Hi,


A couple of serious issues I was involved with this weekend made me think of this. One was in the engineering world to do with the day job, I was reviewing a very serious incident report (fortunately no fatalities but very close) involving a mixture of everyone trying to do the best they could, but perhaps over reliant on structured checklists which had completely missed an entire piece of equipment in a fairly unique situation. The other was a medical issue in the family, once again all the individual hospital staff were doing their best, but there was a bit of the process that just didn't cope with a particular situation.


Which made me think of something that's long been at the back of my mind: I've never worked in a military environment, but my impression of the modern military from the contacts I have had is that there is still a very structured hierarchy, chain of command, and focus on process, but equally it appears that somehow there is also the ability for small units to have the skills and freedom to evaluate and make their own decisions when challenging circumstances arise - exactly the key skills that were missing in the two examples above. 


So really two questions I'd really like to know other people's views on (particularly those who have worked across both the military and civilian worlds): firstly are my impressions above correct? And if so (or even if a bit wrong but on the right lines) are there lessons we can learn from how this works that we can apply to the management of engineering activities in the wider world - particularly in safety critical issues where we need structure but also need the ability to rapidly and effectively cope with new problems when they come up?   


Thanks,


Andy