These are articles on the SAMatters blog.
The foundation of situational awareness is capturing clues and cues in your environment – what some would call “paying attention” – and then making sense of those clues and cues – what some would call “understanding” – and then making projections of future events – what some would call “prediction.” One of the challenges in the […]
Confirmation Bias Impacts Situational Awareness Read More »
Confabulation may sound better than lying, but it’s no less dangerous. One of the most amazing demonstrations I do during my situational awareness programs is to show how a person, when placed under stress, will lie. Only in the world of neuroscience, we don’t call it lying, we call it confabulation. You won’t do it
Confabulation: It Sounds Better Than Lying Read More »
We have many traits that make us uniquely human. Among them is our ability to engage in complex communications. We can look at black ink squiggled on a piece of bleached paper and derive meaning from those symbols. We call that skill reading comprehension. And we can listen to and comprehend the meaning of more
Complex Communications Read More »
Situational awareness is the foundation for good decision making. Situational awareness is formed by observing… and understanding what is happening in your environment, in the context of how time is passing. That “understanding” is then used to make predictions of future events. For those who have attended my full-day situational awareness classes you know this
Teaching Situational Awareness and Decision Making Read More »
Curiosity killed the cat. But it’s not curiosity that is killing first responders. It’s complacency contributing to flawed situational awareness. What does it mean to be complacent? I could offer you the Webster’s dictionary definition. Instead, I’d like to offer you a definition based on my observations of those who suffer from the affliction. Complacent:
Complacency: A Killer of First Responders Read More »
Arguably,to accomplish a mission, it would be very beneficial to have a shared set of goals that everyone understands and everyone is working on together in a unified way to accomplish. Shared goals can contribute to shared situational awareness – a common understanding of what is happening and what the plan of action entails
Competing Goals Can Impact Situational Awareness Read More »
In reading casualty reports you will often see issues related to communications as a contributing factor. Miscommunications, lack of communications or too much radio traffic (to include overloaded radio channels) are often cited. It is the last of these issues I want to address. There is an inherent cognitive consequence from too much communications that
Communications Overload Impacts Situational Awareness Read More »
At the start of the Flawed Situational Awareness program I share a story about my early years as a company officer and subsequently as a command-level officer. Even in those days (more than 30 years ago), I held a deep desire to learn from failure and catastrophe. I read every near-miss and casualty report I
Come down off the high perch of judgment Read More »
It is possible that while you are attempting to pay attention to something, you can be drawn off your task by distractions or interruptions to your workload. A distraction is something that pulls your attention away by accident (like a reflex look in the direction of a loud noise). An interruption is something that pulls
Buildings are disposable. People are not! This guest editorial contribution is provided by Chief John Buckman III, Director of the Indiana State Fire Training and Certification System. Chief Buckman posted this piece on Facebook and, with his permission, it is being reposted here. The message is short and powerful.
Buildings are Disposable Read More »
