This single image captures all we need to recognize about “real-world safety.”
The straight black line represents “work as imagined”; this means the work done “by the book” every time. Anyone who believes humans follow all the rules 100% of the time is living in a fantasy land. We are wired to find the easy, most efficient, and fastest way to do things. And we are quite good at doing so.
The blue line represents “work as done.” This is the real world. Our job in safety is to CLOSE THE GAP, but first, we must recognize there is a gap. Notice how the blue line changes and is erratic – this represents all the variations in our daily work schedules.
When we do catastrophic accident investigations, we can almost chart the course using the blue line and its continual fall further from the standard (i.e., the black line).
Image Credit: Dr. Todd Conklin
