9.G;
I've read your posts and you don't 'read' like a troll at all. You read like someone who knows exactly what they're talking about.
I think your discussion points of the value of SOPs, the value of knowledge and airmanship and particularly the value of discipline in all aspects of one's operation are well worth reading especially for those just getting into the business.
The headset example may not be the best one to illustrate what you mean by "discipline" but anyone who understands the value and the great importance of the points you're making regarding SOPs and cockpit behaviours will also understand your example.
I'd like to talk about the notion of "the bad apple" and organizational behaviour for a sec.
The notion of "bad apple" usually means someone within an otherwise healthy organization, who consistently violates the organization's published-trained-and-checked SOPs.
But if the organization tolerates this in the training and checking process, or if the organization doesn't even know that an individual is not adhering to SOPs and other behaviours known to sustain a safety culture, then it is the organization, not the individual, which has a problem.
The notion of "bad apple" persists and may have some validity in highlighting an individual problem which needs addressing, but since Charles Perrow's ground-breaking insights and work on organizational behaviour (Normal Accidents, 1984) and a huge amount of work done since then by such authors as Reason, Dekker, Helmreich, Foushee and others, the focus is not on the individual but on the organizational environment in which individuals work.
That was Perrow's insight...that organizational values directly affect the work environment including the organization's safety culture. If individual employees perceive that there is an unwritten tolerance for deviations from SOPs then that is the organization's culture and that is how employees will behave.
While there are always varying levels of skill, ability and capacity, SOPs, (as you have pointed out) are intended to provide solid if not straightforward guidance for all. In such an approach, deviations are the exception whereas the notion of the "bad apple", by definition, tolerates the exception.
Nice contribution to the discussion, thanks.