The risk and safety industry loves to use the language of ‘mindset’, but its meaning is assumed and rarely defined. Indeed, if you are going to use language like ‘mindset’ or mindfulness, it might be helpful to first anchor these to an ethic of personhood. The place to start in defining what a ‘mind’ set… Read More What is the Safety Mind-Set?

One of the profound weaknesses with the way Safety understands error, failure and mistakes is its assumptions about human personhood. If one comes at the issue of mistakes/error from a materialist, behaviourist or brain-centric philosophy, one views human error as some kind of mis-computation made by the brain. The idea common in Western and Safety… Read More The Safety Problem with Mindlessness

As the group prepares for the workshops on Weick and HROing, we seek to understand the philosophy of Prof. Karl E. Weick and how his perspective on risk works. Most of what Weick espouses is in direct contradiction with the HOP myths of ‘learning from normal work’ and ‘blame fixes nothing’. Indeed, Weick’s ideas of… Read More Weick’s Expectations of the Unexpected

The language used in safety and its non-events, evokes greater absurdity as the industry continues to struggle for relevance. Soon it will simply run out of words to explain what it does. I had to laugh when I read about traditional safety being on ‘the cutting edge’ and being ‘revolutionary’ and then reading the content… Read More The Non-Revolution in Safety – SafetyRisk.net

In safety, many are familiar with Hudson’s expression ‘chronic unease’ or Weick’s ‘preoccupation with failure’ but in SPoR we prefer to use two expressions: ‘Entertain doubt’ and ‘suspend your agenda’ to convey a similar meaning. Of course, none of this aligns with the HOP con of ‘blame fixes nothing’ or ‘learning from normal work’. Indeed,… Read More Suspending Your Agenda to Begin Learning in Risk