Transactional Analysis is a valuable approach to the understanding of human behavior and action. Developed by Dr. Eric Berne, author of the book, “Games people play” While we communicate with others, we share not only facts & information, but also emotions, values, benefits & traditions. So the starting point of all engagements is:
What’s more culturally dangerous? A manager/Supervisor who is unable to identify at-risk behavior A manager/Supervisor who can identify at-risk behavior but turns a blind eye to it
I was first exposed to the “The Warm Fuzzy Tale” by Claude M. Steiner (1969) in my first organizational psychology course at Murray State Univesity in 1990. At the time, with zero actual field experience in safety, I thought it was hyperbole, academic nonsense, etc. But once I got into fieldwork, beginning with my first
One of my favorite safety sayings came from Dr. William (Bill) Corcoran from the USA’s Nuclear Safety Program. He firmly believed that latent failures were more to blame for accidents than human errors. And he proved this over a distinguished career of 50+ years in nuclear engineering with a major slant towards nuclear safety through
Whenever I think about Routine and Situational violations, my mind goes back to my childhood days when Life cereal came out. The commercial involved two older kids talking about the cereal, and neither wanted to try it. And there sat little Mikey, so they pushed the bowl over to Mikey and said, “let’s get Mikey
In his 2018 book, Risk-Based Thinking – Managing the Uncertainty of Human Error in Operations, Muschara has a passage that hits a home run in how human error is viewed in American society and why this view of human error is so difficult to break through… (p.39)
We have all heard the story of the three little pigs and their construction decisions impacting their futures. It is a sad fable that needs to be told often and even to adults who do not understand “latent failures”! But in this article, I want to have you think about three (3) mountains an organization
I am betting most everyone has heard the old phrase, “that’s an accident waiting to happen.” My brother (also a safety engineer) and I have pondered whether our father, who used that phrase often, influenced our career choices more than we had ever imagined. But how many safety professionals understand what this phrase is saying?
Think about it… Here are the ten (10) elements of your SMS. Of course, we want all 10 to perform in the bulls-eye, but we know safety is a continuous improvement project that takes years. Which process (Target A or Target B) is more advanced, more capable of achieving the desired results, and the one
We see it just about every day; heck, we even see it with safety people… not properly rolling, lifting, inserting, and holding their hearing protection as they insert them. But noise is a “chronic” hazard and thus far too many workplaces fail to respect it. Unfortunately, in the vast majority of projects, we have completed
How did you spend your Friday night and Saturday? Me? I spent mine helping a client manage a traumatic injury to a new employee with less than 3-weeks on the job. And like most employers, this company truly cares about their employees and honestly wants the best for their employees. This business may be the
Although it may be possible to accept that errors are neither as numerous nor as varied as they might first appear, the idea of a predictable error is a much harder one to swallow. If errors were indeed predictable, we would surely take steps to avoid them. Yet they still occur. So what is a
