Aviate, navigate, communicate for business survival...

By Daniel F. Muzyka and Darcy Rezac
Published Globe & Mail, April 14, 2008

One dark night in 1972, the cockpit crew of Eastern Airlines flight 401, on approach to Miami International Airport, noticed an undercarriage warning light. All three pilots began focusing on the warning light and no one was left flying the plane. Was it really a problem with the landing gear, or was it a faulty light bulb? All three became “task fixated,” with one of them unintentionally disconnecting the autopilot while solving “the problem.” Flight 401 descended into the Everglades swamp, killing 101 people. Investigators discovered it was a burned-out bulb.

The accident led to changes in worldwide airline procedures: Now there must be a designated “pilot flying.” Pilots are taught three priorities: Aviate, navigate and communicate...

 Aviate, Navigate... at Board Business Review

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Daniel F. Muzyka is Dean and RBC Financial Group Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia.

Darcy Rezac is managing director and chief engagement officer, Vancouver Board of Trade, author and international speaker on engaged leadership. He holds a commercial pilot's licence.

See other Globe and Mail articles by Daniel F. Muzyka and Darcy Rezac at,

    Board Business Review, www.boardoftrade.com :

-- Deciding where and when... Globe and Mail, 18 Feb 08

-- Companies can't afford to neglect good corporate citizenship,

    Globe and Mail, February 18, 2008;  Sounding Board, Mar 08

-- Community connections , Published Globe and Mail, 25 Jun 07

Silo Syndrome: When Leadership Alone Is Not Enough...

By Darcy Rezac, CD

Sounding Board, Oct 07

Sometimes leadership alone is not enough. It also takes a network, and the networking skills to activate it to make a difference. That became tragically clear with Hurricane Katrina. Under the circumstances, Winston Churchill himself — arguably one of the best known leaders in the world — would have been hard-pressed to lessen the consequences of the disaster visited on the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005. Three weeks later, the Mayor of New Orleans was sparring on television with Admiral Tad Allen, the new FEMA director; the system wasn’t working as it should.

What was painfully clear with this disaster was that it takes more than leadership alone to add value in situations that call for co-ordinated efforts.  Skills to bridge outside our our narrow spheres of activity, skills to connect, are vital too...it was classic "silo syndrome" at work, an all-too-common phenomenon in a disengaged society....

Complete article: Silo Syndrome at Board Business Review Online.

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Darcy Rezac, CD is managing director and chief engagement officer of The Vancouver Board of Trade, Chief Executive of The Rix Center for Corporate Citizenship, speaker and author of Work the Pond! (Prentice Hall, 05). Co-authors and speakers, Gayle Hallgren-Rezac and Judy Thomson CA, (Prentice Hall Press USA, 2005). Darcy can be contacted at boardoftrade.com, Gayle and Judy at workthepond.com. The first version of this article was published in Sounding Board, Oct 2007