Following on from the very successful workshops on following-leading (https://safetyrisk.net/reflections-on-following-leading-in-risk-workshops/ ), we are happy to offer a series of workshops in June on the subject of Prof Karl Weick and HROing. This has been in response to many of your requests.

The workshops will be held at 7am Canberra time on Tuesdays 9, 16, 23 and 30 June. Each workshop will run for 60-90 minutes.

If you want to participate you can register here: admin@spor.com.au

Registrations will close on 9 May 2026.

If you want to read an overview of the module you can see here: https://cllr.com.au/product/social-psychology-high-reliability-organising-unit-5/

The module is titled: The Social Psychology of High Reliability Organising and is focused on the life work of Prof. Karl. E. Weick (1936 – https://safetyrisk.net/reflections-on-following-leading-in-risk-workshops/).

In many ways the work of Weick is foundational to SPoR. Weick published his first book The Social Psychology of Organising in 1969. This was trailblazing research that brought Social Psychology into view concerning the nature of risk. You can download it here: https://ia601401.us.archive.org/34/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.139013/2015.139013.The-Social-Psychology-Of-Organizations.pdf

Reading Weick bears some similarities to reading philosophy. His work in his first book is challenging to understand because of its complexity. My favourite quote from Weick is ‘how do I know what I believe until I see what I do?’

In the risk and safety world the work of Weick is often misunderstood with many confusing the idea of High Reliability Organising (an activity) with the concept of a High Reliability Organisation (HRO – a permanent status for an organisation). Weick never supported the idea of a HRO, hence why we use the language/participle of HROing. High Reliability Organising never stops and no organisation ever ‘arrives’.

Weick introduced some critical new ideas into the nature of tackling risk – ‘loose coupling’, ‘organisational sensemaking’, ‘enactment’ and ‘collective mindfulness’. Each of these links together and interacts dialectically.

In Lose Coupling Weick explores how ontological incompatible entities exists in tension with each other. In SPoR, we explore this in the use of mandala and the hyphen.

In Organisational Sensemaking, Weick does not mean making sense of something through logic, rationality or so called ‘common-sense’. Indeed, he lays out seven core properties that make up what he understands as a ‘cosmological’ order. The seven properties are: identity, retrospect, enactment, social contact, ongoing events, cues, and plausibility. Each of these requires significant unpacking, which we will explore in the workshops.

By Enactment, Weick posits that certain phenomena are created by being talked about. In a way this also bears resonance with some aspects of quantum theory, quantum mysticism, quantum Mind and the contradictions of consciousness. The idea of ‘enactment’ is that we enact things into being. To understand this more, I would suggest reading Zukav, The Dancing WuLi Masters (https://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/dancingmasters.pdf).

In Collective Mindfulness, Weick tackles the nature of organising and the energy/orientation organisations undertake to reduce equivocality. This energy of ‘collective mindfulness’ bears some similarities to Jung’s Collective Unconscious. That is, in organising, fallible humans enter into the ‘wickedity’ (implied) of ambiguity, bricolage and paradox, as organisations spiral towards entropy.

Weick’s work is not easy to understand for the risk and safety industry, indoctrinated in ideas of certainty, controls and linear causality. His seven books can be quite academic and challenging in how Social Psychology is applied to organising and risk.

The idea of HROing, builds on the grammar of the participle. Participles are verb-nouns that name an action. In SPoR, we use this part of speech often to present the active and ongoing nature of dialectic and learning eg. following-leading.

Weick’s work challenges many assumptions made in the risk and safety world about certainty, controls and organising. His work is profoundly philosophical more than psychological (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40926-016-0040-z). Much of Weick’s work shares things in common with deconstruction (Derrida). In methodology, Weick draws us into the challenges of the deconstruction-reconstruction dialectic, a common theme is SPoR. Weick describes the deconstruction-reconstruction dialectic as a ‘cosmology episode’ (https://www.publichealth.hscni.net/sites/default/files/directorates/files/Sense%20and%20reliability%20Karl%20E%20Weick.pdf).

In the risk and safety world there is significant reaction to uncertainty, fallibility and risk. When Safety feels disorder, wickedity, chaos and uncertainty, it creates more order to feel safe. In the face of what Safety cannot explain through its philosophy, it returns to the safety cupboard finding the old Hierarchy of Controls as if this construct can somehow manage disorder and messiness to bring order. This is the dilemma of the cosmological episode. The response to this episode should be met with Transdisciplinarity not old paradigms.

In SPoR, we have been teaching this module for 20 years and with great success as judged by feedback from participants. In some ways Weick shakes the very foundations of many safety beliefs. So, if you register for these workshops, some safety beliefs will be challenged.

You can register here: admin@spor.com.au