WASHINGTON—Former four-star general Stanley McChrystal told credit unions that as they continue to grow and advance technologically, it’s critical not to lose an important skill that leads to any team’s success—strong communication.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal (Ret.) speaks to GAC.
McChrystal, who headed U.S. forces in Afghanistan, kicked of CUNA’s Governmental Affairs Conference last night with a message stressing the importance of adaptability, and also the importance of teams communicating—no matter if they are troops on the ground in the Middle East or inside a credit union stateside.
To illustrate his points, McChrystal shared examples of two commercial flights that crashed in the last 40 years.
He told the story of a commercial airliner on its way from Denver to Portland in 1978 that ended in the death of 10 people, and then talked about the U.S. Airways flight 1549 piloted by Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger in 2009, which landed safely in the Hudson River with all passengers surviving. Sullenberger has previously also spoken to the GAC meeting.
McChrystal explained that the key difference in the two outcomes being the crew’s ability, or inability, to communicate and work together.
In the Denver flight, the crew faced the problem of landing gear not being able to deploy. McChrystal explained that the crew took all the correct trouble-shooting steps covered in the “manual” to address the landing gear issue. The plane ultimately crashed, however, due to exhausting the fuel on board while the crew looked to resolve the landing gear issue.
“What happened is the crew did not communicate, that was the real problem,” explained McChrystal, who said all the technology in the plane made it easier for the team to be distracted. “They were too busy paying attention to the issues with the landing gear to notice the real threat, low fuel in tanks.”
But good communication is what spared the lives of those on board the flight that landed in the Hudson, said McChrystal.
When the plane flew through a flock of geese that caused both engines to fail, the decisions the crew made then were not in any procedure manual, said McChrystal. “It turned out that the pilot and the crew were able to make the right decisions because they had trained being good communicators. They were able, as a group to see the problem and make the right choices.”