Most models (semiotics) of safety don’t reflect reality. Models that are binary and linear in particular don’t reflect what happens in the real world. This is especially a problem when it comes to incident investigations. When one believes in a linear binary model of safety that frames how one ‘looks’. When one takes a linear ideology to a process of investigation, one’s perceptions can only see what ‘lines up’. The reality is, life and being doesn’t ‘line up’. Events don’t evolve or emerge in some linear determined way.

Of course, Safety has no interest in Semiotics so why would it think models matter?

A classic example is the popular ICAM process (https://safetyrisk.net/deconstructing-icam-useful-or-useless/). Like all investigation models, ICAM is NOT person-centric but hazard-centric and linear. It is flawed by it acceptance of the silly notion of the swiss-cheese model. Events do not evolve or emerge this way. There is no greater liability to conducting investigations than the model of swiss-cheese. The sooner you dump the nonsense of swiss-cheese, the sooner your investigations method will improve. Similarly, setting about prevention based on a linear model creates perception blindness based on linear conditioning.

This is how Safety creates its own myths. All myths are empowered by semiotics. Put the two together and they become very powerful in any culture, including safety culture. The same mythology applies to the nonsense of ‘root cause’ (https://safetyrisk.net/causation-myths-stop-looking-for-linear-and-root-cause/).

Taleb’s works Fooled by Randomness and Black Swan demonstrate that life is unpredictable, random and chaotic NOT linear. And don’t believe the nonsense of predictive analytics. No amount of data creates prediction. The world is random and unpredictable. Humans are fallible and mortal and cannot know anything perfectly except for the certainty of death. And even then no-one knows the time, method or place of their death.

When you believe there are only white swans, that’s all you look for. Then when confronted with a black swan, one has to jettison years of bias in cognitive dissonance when the evidence proves otherwise. But unless one actually sees a black swan its much easier to hold onto the original belief.

We learn through Quantum Physics that the ideology of order and certainty is a concoction of scientism. Real science is framed in doubt, hypothesis and uncertainty. Real science knows that it doesn’t know much eg. understanding consciousness. Rather than framing a view based on absolute certainty and linear ideology, we would be much better approaching things through Radical Uncertainty and a readiness to learn.

Once a semiotic/myth like the swiss-cheese is set as a foundation for knowing, then open enquiry ceases. No need to look for the random and unpredictable, when we know that all things ‘line up’.

How can you Manage the Unexpected (Weick) when your worldview is framed by linear predictability, ratified by hindsight bias?

The same applies for other safety models like the nonsense models of Heinrich of false pyramids and silly dominoes. But once you have been indoctrinated by a safety curriculum that teaches various models as fact, the job is done. It then becomes nearly impossible to get rid of them or question them.

One of the best methods for approaching incident investigations is a blank piece of paper, skills in open questioning, skilled listening and no model or form filled with expectations and biases of the designer. This is how SPoR approaches Incident Investigations and you can learn about this through the SEEK Program.