Are You Doing the Take 5 Tango?
Nothing is more dangerous for safety than the ‘Tick and Flick Tango’.
The Tick and Flick Tango (TaFT) is performed by ticking and signing a safety document without thinking. The TaFT is best performed using a Take 5. When doing a Take 5 TaFT no-one’s mind is engaged and no thinking takes place.
The Take 5 TaFT is a sexy dance originating in the country of DuPont, that wonderful jurisdiction for fake curves and zero vision (https://safetyrisk.net/dark-waters-the-true-story-of-dupont-and-zero/ ).
Performing a Take 5 TaFT is a guarantee of nothing, even the courts know that. Paper safety is not an assurance of anything (https://safetyrisk.net/the-template-trap-and-paper-safety/ ). The courts even have a name for the phenomenon of paper safety (https://safetyrisk.net/paper-safe/ ) and called it ‘paper systems’. What does this mean? The cosmetics of paperwork are in place but they don’t work!
As Greg Smith states, the Take 5 TaFT simply builds a database demonstrating a lack of due diligence (https://vimeo.com/162034157 ).
The strange thing about many of the tools that have been developed for safety is that they don’t take into account the nature of fallible personhood. They don’t work (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/it-works-a-new-approach-to-risk-and-safety/ ).
The Take 5 TaFT looks sexy but has no substance. The Take 5 TaFT looks good but doesn’t work indeed, it creates more legal liability than it solves.
Whenever implementing a Take 5 TaFT one needs to consider: redundancy, repetition, habit, desensitization or psychological fatigue. Unfortunately, Safety considers none of this, a critical element of performing the Take 5 TaFT. Nothing is more dangerous than the façade of safety.
The most important thing to ensure against ‘tick and flick’ is not to lock a checklist or form in place. All forms and processes have a very limited shelf life. The trouble is once one has put in place a Take 5 TaFT, it becomes a political game. Systems are not neutral or objective but are fallible just like the humans who ‘use’ them. Most systems, curves, cubes, pyramids and safety tools are infused with political power so much so, questioning their efficacy is deemed anti-safety. Such are the delusions of the Take 5 TaFT.
Humans don’t serve systems, systems serve humans.
Whatever processes are developed, the worse thing to do is lock them in place and give them political weight. There are other dances that the Take 5 TaFT, that actually work.
The politicisation of any process ensures that nothing changes in safety.
If anything, the best safety systems are those that are: open, flexible, adjustable, aid learning and can be jettisoned/replaced with ease. This is why Safety needs to be far more considered when it locks mantras and models in place that cannot move with reality. It’s time to stop the dance and get a new tune.
This is how the Heinrich Hoodoo (https://safetyrisk.net/ration-delusions-and-heinrichs-hoax/ ) maintains its presence in an industry that is bogged down in paperwork and metrics. This is what happens when you introduce the Take 5 TaFT.
Dr Rob Long
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