Do More Than the Minimum Necessary

The D.O.M. magazine team is in Fort Worth, TX for the NBAA Maintenance Conference this week. Today was the first day of the conference, and I had the opportunity to sit in on plenty of interesting sessions and talk to a lot of our readers at our booth.

I was pleasantly surprised when Dr. Tony Kern took the time to stop by our booth to say hi. The last time I had seen Dr. Kern was at an NBAA Maintenance conference around eight years ago. 

I still remember Dr. Kern's presentation at that show all those years ago. He talked about the need for true professionalism in our industry. He brought up an example of a technician who believes he or she is a professional because they never violate the regulations. He opined that mechanic might as well be saying, "I only do the minimum necessary to meet the regulations."

The FARs are the minimum standards established by the FAA. But just because the FAA sets the bar low doesn’t mean we should settle for just hopping over the bar. We can set our standards much higher.

What do you think the measure of a true professional in our industry is? Are you just doing the minim necessary to meet the regulations, or are you pushing yourself and your team to continually raise the bar of professionalism?

Thanks for reading!

Joe