like it's such a treat to have you on the podcast. I really do because to have a human factors person for Emirates, that's no small feat. That's a big deal. That's cool. What led you to that job? I haven't made a conscious career decision in my whole life.

So the banana peel principle, I just turned into a conference and someone asked me if I want to come to an interview in Dubai. And 16 years later, I am still here. That's amazing. And I actually love that. I mean, that's exactly the way to do it. I'm sure that'll drive many people crazy, but that's a great way. Everyday life's kind of an exciting adventure for you. Well, it is a fabulously interesting organization to work for.

We have more than 100 nationalities represented on the flight deck, probably 150 plus among cabin crew and even more if you count the whole company. So it's just a very special experience. Well, with that kind of diversity, I mean, I think that's so interesting. What advantages does that give you guys as an airline? I think it gives the advantages of perspective. That seems like kind of an obvious one. but also that comes with misunderstandings.

We do very well, but one conclusion I have from the experience is that if you're going to mix it up, mix it up properly. I go to a meeting and there's like 12 different nationalities, and then I go to another meeting and there's 12 others. At some point, you start thinking of that as a variable. It's simply not interesting. It's which people do I want to work with? Which people can I get something done with? That's what's interesting. So it just fades out in the background as a variable.

But that's quite remarkable to be able to say that. I mean, that's something really special. And I think it's interesting how that would dramatically influence the work you do.

It, well, yes and no, because I work primarily with CRM training for pilots. There's a wide variety of things I do, but that's one of my primary tasks. And we did a study about a decade ago with a PhD student of mine who was a pilot as well. And the absolute majority of Emirates pilots, when they're asked, what is more important, your national culture, professional culture, they say their professional culture. So if we look at the flight deck, it's such a strong professional culture.

People are selected, trained similarly around the world. So it's not a big deal as it might look from the outside. And yet, I would suggest that becomes a really important condition, that becomes a really important factor in the work you do, is that you can always leverage the professional culture to make inroads. Correct, correct. No, of course, it's still an important variable.

It's just not sort of of the magnitude or character when you look from the outside and you think, oh, how can they do it on the flight deck? Well, they can because they're pilots, first of all. And I also think living in Dubai and working for Emirates is quite a unique experience in that the Emiratis is a relatively small proportion of the population of the country. And that is a fascinating thing. So you meet a lot of people and no one has home turf.

And that just creates a different setting to meet and want to learn to know people and explore than if you have someone who has home ground. How has it influenced the work you do? Have you had to really think about dividing up sort of the big culture, big C culture and the professional culture? And I mean, has it given you some interesting challenges in the work you do?

Yes, it does. Absolutely. You've got to be able to have the ability to take different perspectives and understand things from different viewpoints. Otherwise, you're not going to understand people's behavior or performance. But I think mostly it's about focusing on professional culture, focusing on what we have shared and what is important to get the job done. And I think both for pilots and across the company, we're good at doing that.

People come, you know, move from their home country to a place like Dubai and a company like Emirates because they want to achieve something. So there's also some form of shared attitude in life and your profession when you get there. Right, which is a huge advantage. How did the pandemic influence that? The pandemic was as problematic for us as it was for anyone else. It was, however, I would say, well managed here. And it was a very hard time here as well. You know, we couldn't fly.

We tried to fly cargo and other things, but we recovered quickly and fully. And, you know, we're at this point, we're expanding beyond where we were before the pandemic. How much pressure is on you and your job to be associated with an airline that really is kind of leading the pack? I mean, and wants to lead the pack, at least from outside looking in, it's clear that you guys want to be the best in class, hands down.

There is a high ambition level. And I would just link that to what I said before, that that's also the kind of people that come here to this region, to this city and to this airline. So that's more of an inspiration. It probably helps to drive up the work tempo, maybe too much sometimes. But other than that, it's inspirational. It's just, you know, the thing, you're in a place where things happen. Something new is being built. Some visionary next step is always right in front of you.

And overall, that's just inspiring. Do you spend the majority of your time, On the ground, working, training, teaching, coaching, walk me through kind of what you do. Well, you kind of summarized it pretty well there. Well, thank you. It's my talent. Yeah. No, look, to be very short, we develop and deliver CRM training. Right. Development of that is central. Delivering, I have help from a number of pilots who do part-time delivery of CRM training.

Also responsible for the content of CRM training on the cabin crew side. We do coaching, as you mentioned, for pilots who need that type of support, mostly in terms of their pilot performance, not in sort of wider psychological sense. We're involved in event and accident investigation. We're integrated in the training department and try to contribute human factors and CRM aspects right across.

And we do some work across the organization since we are the human factors resource, whether that's with emergency management, engineering, Sky Cargo, or any other part of the company. Have you seen CRM change in your 16 years? Absolutely. And that's a very good question. Thank you. Thank you. I'm filled with them. Yeah, obviously. When I came to Emirates, we still delivered. And I'm not saying that was because anyone didn't know what they were doing.

It was just the way it was done at the time. Right. More traditional CRM, it was very CRM, very fundamental concepts. Today, to take a big leap, it's very integrated. You could go in on the classroom and if you didn't watch too closely, you wouldn't even see the CRM. In the current recurrent training, we have one module about runway incursions, which is a big topic, as you know. And the CRM is there, but it's just not on the headline and at every bullet point and so on.

There are case studies from our own operations about potential events and events that could have happened, and we make use of them. We have one about intervention, which is a CRM topic, but its context is very much in our own operational experience. And that's linked to the fact that we've been one of the leading evidence-based training airlines. So, you know, I do have moments when I worry that if someone from the outside, an auditor, an investigator walked in, they would go, where was the CRM?

And I would go, well, it's there, but it's not there like it looked 10, 15 years ago. Right. Which makes sense. It's maturing. But to me, that maturation process that things like career resource management are going through, it's kind of exciting to watch because we're so much smarter now than we were really in the inset of CRM. We were pretty naive. I mean, I think we grew and developed dramatically.

What do you measure? How do you measure the work you're doing? Well, that's a tricky one because how do you measure sort of personal development or competence and so on? Yeah. I've been asked that question a few times because people want some kind of scalers. Oh, yeah, they want the answers, what they want. I don't think that's constructive.

The best I can muster is that when I put a case study on the table and I tell the pilots to look at it, analyze it, and come up with something, I hear a very different conversation now than I did three years ago. And I think that's both the time perspective you must have, and I think it's a kind of qualitative assessment. Do they have concepts and can they use them naturally? Do they have a different depth of explanation now than they did a few years ago? If so, I think we made progress.

And I think that's a really rich way to think about it.

Do you find, as you've integrated CRM into kind of mainstream thinking, or the training component, but I actually think it's bigger than training, do you find that it's changed your place at the table as a human factors resource?

Resource i wouldn't say expert because i'm pretty sure none of us are experts but i would resist the label expert as well uh my imposter syndrome prevents me from thinking about like that and i always figure we're kind of one banana peel away from somebody having a better idea that's what i think all the time anyway so i i do agree i do agree i i let me just take a little bit of detour and you might have to repeat that question but one thing i reflected when you asked before is that

I am in one sense conflicted about the situation right now because we have integrated CRM and I think we've done it fairly well here. And I'm very happy about that. There is still some concern and I share those concerns when I hear about other airlines where CRM have gradually receded or almost disappeared. It's now part of the briefing informed SIM and that's it. I'm not sure I'm...

Quite comfortable with that. On the other hand, if you look at now the ICAO framework for pilot competencies has nine competencies. Five of them are CRM. And that's what people are assessed on all the time. It's workload management, situational awareness, decision-making, communication, and leadership and teamwork. So in one sense, you and I could just put each other on the back and say, we won the battle. It is integrated now. Now there's of course more work to do.

My concern is sometimes when I hear some operators saying, we've integrated it, and I look, where is it? No, it's gone. Where did it disappear? Bob Helmreich back in the 90s talked about integration of CRM and it would disappear at some point. But he later, not many people know this, changed his view and said, I'm not so sure about that. So here is my argument. You can only integrate something if it's already there. You talk about decision-making, you know something thing about decision making,

and then you go and integrate it. Wow. Integrating something without actually knowing something about it. So you still got to have some form of modules of CRM living somewhere in your organization, and then you can go and integrate it. What I've seen in the last decade is sort of not integration, it's pretty much disintegration. I hear you. And that's a brilliant point, actually, because you can't integrate it into the mainstream thinking of the organization if it's not there.

You have to have the fundamentals, and the fundamentals, probably, to steal from our brothers and sisters in science. Probably you never want to get very far away from first principles, because first principles are really the foundation that allows you the integration luxury or necessity. Maybe that's a better word. It's really nice to be a human factor, so you talk about safety, and you're fighting the good fight. You're the knight in shining armor for safety.

Everyone loves to stand on that soapbox. folks. But with the kind of aviation safety we see now, it's not the same issue it was 30 years ago. Of course, it's still as important and every fatality is a wasted life. Absolutely. But it doesn't have the same urgency.

What we must be better at doing, and this is something I'm still developing and trying to get better at, is to argue for safety and efficiency. If you train people, in handling stress, in making better decisions and communicating better, you're not only making them safer, you're making them better. We must be able to make that argument from two fronts because then we would be better integrated with training across the organization and we would make a more compelling argument.

I'm going to steal from Don Harris. And he said once that what you're selling when you're selling safety is basically this, give me money and nothing will happen. It's not the most easy message to sell. So I'm trying to sell that message. And I've done some inroads. I've delivered human factors to parts of organizations I've never heard about before, like security. I've done human factors training with them, like SkyCargo, like I mentioned before. They had never heard about it before.

But I think I managed to do that because I made the argument from safety and efficiency, not only safety. Which makes total sense. I mean, it goes right back to the idea, which I was surprised when we were recently together, I was surprised that the message that safety should make efficiency better was kind of a new message for that crowd. They seemed a little bit shocked by that idea. And that was interesting to me, but only because it offered an inroad into the discussion.

To me, one of the things I think you're so good at, because you're disarming and charming, and I'm not trying to get anything from you, that'll come later, but is creating a space for the conversation to change at the senior leadership level. Because really, I think all, and I'll speak for myself, all I want the senior leaders to do is to ask different questions, to ask better questions. And I don't need them to have any kind of expertise in CRM, for instance. I mean, it'd be nice.

But I do want them to be curious in a way that moves the organization forward towards deliberate improvement. And that's something that I hear when you talk about your work. I hear that in your conversation. And I guess the question I would ask, and you probably can't answer it because you probably would never have thought to go out and test this, is you probably have changed their conversation. They probably do speak differently in the hallowed halls of the giant conference room.

Well, I'd like to hope so. I have people coming up to me and telling me that I've had some influence, but I would like to emphasize again for Emirates, I'm a very small fish in a very big boat. Yeah, sure.

But nevertheless, I do find it meaningful because if nothing else, I'm under the illusion that, And it's not, like we know, it's not, we didn't sit and come up with these ideas. We are taking the best ideas we find and whatever, you know, we're standing on the shoulders of giants and so on. But it is, it is. And I think also one challenge is when you are in aviation and so often, you know, a procedure can be changed and the work is done. The technical part can be changed and the work is done.

So the understanding for that type of long-term development might not always be there. But I am happy to say that, you know, I still feel that those conversations are leading somewhere and are valuable. And I think also adding one thing more, when we develop a new recurrent course, we always do it from a blank sheet. You know, by the regulation, you can roll over and cover the same topics every three years.

And we don't. We start with a blank sheet every year. I think that also helps. Yeah, it's beautiful. I mean, and kind of a luxury. So that's kind of cool. That means you have the space, time, and resources to actually pick it up and reframe the entire discussion almost on an annual basis. That's cool.

I mean, reflecting back, I'm not the one supposed to ask questions, but I think another one of those conundrums we're working with this is that you've got to realize no matter how important you want to be or think you are, you're always a support function. You're not flying the planes. You're not the one who's putting them together or doing the maintenance or so on.

So the ability to integrate effectively and still make some form of visible contribution i think is always a challenge in what we do right and yet i would suggest that the the challenge that we probably the the benefit we bring to the table is just a new way to view the same problem yeah and and that maturation i mean that's how crm has changed over the past 20 plus years is that we're We're viewing the problems. They're the same problems.

We're just viewing them in a much more mature and maybe enlightened way. I don't know. It's a little heavy. If we go to the enlightenment part, it's not only about viewing it from other perspectives. I think it's to have different concepts. It's to give people a different set of words and concepts to talk about something.

One of the most beautiful things I've seen, and I've been fortunate enough to see it a number of times, is pilots who want to develop themselves and a number of them gone on to do a master's in safety or even human factors. And to see a pilot who clearly is an expert in the field, incredibly experienced. And the joy of then, you know, later in life doing a master's and go, ah, the way they light up. Now they know they have words and concepts to, you know, do something with that

experience. I think that's quite beautiful. It's remarkable. Thanks for your time. This has been a great conversation. Pleasure. Absolute pleasure. The pleasure was mine. I'm sorry. I measured it, and empirically, the pleasure was mine. Excellent. Thank you so much.

I told you you'd find that interesting. Wasn't that interesting? And I like the fact, well, anytime you talk to people who are on the European side of the equation, you're going to hear the term human factors bantered about a lot more freely than you would kind of, for instance, in North America. And it's not that it's a different meaning, but it's that in North America, we've given it kind of a specific function. And in Europe, it kind of is an inclusive title.

But nonetheless, it's all the work we're interested in. It's all the work we do. do. And Nicholas is just a hilarious guy. I mean, he's just, he's very funny and he's super interesting and he always has things on his mind. You know, the whole idea of integration, starting with first principles is a pretty powerful idea. I mean, I must admit that is one that I think of often because I think to a great extent, we don't really think about about integration.

No, we don't think about the fundamentals, the first principles. We think a lot about the integration part. So we want to integrate, we want to fix, we want to get something out there. Give me a go-do, but you can't have that integration if you don't have the content initially. And actually that's probably a good message for us to hear. I don't know, like every other day, that would be a pretty powerful message for us to kind of hang out and listen to anytime at all.

That is the pod, man. Thank you, Emirates, for allowing Nick to do this. Thank you, Dr. Dahlstrom, for blabbing with me. It was a fun way to spend an hour or so. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Learn something new every single day. Have as much fun as you possibly can. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. And for goodness sakes, you guys, be safe. Music.