A Navy pilot explains normalization of deviance: how small rule-breaks in checklists compound until the process becomes unrecognizable and unsafe. He shows how the same pattern destroys relationships, when minor disrespect gradually becomes open contempt.
In the Navy, we have this concept called the normalization of deviance. When you think about that from an aviation perspective, that means that when I get in my jet, every single time I open the checklist and I read the checklist and I touch the switches in the same order, getting the aircraft ready for flight. Normalization of deviance occurs when one time maybe I'm not really paying attention to the checklist the way I need to be, and I touch the switches out of order, and then the next time I do that same thing And let's just think about how that can compound over time. The first time I do one switch out of order, the next time I'm doing two or three switches out of order. That can actually get us to a place that's so far from where we started that we can't even recognize the process that we were doing. I look at this in relationships. I see spouses and partners talk to each other in a way that they would never talk to anybody else, but because they started with this slippery slope of denigrating their partner behind closed doors, That can become incredibly insidious. Now they talk to each other and they speak to each other in a way with a lot of animosity and resentment. That's not a way they would speak to anybody else on the planet, but they've normalized it with their partner.
