One of the strange trade-offs of busyness in large organisations is the exponential growth of rules. It’s a bit like how software companies send out patches on patches until the software is so large and unworkable, no-one uses it.

I was consulting to a Tier One organisation once that paid a software company to develop their safety management system that cost $2 million to develop. They called the software First Priority. The company developed this amazing product but no-one used it. Everyone found it easier to just go back to spreadsheets and tables because the software was so cumbersome to navigate, even after a 4-hour induction program. A few simple principles about human personhood apply here: Occam’s Razor (https://www.newscientist.com/definition/occams-razor/), Bounded Rationality and Satisficing (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bounded-rationality/). But it’s not likely that software engineers know about any of this stuff. This would require a Transdisciplinary approach to learning.

The reality of fallible human personhood is that 99% of decision making is founded on heuristics (learned and embodied short-cuts). Most decision making is not slow/rational or fast as Kahneman suggests and it cannot be, given the limitations of fallible being. The beauty of heuristics is, they enable fast and efficient decision making (https://ia803400.us.archive.org/5/items/pdfy-Xi4vv7AaDeTOQeF-/Simple%20Heuristics%20That%20Make%20Us%20Smart.pdf). We discuss this in SPoR in our model of 1B3M (https://vimeo.com/142962432). Heuristics are developed slowly over time, sometimes years until they become automatic. Most learning is like this.

Inventing new rules is easy and often ‘knee jerk’ in organisations and once put in place hard to eradicate. It’s similar to organisations that adopt zero vision and then don’t know how to get rid of it once the outcomes of zero (brutalism) are experienced.

It’s so easy to bring in something that looks new without considering its trade-offs and by-products (https://safetyrisk.net/new-year-safety-trade-offs-and-by-products/).

I was at a rock concert last Saturday at the Horden Pavillion in Sydney to see a band Called Greta Van Fleet. It is always fascinating to see how Security and Safety companies manage large groups of people. Sometimes the best rule can be to do nothing!

As we approached the venue we joined a large queue 4 wide lined up for kilometres on the footpath and spilling out on the road. Added to this congestion was 40,000 people trying to get into the venue next door for a football game. We were also in a district of bars and clubs and these too included people spilling out on to the road. Interestingly, all of the road rules about being on open roads, crossing roads, pedestrian pathways and driving, were broken. Because people were all over the roads, traffic slowed down to a crawl. Everyone was safe. This is how Homeostasis (https://safetyrisk.net/understanding-homeostasis-and-risk/) works. Sometimes, we don’t need rules because Homeostasis and Allostasis (https://safetyrisk.net/allostasis-and-homeostasis-in-risk/) are at work.

As they opened the doors people flowed forward slowly to the check-in area with the usual wrist band, scans and security checks. Once we were in a new set of rules applied. Those with wrist bands (adults) could purchase alcohol and those without bands (minors) could not. This only works well if adults don’t purchase alcohol for minors. This is where rules disappear and Social Contract (https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.203827/page/n7/mode/2up) emerges.

So, I purchased a beer for my Son-in-law and myself and a juice for my granddaughter. We were both there for her, her first ever live concert. We were lucky to get auditorium seating but the mosh pit (again with its own social contract rules) began to swell and I could see that the pathway to get a drink was being blocked. So, with a beer nearly finished I quickly rushed down to the bar to get another 2 beers. Luckily there was no queue at the bar.

Then came the most fascinating experience. I was refused entry to the bar because I was holding a beer can. I was then told if my hands were empty, I could walk in and purchase up to 4 beers at a time. So, I walked away and put my nearly empty beer can by a bin and walked back to the bar. The security guard stated that that wouldn’t work either because she could see where my beer was so, I could ‘skull’ the beer (drink all at once) throw it in the bin and then go in and buy 4 more. So, I ‘skulled’ the beer put it in the bin and bought 4 beers, considering the nature of the queue, even though I had intended to only buy 2. I figured futures trips would be much more challenging.

I have no idea what the intention of this rule was but knew it encouraged people to ‘skull’ a beer and buy more than intended. Perhaps the purpose of the rule was to encourage greater beer sales? I don’t know, perhaps in someone’s mind this rule would curtain excessive drinking? With this rule, I could buy 4 beers, hide them somewhere and immediately come back and buy 4 more.

Such an interesting comparison to how Safety thinks. On many occasions we don’t need rules when the Social Contract works best. When rules don’t work and are not needed, we would be better off studying why Allostasis, Homeostasis and Social Contract are better forms of control than arbitrary rules. Unfortunately for Safety, this would mean engaging with Transdisciplinary study and this seems of little interest to an industry that seems to think that any rule is a good rule or that any action in the name of ‘safety’ is a moral imperative.

If you are interested in a practical study of how Social Contract works and about the power of Allostasis and Homeostasis, you can study an Introduction to SPoR for free here: https://vimeo.com/showcase/4233556