A few years back I played basketball at elite level and at that level you get used to high quality facilities, high expenditure on conditions and certain expectations about what makes sense. I learned that it doesn’t take long before expectations become belief and then beliefs are made myth.

In reality, we have to live with what Heidegger called ‘thrownness’ (https://focusing.org/articles/thrownness). Weick made a great deal of this concept, particularly in relation to the need for adaptability, bricolage and resilience (https://safetyrisk.net/weicks-six-properties-of-thrownness/).

It is one thing to have high expectations about how others tackle risk and in what we believe but, these may not match the belief and conditions of others. What kind of resilience (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/everyday-social-resilience-being-in-risk/) can one dip into, when expectation doesn’t match thrownness?

In 1973, I played with a representative Australian team that decided to do charity games in the barrios as well as play elite games in Manila in the Philippines. Apart from being smuggled at mid-night against the Marcos curfew (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law_under_Ferdinand_Marcos) and having armed guards at games, there were other circumstances we encountered that taught me much about risk.

Below is a picture of our team lining up for a photo op before the game, I am (a much younger version of Rob) closest to the camera.

I remember the humidity at the time was oppressive and that it bucked down with rain at half time but then we continued playing two more quarters. The local village came out in droves to watch the game and we certainly had fun. Whilst most of our team was taller than the local team, their skills with the basketball were amazing.

What was most challenging about the game was the surface of the court. You can see in the photo, apart from line markings, the huge cracks and patched holes in the surface. Similarly, it was fascinating to land at the local airport where WW2 shell casings were nailed over potholes in the tarmac. It was quite an experience to feel the plane thud over these casings nailed over each pothole as we landed. We had flown from our first world reality into astounding poverty, such as I had not seen before. But my goodness did they love the game of basketball.

In Weick’s discussion of ‘thrownness’ he cites six critical properties that I learned in this experience and have carried with me to this day. It was only much later that I realised Weick had noted the properties of thrownness when I read his second book Sensemaking in Organisations (p.44).

Working with what you have been thrown into, is a critical skill in resilience. Demanding perfection is unrealistic and naïve. Whilst you make like perfection and expect it, that’s not how the world works.

I remember working once with an organisation that had a fatality at a port. One of the projected solutions by safety perfectionism was to have a retractable net across the port that could be activated by sensors, if someone fell. The costs for this idea was absurd and of course what quickly ditched as the company rather employed SPoR methods to tackle risk not physical remedies for psychological issues.

The cost for this suggestion was not just prohibitive, it was also unnecessary. The law and regulation do not expect organisations to break the bank to save lives. There are limits to the economics and costs of safety that are accommodated in the legislation and regulation called ALARP. Greg Smith, Dr Ashhurst and I discuss ALARP here: https://vimeo.com/162637292

In resilience, we work with thrownness, a lesson I learn a long time ago in a barrio in the Philippines. The ball doesn’t bounce that well on big cracks and pot holes. Slips, falls and twisted ankles are not normally something one has to cope with on a first world basketball court. But, you work with what you’ve got.

Sometimes there are higher order goals (https://safetyrisk.net/understanding-safety-goals/) that matter more than slips, trips and falls. A hard belief for some to shake in belief in the safety world.