Dana's space

The "Strategic Job Analysis" for the air traffic control specialist occupation is one of my research tasks for FY2008 and beyond.

Dunnette and Peterson & Bownas proposed a job-by-person matrix back in 1983. In the mid-1990s, my laboratory sponsored work on framing or developing a methodology for actually building such a matrix. And now, 12 years later, the task is no longer theoretical, but real, with deadlines and expectations.

As a first approximation, I've started building an Excel workbook with 3 worksheets: a job-by-person matrix; job characteristics or attributes; and person attributes (e.g., knowledge, skill, abilities and other personal characteristics). I've taken the more-or-less updated version of the tower cab activities, sub-activities, and tasks based on the CTA, Inc. 1987 job/task analysis, as my starting point/test case. The lowest level of the hierarchy is task statements, and the Excel "Group" function is used to group tasks into sub-activities, and then sub-activities into activities. The trick to remember with Excel when grouping is that it is summation oriented, so the aggregated (grouped) label is beneath/under the grouped rows (or to the right if grouping columns). But by grouping task statements and KSAOs (worker requirements), I can build an approximation of what a job-by-person matrix might look like for the ATCS occupation.

According to Kit Bond (R-MO), failing to pass the RESTORE Act, granting immunity to telecommunications companies that collaborate with the federal government to conduct warrantless and unconsitutional electronic surveillance, is dangerous. According to the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Bond went on to say that without immediate passage of permanent legislation (e.g., the RESTORE Act), "terrorists" will soon "be free to make phone calls without fear of being surveilled by U.S. intelligence agencies."

Here's another perspective - without this legislation, citizens will be free to make phone calls without fear of being surveilled by U.S. intelligence agencies.

Sounds good to me, being able to make a phone call, free from governmental snooping and intrusion. That's what I thought the Fourth Amendment was all about.

So defeat the RESTORE Act, make the phone companies liable for the cooperation in illegal and unconstitutional surveillance.

Make this Administration use the powers of the FISA court, properly.

Otherwise we will find one more of our natural rights compromised by a neo-fascist ... whoops, I meant neo-conservative wanna be fascist administation intent on arrogating all power unto itself at the price of our liberty.

Federal executives and senior managers are notorious for

• buying last year's management fad from consultancies
• believing in magic bullets for solving organizational problems, and
• attributing failures to employees and success to their insight.

Phil Rosenzweig's The Halo Effect should be required reading for every member of the Senior Executive Service and senior management cadre. Basically, there are nine managerial delusions:

• The Halo Effect: attributing "success" on prior performance (also known as the post-hoc fallacy)
• The Delusion of Correlation and Causality: a correlation between A and B doesn't mean A caused B, or vice versa.
• The Delusion of Single Explanations: focusing on a single factor as the explanation of "success" and ignoring anything else.
• The Delusion of Connecting the Winning Dots: looking only at "winners" in a cross-sectional design and disregarding losers over time.
• The Delusion of Rigorous Research: fancy statistics (think structural equations modeling), cross-sectional design, and self-report questionnaire data don't prove squat.
• The Delusion of Lasting Success: things change, and what succeeds now may or may not work in the future.
• The Delusion of Absolute Performance: all things are relative, and context is always important. Only the paranoid truly do survive.
• The Delusion of the Wrong End of the Stick: corollary to the correlational delusion. Successful companies may do X or Y, but that doesn't mean if another company does X or Y that they will succeed.
• The Delusion of Organizational Physics: no simple "law" will summarize the complexities and uncertainties of human behavior in complex organizations.

Federal managers fall prey to these nine delusions every bit as hard as managers and executives in the private sector. Federal execs and managers buy into "business" or the "private sector" as the model to be followed, and if we just adopt "more business-like" practices, values, attitudes, reward schemes, etc., then we will be more efficient, better performing, more responsive.

The prescriptions from business research, as so artfully summarized by Rosenzweig, simply guarantee another failed organizational redesign, another failed initiative, another business process re-engineering effort sputtering to stop. Employees, as always, will be left to continue doing the jobs required by law and regulation in spite of executive and managerial stupidity and gullibility. I've seen this play out in the FAA many times over my 20 year career as an I/O psychologist. TQM, BPR, COTS, P4P, ISO-9000, SMS (a variation on systems thinking), EI (Employee Involvement), and most recently, PBO (performance-based organization). Successful companies are pointed to as the example to follow (the halo effect), based on recent research showing a correlation between, say stock price and employee engagement (the correlation and single factor delusions), so let's have Gallup survey the employees (rigorous research) and improve our EE score (absolute performance and wrong end of the stick delusions), and our aviation safety inspector workforce will adopt SMS and aviation safety will thereby increase (the delusion of organizational physics).

To bad reality in the bowels of bureaucracy isn't so neat as the consultants portray.

But then, maybe I should join one of the consultancies and make more money on the gullibility of the FAA management team.

• Pilots may serve in multicrew covered operations (e.g., Part 121) until reach age 65, consistent with the ICAO standard (one over 60, one under 60);
• If ICAO changes, and allows a pilot over 60 to serve as PIC without regard to co-pilot age (e.g., both over 60), then the US standard will conform;
• The change is not retroactive and an action taken in compliance with 49 USC 44729 "may not serve as a basis for liability or relief in a proceeding, brought under any employment law or regulation, before any court or agency of the United States or of any State or localty;"
• Collective bargaining agreements will have to be amended through negotiation (because the change impacts seniority, pay, and probably a whole host of issues);
• A medical exam will be required every 6 months (which is interesting, as the FAA has an NPRM on the street to increase the interval for 1st class exams to 1 year from the current 6 months, so the NPRM may have to be modified);
• Line evaluations of pilots age 60 and over will be required every 6 months, and for PICs, a simulator evaluation will not suffice; and finally,
• The GAO will have to make a report 2 years after the effective date of the new law.