Safe and reliable performance is a process to be guided, not an outcome to be managed.
Safety is wisdom. We create safety, or more importantly, we co-create safety in the RELATIONSHIP between workers, planners, managers, and the tasks being accomplished in real-time. None of those components mentioned above involves the scoring and tracking of work outcomes. What matters are the RELATIONSHIPS each group has with all the other groups.
Safety is the creation of the common good. We cannot manage the results these RELATIONSHIPS create because the outcomes result from those RELATIONSHIPS.
We have to better understand the perspectives and relationships these groups have with and about one another.
Reliability is found not in the individual workers and managers but in the RELATIONSHIPS between the workers and the managers.
Source: Pre-Accident Investigations, Better Questions – An Applied Approach to Operational Learning, Todd Conklin, PhD., 2016
