We see a recent announcement by the AIHS that Safety needs to move from compliance to ‘culture leadership’, whatever that means. Safety is so good at throwing around such expressions and all they do is just hide marketing.

Of course, the announcement doesn’t talk about culture or access to expertise on culture but rather goes to the old traditional safety box to dig out the old favourites – systems, behaviours and performance. None of the agenda in this announcement has anything to do with culture. None of the sources quoted in this announcement have any expertise in culture. It’s just more marketing for the AIHS and HOP.

If you want to learn about culture, the last place you should look for understanding is traditional safety.

Digging out the HOP focus on performance and the old Hudson model on culture have nothing to do with culture. And please, don’t try on that old behaviourist nonsense that culture is: ‘what we do around here’ (https://safetyrisk.net/culture-is-not-what-we-do-around-here-yet-safety-believes-it-is/). Nothing is a greater distraction from understanding culture than this meaningless meme.

Much of culture is not ‘done’, neither is culture ‘performed’. Most importantly, culture is NOT assessable, nor propositional (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/51-stories-in-culture/).

So, as we read into this announcement, we see it is marketing for a Victorian Safety Symposium. The symposium has nothing to do with culture.

Then we get this classic from someone who is a supposed expert on culture:

‘There is a polarity that operates in this; it is FROM blame TO responsibility. People start to see the whole system at play, and as the leader, I am responsible for the organisational system’.

No, there is not a binary polarity in anything from blame to responsibility, neither is a system ‘at play’ nor is a leader ‘responsible for the organisational system’. None of this has anything to do with culture. Systems are not culture.

And, the rest of this announcement is just focused on systems and performance. It even uses language like ‘advanced culture’, whatever that means. Just more gobbledygook from Safety with no expertise in culture.

Of course, the announcement then goes on to repeat the word ‘professional’ as often as it can, as if professionalism comes by seeking knowledge from amateurs.

Then the ending of this announcement is classic traditional safety, yep, zero harm, the great safety delusion (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/zero-the-great-safety-delusion/).

Whenever you see the discourse of zero you can know for certain that whatever is being marketed is NOT ethical or professional.

 Any discourse expecting perfection from fallible people will be naturally unethical and unprofessional.

Any culture that is infused with the nonsense discourse of ‘zero harm’ will generate a toxic culture!

Why is it that Safety, with no qualifications or expertise in culture, is the source of telling everyone about culture, and then confuses systems and performance as culture???

What we see in all of this, is that language is made meaningless by Safety.

It’s clear, one can talk in safety about anything like ‘care culture’, ‘advanced culture’ or ‘leadership culture’ without any sense of meaning. It’s just marketing for some new brand or group that know that safety is an easy uneducated market in which to sell snake oil. Apparently, ‘safe care culture’ means HOP. Yep, more performance, more slogans and no methodology or method.

And of course, more repetition of the HOP slogans about ‘no blame’ (https://safetyrisk.net/the-blame-game-of-hop/), all from an approach that has no articulated methodology, method or ethic. Throwing a collection of slogans together doesn’t articulate a philosophy, it hides it! Slogans are the foundation for propaganda, not education and learning. Slogans are NOT principles, only a source with no expertise in ethics would suggest so.

Similarly, it is easy to regurgitate the language of ‘care’ in safety but never articulate what that means. It’s easy to repeat the word ‘professional’ so it has no meaning, so that traditional safety systems and performance can be implemented as if there are no hidden values and ethic built into those systems. All systems hide their design.

Unless there is a clear articulation of personhood, moral meaning and an ethic of risk articulated by a group, you know that it is just more traditional safety with a few slogans thrown in.

So, one can urge people in safety to shift from compliance to culture as much as one wants but without some substance and intelligence about culture, it’s just all more ‘goop’.

If you actually want to learn about culture or an ethic of care, you can download any of the free resources offered by SPoR (https://www.humandymensions.com/shop/).

You can read about SPoR methodology and methods for free (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/spor-and-semiotics/; https://www.humandymensions.com/product/the-social-psychology-of-risk-handbook/) and read a case study of a large global organisation where SPoR works (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/it-works-a-new-approach-to-risk-and-safety-book-for-free-download/).

No spin, no slogans. Just a positive practical methodology and method for tackling risk.