The obsession of Safety with ‘performance’ and measuring ‘performance’ is not really what performance is about.
What is ‘safety performance’?
If I’m alive at the end of the day, is that good ‘safety performance’?
The best way to understand what performance is about is through a reading of Elam (Semiotics of Drama and Theatre (https://archive.org/details/semioticsoftheat0000elam). I have written previously about the meaning of ‘performance’ here: https://safetyrisk.net/what-do-you-mean-by-performance/
The root of the word ‘performance’ goes back to the 1300s meaning simply ‘to do, to accomplish, to carry out and finish’. It has now transitioned through obsession in the business word and safety industry to anchor to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and measures of performance. The assumptions of measurement ideology is based on the philosophy of Technique (Ellul) and the myths of efficiency.
The crazy thing is, that safety cannot be measured, neither can risk.
It’s all subjective, which is why the Act and Regulation uses language of ‘As Low As Reasonable Practicable’ (ALARP). When we read language like ‘safety performance’ we are simply reading about an obsession with measurement NOT how people act. When you see such language, regardless of the marketing, you are witnessing the work of traditional safety. Throwing the word ‘innovation’ about, anchored to the discourse of ‘performance’ is nonsense.
The obsession with ‘safety performance’ leads to a tyranny in metrics (https://safetyrisk.net/the-tyranny-of-metrics/) as if injury rates are a measure of something other than injuries. There is no link between causation and injury correlation, this is simply Fundamental Attribution Error (https://safetyrisk.net/risk-safety-and-fundamental-attribution-error/ ).
Injury rates are not a measure of safety but more a measure of measurement ideology bias. Safety is at best a temporary outcome and an enactment of faith. This is why the discourse of zero is nonsense. The moment one expects zero from fallible people in fallible systems, one has entered a discourse of faith. This is why DuPont asks Safety to ‘believe the impossible’ (https://safetyrisk.net/believe-the-impossible-and-speak-nonsense-to-people/ ).
Any words or measures would devalue what was performed.
The only way to really respond to Tommy’s performance was with happiness, joy, delight, mystery and ecstasy.
Many brought their guitars to the performance and after the show, Tommy generously signed them. How I wish I had thought of that. Many testify to Tommy as a humble person and, many give testimony to his faith and will to help others.
As a guitar player with nearly 60 years of experience and many years of performance myself, I could only admire and wonder at all I saw and heard.
Any effort to ‘measure’ or ‘count’ what Tommy did would have wrecked the night. What he did was beyond measure, beyond metrics. There is nothing more amazing than Tommy playing classical gas (https://youtu.be/S33tWZqXhnk?si=yJYHp4I9OojvEiJu). Indeed, one of the best guitar teachers in the world has a video (https://youtu.be/GwyXNZZei6E?si=_INKdIAUBRxVkQou) where he tries to assess this performance of Classical gas and at one point stops to talk about one chord progression in the performance and, using Gladwell’s framework of 10,000 hours, confesses that just that one chord progression represents 30,000 of practice!
In some ways, this chord progression for any guitarist is ‘impossible’. Tommy, holds his thumb in one position as if nailed into place whilst the rest of his fingers shift up and down seven frets.
If you didn’t know about guitar, you would know what this represents just as if you don’t know about piano, you won’t know who Andrea Lam is. Andrea first ‘performed’ with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the age of 11!
Someone asked me the next day what I thought of Tommy’s performance and I responded, ‘no words’!
Some things are immeasurable. And, we need not worry about it.
Do you put a score on your parenting? On your marriage? I hope not.
One of the great anxieties of risk and safety (https://safetyrisk.net/measurement-anxiety-in-safety/ ) is created by trying to measure the immeasurable.
If you look at all the semiotics Safety has created to try and measure risk and safety, such as the risk matrix, Heinrich’s pyramid etc, none of it measures anything! It’s all attribution.
You can’t give performance in safety a score! To do so is a subjective judgement based upon a delusion that safety can be measured (https://safetyrisk.net/the-seduction-of-measurement-in-risk-and-safety/). How good was safety today? What kind of question is that?
Unfortunately, in safety, value is determined by what can be measured yet, the things that should be valued can’t be measured eg. trust, care, helping. Indeed, values of trust, care and helping are devalued by trying to measure performance.
In SPoR, we don’t use the language of ‘performance’ when we talk about tackling risk because we know it’s an artificial measure that says nothing about persons, context, culture, helping, community, trust, care or how humans make decisions. We know that safety is a ‘wicked problem’ and that measures are artificial and meaningless.
When we do any observations and helping in SPoR on site, we always throw to the person doing the work and ask them how they think they are doing? When one approaches risk and safety through a disposition of helping, projecting subjective measures onto others as if there are ‘objective measures of performance’, is meaningless and helps no-one.
In SPoR, we view helping others tackle risk in a role of facilitation, much like a mid-wife helping someone give birth. The skill in helping, caring and facilitation are for the other as they speak of their enactments, decision making and thinking. We don’t think the role of a safety person is to control safety indeed, you can’t.
I find it so amusing when I see safety people get sacked because there was an incident on site. There seems no bigger revolving door, that the door in and out of Safety.
There are no objective measures of performance in how someone tackles risk! Get over it.
Moreso, if you enact such a delusion, how do you go when such false measures are applied to you!
So, any time you are harmed, physically, socially or psychologically, have you failed in safety performance?
By what measure have you assed such a judgement?
And what does that judgement do to you, others, your community and the organisation? What are the by-products of such judgements and how do they foster a culture of trust, helping and care? And when the numbers do come out, what interpretations are made of those numbers? And, what do those projections do to enhance safety?
I’d love someone to explain how the publication of injury rates motivates anyone to do better tackle risk.
I’d love to hear how all this excessive language of ‘safety performance’ inspires anyone to better tackle risk.
Always happy to hear a sense-able response.
Prof. Robert Long
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