Investigations and The Simplicity Attraction
Within the face of a lot noise, competing values, variety and confusion stands the parable of Occam’s Razor, a want that when confronted with a number of elements, people will all the time go for the shortest easiest route. The 14th Century thinker/theologian William of Occam acknowledged ‘plurality should not be assumed without necessity’. The precept since then has grow to be often called Occam’s Razor’.
Standing in opposition to Occam’s Razor is the problem of Depraved Issues. Depraved Issues (https://hbr.org/2008/05/strategy-as-a-wicked-problem ) are past complicated, past paradox and are intractable issues that can not be solved. Certainly, the extra one tries to resolve a Depraved Downside (http://www.enablingchange.com.au/wickedproblems.pdf ) the more severe it will get certainly, the issue amplifies. Depraved issues can solely be ‘tackled’ they can’t be ‘tamed’.
Danger is such an issue, fallibility is such an issue. The extra one tries to manage risk, the extra one diminishes studying. The extra one endeavours to remove fallibility the extra fallible one turns into. Taleb discusses this in his e-book Antifragility (http://en.kgt.bme.hu/files//BMEGT30M400/Taleb_Antifragile__2012.pdf ). Amalberti additionally discusses the impossibility of ultra-safety (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15867408/)
No-one likes to be overwhelmed by uncertainty which is why we develop rituals (https://safetyrisk.net/practice-repetition-habit-routine-ritual-and-decision-making-in-risk/ ) to provide the ‘feeling’ of certainty, when there may be none. There’s nothing like parading the meme of KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid) to a safety business that demonizes complexity. It’s easy: right here’s the rule, obey the rule, police the offender. Sadly, for the simpleton, tackling risk just isn’t easy.
The hassle is that once we assemble investigations, safety coaching and inductions on this simplistic stuff we create an expectation that shapes how risk is envisioned (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/envisioning-risk-seeing-vision-and-meaning-in-risk/ ) and, by means of affirmation bias, find yourself with harmful types of safety naivety. Any declare that risk and safety might be made easy is harmful. Any declare that management in risk is easy is harmful and delusional. Such programs are presently being marketed with peak risk and safety associations.
Human individuals are usually not behaviourist objects. You don’t develop understanding of personhood by consulting an engineer. Equally, when issues go flawed you received’t discover a lot assist in a mechanistic components as an investigation methodology. You could want for all times and being to not be a Depraved Downside however that doesn’t make actuality disappear. Certainly, when one holds to the KISS principle what occurs is the development of false hypotheses to show assumptions that aren’t actual. Memes and rituals could also be enticing however they aren’t useful. The cause why the courts usually come up in investigations with inadequate proof for a declared trigger is as a result of there is no such thing as a root trigger (https://vimeo.com/167228715 ). Such language of ‘root cause’ is simply as harmful as KISS. There isn’t any nice advantage in false consciousness (https://safetyrisk.net/false-consciousness-and-perception-in-risk-and-safety/).
One of many worst issues one can do in investigation is to convey to the desk nonsense memes like ‘safety is a choice you make’, ‘all accidents are preventable’, KISS or root trigger.
On the lookout for neat and tidy outcomes and trigger in any safety exercise isn’t just nonsense however creates harmful development of explanations which can be merely not true. If individuals are concerned and fallible techniques be assured, anticipating messiness is your finest ally. Equally, your investigations methodology must be the identical.
One of many issues we do within the SEEK Program is discover the various important parts excluded from the preferred investigations applications (https://safetyrisk.net/the-seek-investigations-donut/ ). This contains strategies like iCam which have one way or the other been normalized into some form of business normal. The cause why applications similar to these are so enticing is once more a want for certainty, authority and management. That is the search for the investigations sausage, and it tastes prefer it.
In case you have the braveness to discover outdoors the confines of conventional safety and want to enhance your evaluation of occasions and incidents then you possibly can enrol right here:
https://cllr.com.au/product/seek-the-social-psychology-of-event-investigations-unit-2-elearning/
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PhD., MEd., MOH., BEd., BTh., Dip T., Dip Min., Cert IV TAA, MRMIA
Rob is the founding father of Human Dymensions and has intensive expertise, {qualifications} and experience throughout a variety of sectors together with authorities, training, company, business and group sectors over 30 years. Rob has labored in any respect ranges of the training and coaching sector together with serving on numerous publish graduate government, publish graduate supervision, publish graduate course design and implementation applications.