Inputting “three legged stool” into your favorite internet search engine produces shopping listings. Wood, metal, folding, rolling – the world offers plenty of options for resting your legs or pulling up to a workbench. You can refine the search a bit for the purpose of this editorial by specifying that you’re interested in the idiomatic or metaphoric use of the term.
While the metaphor is apparently most commonly applied to retirement planning, a three-legged stool in the abstract is a program, policy, or procedure that balances core elements to ensure a predictable outcome. Three legs, furniture makers know, balance themselves and provide a solid foundation even on rough ground. You can still fall off one, but it takes work.
Aviation businesses could stretch this concept to many realms, but for ARSA it has become an essential illustration for the training and knowledge development that is a practical and regulatory requirement for every aviation stakeholder. Mechanic knowledge is prerequisite to certificate testing, after which the rules require familiarity with work and recent experience to maintain the privileges of their certificate. Repair stations must have sufficient personnel – individually certificated or not – with “training or knowledge and experience” and ensure they are “capable of performing assigned tasks.”
Every certificate holder, every aviation professional, must meet demonstrated competency requirements in order to perform their roles in that global aviation system. To do so effectively depends on partnership of regulators meeting the same knowledge standards, powered by critical thinking and the very just culture on which the FAA believes its Compliance Philosophy depends and EASA has made a cornerstone of its commitment to Safety Management Systems.
Where the three-legged stool comes in can be found in a 2021 report accepted by the Safety Oversight and Certification Advisory Committee (SOCAC). Still the only official SOCAC output, the analysis was produced by the body’s Workforce Development and Training (WDAT) Working Group, which had been charged with developing standards of knowledge and skills for government personnel overseeing aviation certificates.
“The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and industry must develop an aviation safety workforce that can accommodate and respond to modern oversight methodologies and technology,” the report’s executive summary said. “To aid that goal, the SOCAC Subcommittee Working Group examined strategies and methods for attaining knowledge and critical thinking skills to support current and future aviation safety duties.”
The result of that examination was a tiered system of knowledge assessment built on the three-legged stool of regulatory compliance, technology, and professionalism. Across these disciplines, effective training should range from beginning to advanced knowledge and provide specific in-depth experience for those with relevant job responsibilities.
The working group assessed knowledge retention using the “cone of learning” model. At the tip of the cone – admittedly a triangle in two dimensions – is the minimal amount of information retained through reading. At the wide base is the almost total retention through speaking about a task and doing it. Mental and motor skill combine to ensure fullest understanding and memory of a lesson.
Care to test the theory?
(1) Read this article to yourself (Good news: You’re almost done already.)
(2) Read it aloud to a colleague.
(3) Get out a piece of paper, draw a three-legged stool with “regulatory compliance, technology, and professionalism” written underneath it.
(4) Set a calendar reminder or task for a week from right now asking “What are the three elements of an effective training program?”
See if you remember. Then let ARSA know how you did (go to arsa.org and use the “Ask ARSA” button to submit your results…perhaps we’ll give you some free training access for it).
How do the “stool” and the “cone” fit into your own training program? While basic introductions or webinar walkthroughs can be useful in introducing basic concepts, practical engagement is necessary for the lesson to really land.
Brett Levanto is vice president of operations of Obadal, Filler, MacLeod & Klein, P.L.C. managing firm and client communications in conjunction with regulatory and legislative policy initiatives. He provides strategic and logistical support for the Aeronautical Repair Station Association.
