He seems to have changed stance on this topic from this article Ultimate Buoyancy Control Guide: Dive with Effortless Precision
Attitudes Toward DIR Divers
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He seems to have changed stance on this topic from this article Ultimate Buoyancy Control Guide: Dive with Effortless Precision
ginti
Contributor
Agree, which is why I linked the article. Nevertheless, rec diving is an extremely safe activity nowadays.
You cited "poor quality is more costly than high quality" - quality within this sentence has nothing to do with training quality the way you intend it here. It's"management quality" (lean principles, satisfying the product specifications decided by the management, make customers happy, etc.). And PADI seems to be pretty good at this.
Anyway, I don't think we will ever agree, but thanks for your insights
Cthippo
Contributor
I think there is an element of how, or at least how often, these people are diving. You could get the best instruction on earth, but of you then go home and don't use it for a year, you will not become profiecient with it. Most of the divers I know ONLY dive on vacation in warm places, so generally no more than a couple of times a year. Even if someone had prefect skills when they were certified, I suspect they would look pretty sloppy getting back in the water 6 months or a year later.
My point here is that while there is a need for better and more consistent training, initial training is only part of the solution.
ginti
Contributor
I didn't know. This might be another reason why they are changing.
But financial performance is still a TOP priority - if the company fails, no agenda anymore. So when they define quality, the won't start from "quality of training", at least at the beginning. Of course in the long term, if they have such an agenda, they will take care, but they won't risk what has been built so far. They will just go for a typical change management approach that, as I mentioned before, will be (is being) VERY slow
I read here a lot of things that are also dependent on the intelligence of a person. And the natural talents a diver has.
Theory, for some divers very difficult, already in open water. Pressure? Gases getting less volume on depth? Gases in your body causing dcs? Quite a lot of divers will pass an exam with a 'monkey see, monkey do approach'. The theory is forgotten within less than a month after the course. And no, this is not 1 diver, there are a lot who will forget it. Even if you start diving every week.
The same with GUE, deco on the fly, ratio deco. Now computers are accepted, quite a lot of people could not calculate under water their deco. You can say I have never heard about this. No, but I have seen this a lot. And I am already diving for a longer time, and have seen what has been changed in the last 10-15 years. So accepting computers made diving safer. And more people can now pass a T1 or T2 easy, or if they passed in the past, they can now dive safer as there is less theory to remember.
Then about skills. People will forget things. This is human. I have had a student who did a complaint a couple of months after his technical cave course that we didn't do a lost line drill. I could proof this with pictures that we had done this. So why did he forget? I don't know. Yes, I take my camera/gopro with me while teaching. To discuss skills after a dive, to give students a souvenir from the course and for myself to see if I did not see things under water.
And do all divers need to be topdivers? Only if you want to train and improve you will improve your diving after being certified. And not everybody wants to do that. And then you forget, or start doing things different from what you have learned. Nobody drives a car anymore as they learned when taking drivinglessons for their driving licence. Real experience vs learning the trick how to drive. Is this directly wrong? no
I also read here about failing courses. Everybody knows that not every person can be a real diver after just 4 open water dives. A lot of divecenters will pass a student then, but if you don't do that, did the student fail? Naturals you can learn diving in just 1 dive. If they also have an above intelligence, theorylessens are not needed, give them a book and 30 minutes later they know all. But in standards you must teach theory and a minimum of dives.
Other people are less gifted and need more time. I have had a student who I passed for open water after 16 dives. The reason was his bouyancy and he paniced every time with mask clearing. At the end he did the mask clearing skill 2-3 times ok, but he still is a person who hates this skill.
If this person did a gue course, or a course with a commercial padi or ssi divecenter, he would have failed. But if you take the time, even these people can learn. But only not in the minimum required amount of time.
And here a thing starts that is a problem in diving. You cannot be an autodidact. There is no option to do a sort of exam to proof you know the skills for the level you want a cert for.
For me as a fast learner, I will not do some courses as they costs me too much time and will learn me too less or nothing for the money I have to spent. Or that are teached by an instructor who really wants to teach all the theory in a very slow way, or on 1 day. A day of a course with only theory is a waiste of my time. I also don't do this myself when teaching.
The other point are the divers who need more time than average. They also get dissappointed. But they at least get in most times a cert in the minimum required time.
What I see as an instructor is a lot of different people and some can learn fast and others don't. Within the standards I am free to do things a little bit faster, or slower if needed. I try to adapt to students. For longer and more difficult courses like cave or trimix I will meet them before starting a course, so we will learn to know each other. And I know how I can teach a course best. If you have 3 completely different learners in a course, this is the most difficult course. But if you know each other already, you can adapt. So if I know a person will need some more time with theory, we can do already something before we drive to the caves. If I have a person who reads the book and knows it, then it will be a knowledge review when doing the dryruns.
So I think with diving, sometimes it is that you need to do courses all the time. Courses have a start and enddate. In things like swimminglessons or horseriding you buy for 10 lessons a card and some people can go to the next level already after just 10 lessons and others need to stay in the beginnergroups. Diving has a different approach. Of course also because of that this is a holiday activity and you need to have cert to dive somewhere in the world. With horseriding, I can say I want a trailride, I own my own horse, and have 40 years experience. And this is believed. I have never done a checkride or a checkdrive when renting a car. In diving because of a lot of attitude by a lot of people it is not believed that someone with 3000+ dives is able to dive in all circumstances, even if the divesite is new. I don't need a guide to drive up on a new mountain by car, so why with diving then?
Attitude, this is in diving sometimes a big problem. The reason is that being instructor means for beginners 'you are something'. And this is already teached from the beginning in divingcourses because every agency wants to sell courses. And you need to sell them in the first 1-3 years and if people dive a little bit longer till 5 years. Then most people are done with diving or at least don't want to do a course anymore. No single agency is different in this. And if the courses that are offered are sold out, then they invent new courses. Sometimes because of demand, sometimes because of just wanting to earn money.
But the attitude. Here in my country a lot of instructors say that you cannot learn diving well in holidaydestinations. You need to learn diving in our dark murky waters. But what do you see? People who learned diving here are sticked to the bottom, just 30-50cm from the bottom, otherwise you loose all reference. If these divers go to clear waters, they try in the first dive(s) to stick at the bottom as they are used to it. Their bouyancy is in most times not that good. To stay away from the bottom is easier learned when people learn diving in clearer waters.
After some experience these differences dissappear, but with beginners they are there.
So attitude means also talking negative about other places to learn diving. And this is not only within the 'dir community'.
Attitude, egoism, etc, all is human. And the intelligence of a person differs from person to person.
There are also instructors who are not that good in theory. They can pass an instructor exam, but will forget things later. This is why there are manuals, but also you see that with manuals, with standards, all instructors will teach different. And I see that not all knowledge is current. I have had a discussion with a diver who is also an instructor for recreational diving. This diver got dcs after a dive. Probably there was nothing done wrong in the dive( I have analysed the diveprofile by putting it in a planner and adjusted and explained some parameters to make it safer for the future, but it looked like it was just a normal recreational ndl dive), but the computer was set to nitrox32 and there was dived on air to 35m. Others in the group did not have problems and all stayed within NDL for the same dive. And then I got the question: my computer was putted on a maxPO2 of 1.6, can this has caused my dcs? And then you are a nitrox instructor. So this question is strange in my eyes then, do you as instructor understand nitrox or partial pressures in general yes or no?
Setting a computer to a max PO2 of 1.6, does this mean that if you dive on air to 40m that this influences your diveprofile or ndl-time? This question is NEVER asked in an exam. But it is a good question to understand things. How about the adviced PO2 of 1.4 as max? What does this mean if you dive to 40m on air? and to 40m on ean32?
But also, you dropped your expensive light to 38m. Can you pick it up while breathing ean32?
Is it for an instructor enough to only teach tables with PO2's and max depths? Or do you expect an instructor can explain the questions above to you?
Sometimes I think it would not be bad to do an online knowledge review for instructors every 2 years or so. But then again, does this help? No, people will learn for it and then pass again. But the direct knowledge that people have is forgotten in less than a month by a lot of people. The reason is easy: I have passed, so I know it. How many people are still practising things they learned in a course? Most not.
Do only walking encyclopedias are allowed to teach? This is the extreme opposite of course. If you only want to have instructors with a proven university grade, then diving will be impossible for most people. And agencies will loose too much money. And is diving now unsafe? No, also not, statistics don't proof that.
So it is a hard discussion. In my opinion there are instructors with too less knowledge, but it is hard to improve that I am afraid. And also being a DIR diver does not mean you have a better knowledge or understanding. We are all human. knowledge and understanding is in a lot of cases natural gifting and then the willing to learn. If you are not gifted, but willing to learn, then you can get further or become better than a gifted lazy person. But all qa's, standards, etc will not change human behaviour where there are always people who want to cut corners.
And be honest, did you never cut a corner somewhere in your life? (not only in diving). Everybody did.
Theory, for some divers very difficult, already in open water. Pressure? Gases getting less volume on depth? Gases in your body causing dcs? Quite a lot of divers will pass an exam with a 'monkey see, monkey do approach'. The theory is forgotten within less than a month after the course. And no, this is not 1 diver, there are a lot who will forget it. Even if you start diving every week.
The same with GUE, deco on the fly, ratio deco. Now computers are accepted, quite a lot of people could not calculate under water their deco. You can say I have never heard about this. No, but I have seen this a lot. And I am already diving for a longer time, and have seen what has been changed in the last 10-15 years. So accepting computers made diving safer. And more people can now pass a T1 or T2 easy, or if they passed in the past, they can now dive safer as there is less theory to remember.
Then about skills. People will forget things. This is human. I have had a student who did a complaint a couple of months after his technical cave course that we didn't do a lost line drill. I could proof this with pictures that we had done this. So why did he forget? I don't know. Yes, I take my camera/gopro with me while teaching. To discuss skills after a dive, to give students a souvenir from the course and for myself to see if I did not see things under water.
And do all divers need to be topdivers? Only if you want to train and improve you will improve your diving after being certified. And not everybody wants to do that. And then you forget, or start doing things different from what you have learned. Nobody drives a car anymore as they learned when taking drivinglessons for their driving licence. Real experience vs learning the trick how to drive. Is this directly wrong? no
I also read here about failing courses. Everybody knows that not every person can be a real diver after just 4 open water dives. A lot of divecenters will pass a student then, but if you don't do that, did the student fail? Naturals you can learn diving in just 1 dive. If they also have an above intelligence, theorylessens are not needed, give them a book and 30 minutes later they know all. But in standards you must teach theory and a minimum of dives.
Other people are less gifted and need more time. I have had a student who I passed for open water after 16 dives. The reason was his bouyancy and he paniced every time with mask clearing. At the end he did the mask clearing skill 2-3 times ok, but he still is a person who hates this skill.
If this person did a gue course, or a course with a commercial padi or ssi divecenter, he would have failed. But if you take the time, even these people can learn. But only not in the minimum required amount of time.
And here a thing starts that is a problem in diving. You cannot be an autodidact. There is no option to do a sort of exam to proof you know the skills for the level you want a cert for.
For me as a fast learner, I will not do some courses as they costs me too much time and will learn me too less or nothing for the money I have to spent. Or that are teached by an instructor who really wants to teach all the theory in a very slow way, or on 1 day. A day of a course with only theory is a waiste of my time. I also don't do this myself when teaching.
The other point are the divers who need more time than average. They also get dissappointed. But they at least get in most times a cert in the minimum required time.
What I see as an instructor is a lot of different people and some can learn fast and others don't. Within the standards I am free to do things a little bit faster, or slower if needed. I try to adapt to students. For longer and more difficult courses like cave or trimix I will meet them before starting a course, so we will learn to know each other. And I know how I can teach a course best. If you have 3 completely different learners in a course, this is the most difficult course. But if you know each other already, you can adapt. So if I know a person will need some more time with theory, we can do already something before we drive to the caves. If I have a person who reads the book and knows it, then it will be a knowledge review when doing the dryruns.
So I think with diving, sometimes it is that you need to do courses all the time. Courses have a start and enddate. In things like swimminglessons or horseriding you buy for 10 lessons a card and some people can go to the next level already after just 10 lessons and others need to stay in the beginnergroups. Diving has a different approach. Of course also because of that this is a holiday activity and you need to have cert to dive somewhere in the world. With horseriding, I can say I want a trailride, I own my own horse, and have 40 years experience. And this is believed. I have never done a checkride or a checkdrive when renting a car. In diving because of a lot of attitude by a lot of people it is not believed that someone with 3000+ dives is able to dive in all circumstances, even if the divesite is new. I don't need a guide to drive up on a new mountain by car, so why with diving then?
Attitude, this is in diving sometimes a big problem. The reason is that being instructor means for beginners 'you are something'. And this is already teached from the beginning in divingcourses because every agency wants to sell courses. And you need to sell them in the first 1-3 years and if people dive a little bit longer till 5 years. Then most people are done with diving or at least don't want to do a course anymore. No single agency is different in this. And if the courses that are offered are sold out, then they invent new courses. Sometimes because of demand, sometimes because of just wanting to earn money.
But the attitude. Here in my country a lot of instructors say that you cannot learn diving well in holidaydestinations. You need to learn diving in our dark murky waters. But what do you see? People who learned diving here are sticked to the bottom, just 30-50cm from the bottom, otherwise you loose all reference. If these divers go to clear waters, they try in the first dive(s) to stick at the bottom as they are used to it. Their bouyancy is in most times not that good. To stay away from the bottom is easier learned when people learn diving in clearer waters.
After some experience these differences dissappear, but with beginners they are there.
So attitude means also talking negative about other places to learn diving. And this is not only within the 'dir community'.
Attitude, egoism, etc, all is human. And the intelligence of a person differs from person to person.
There are also instructors who are not that good in theory. They can pass an instructor exam, but will forget things later. This is why there are manuals, but also you see that with manuals, with standards, all instructors will teach different. And I see that not all knowledge is current. I have had a discussion with a diver who is also an instructor for recreational diving. This diver got dcs after a dive. Probably there was nothing done wrong in the dive( I have analysed the diveprofile by putting it in a planner and adjusted and explained some parameters to make it safer for the future, but it looked like it was just a normal recreational ndl dive), but the computer was set to nitrox32 and there was dived on air to 35m. Others in the group did not have problems and all stayed within NDL for the same dive. And then I got the question: my computer was putted on a maxPO2 of 1.6, can this has caused my dcs? And then you are a nitrox instructor. So this question is strange in my eyes then, do you as instructor understand nitrox or partial pressures in general yes or no?
Setting a computer to a max PO2 of 1.6, does this mean that if you dive on air to 40m that this influences your diveprofile or ndl-time? This question is NEVER asked in an exam. But it is a good question to understand things. How about the adviced PO2 of 1.4 as max? What does this mean if you dive to 40m on air? and to 40m on ean32?
But also, you dropped your expensive light to 38m. Can you pick it up while breathing ean32?
Is it for an instructor enough to only teach tables with PO2's and max depths? Or do you expect an instructor can explain the questions above to you?
Sometimes I think it would not be bad to do an online knowledge review for instructors every 2 years or so. But then again, does this help? No, people will learn for it and then pass again. But the direct knowledge that people have is forgotten in less than a month by a lot of people. The reason is easy: I have passed, so I know it. How many people are still practising things they learned in a course? Most not.
Do only walking encyclopedias are allowed to teach? This is the extreme opposite of course. If you only want to have instructors with a proven university grade, then diving will be impossible for most people. And agencies will loose too much money. And is diving now unsafe? No, also not, statistics don't proof that.
So it is a hard discussion. In my opinion there are instructors with too less knowledge, but it is hard to improve that I am afraid. And also being a DIR diver does not mean you have a better knowledge or understanding. We are all human. knowledge and understanding is in a lot of cases natural gifting and then the willing to learn. If you are not gifted, but willing to learn, then you can get further or become better than a gifted lazy person. But all qa's, standards, etc will not change human behaviour where there are always people who want to cut corners.
And be honest, did you never cut a corner somewhere in your life? (not only in diving). Everybody did.
It sounds like you’re viewing “quality” from only from a business management perspective, focusing on lean principles, meeting product specifications, satisfying customers, and overall operational efficiency. Going forward I’ll refer to this view of quality as “business performance.” In this sense, I agree that PADI seems to be quite effective at running its operations and maintaining customer satisfaction. Although I’d argue that most of its customers wouldn’t know better.Agree, which is why I linked the article. Nevertheless, rec diving is an extremely safe activity nowadays.
You cited "poor quality is more costly than high quality" - quality within this sentence has nothing to do with training quality the way you intend it here. It's"management quality" (lean principles, satisfying the product specifications decided by the management, make customers happy, etc.). And PADI seems to be pretty good at this.
Anyway, I don't think we will ever agree, but thanks for your insights
However, when I referred to “quality,” I was speaking specifically about the quality of training and safety standards in diving instruction. This type of quality management is not just about meeting business goals or keeping customers happy, but rather about ensuring that the training provided is thorough, safe, and adheres to PADIs standards. This would more related to management frameworks around High Reliability Organizations (HROs) and Safety Management Systems (SMS) and implementing things to monitor the effectiveness of the training like the Kirkpatrick’s Four-Level Training Evaluation Model.
While business performance might be judged by how well a company meets its operational goals and satisfies its customers, the kind of quality I’m discussing is measured by how well divers are trained, how safely they can operate in the water, and how consistently instructors adhere to established safety standards. It’s less about operational efficiency and more about the competency and safety of divers, and the consistency of the training they provide.
The old PADI OW course was abysmal in terms of teaching buoyancy, and that is indeed why the Peak Performance Buoyancy course was needed. The far-too-slow change to teaching the course while neutrally buoyant from the start makes a HUGE difference. Taught that way without any additional time or activities, an OW course will have students looking like veteran divers by the time they are done with the pool activities. I have written in the past of an incident when a DM assumed two companions of mine had well over 100 dives when in fact I had just certified them the day before.
In addition, the newer course standards (about 2013) put a much greater emphasis on buoyancy. Unfortunately, they call for a lot of judgement on the part of the instructor on how long to spend on neutrally buoyant swimming during the pool sessions, and I am sure many instructors choose minimal time.
ginti
Contributor
Not really. I am saying two things:
1 - The "poor quality is more costly than high quality" works when quality is defined from a business perspective, that is, business performance + target customers' perceived quality
2 - PADI is a for-profit business, and to survive must prioritize business performance to any other type of quality
And again, my point is that PADI cannot afford to prioritize this "quality" in the short term. The way you define quality, it requires a massive cultural change within the organization, and cultural changes require time, lots of time.
PADI has already started this change. It's just taking lots of time, as any reasonable change management process would take.
In my view, those who say "it isn't enough" just do not consider how time-consuming and complicated the process can be. This is my opinion. Probably the opinion of many is that PADI could be faster and reach the same level of smaller agencies in a shorter time - and here is where I cannot agree. Both views are opinions, not facts, and the only way to prove one or the other right (or wrong) is to test both of them, which obviously will never happen. Also, it appears that PADI management is pretty conservative from a business perspective, following the approach I believe is right, so until there isn't a change in the senior management, we will have to move on with this strategy.
I feel positive
eightytwenty
Contributor
That's the one. Followed up by something along the lines of "We listen to Metallica when we gear up and we do not get anything dirty"
How is prioritizing performance over quality working out for Boeing? Just because a business is for-profit doesn't mean it can ignore quality. In fact if you ignore it for long enough you might find you don't have a business anymore.
Cultural changes do not require a lot of time in relative terms, they require a lot of consistent energy. Certainly since @boulderjohn wrote the article in 2010 is more than enough time for cultural change. If enough people would have put the consistent energy into it.
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