Whenever you read assertions like this in safety you know that what follows is NOT science but marketing. Just because Safety uses the rhetoric of ‘science’ doesn’t mean what follows is scientific.
Most of what we read in this kind of rhetoric is marketing and spin. Great for selling the next fad in safety entertainment but there is no innovation, nothing creative, no learning and certainly nothing ’different’. The push is the same: systems, productivity, performance, outcomes and measurement.
It’s not difficult to undertake a simple discourse analysis (https://safetyrisk.net/discourse-analysis-safety-alerts-and-safety-boards/). It’s not that difficult to analyse the text for what is said and NOT said. Look at the language about learning and see if there is any discussion of persons, movement, ethics or power. Of course, it’s not there. The last thing Safety wants to discuss is it’s addiction to its own political power. When you read about learning in HOP, it’s always about learning for other people. HOP doesn’t need to learn, it has its 5 declared ‘truths’.
I read the book Better Questions, An Applied Approach to Operational Learning and it contains nothing about affective questioning or learning in risk. Just more of ‘Declaring What is, By What isn’t’ (https://safetyrisk.net/declaring-what-is-by-what-isnt-hop-as-traditional-safety/). If you want to learn about effective questioning and investigations perhaps start here instead: https://safetyrisk.net/questioning-skills-and-investigations/
If you are going to discuss better questions in safety you would think there might be something on effective questioning skills or what learning is.
Effective questioning is NOT about understanding and stopping blame but about an ethical reorientation to persons, moral meaning and change in disposition. Effective questioning is not about changing Technique (Ellul) but about movement in one’s ethic (ethos). Effective questioning doesn’t start by observing what happens on the workshop floor but by looking inside oneself. If the power remains in Safety, then the questions will not be ‘better’.
Unfortunately, Safety doesn’t discuss the need for change in itself, it’s always about changing others. This is the culture of traditional safety.
In Safety there is rarely discussion of an ethic of power or any contemplation of the need for a shift in power away from itself. Power remains with the authority in Safety and the focus is performance of others. This is the culture of HOP. How are others performing in safety, let me tell you!
You read so much in traditional safety about learning but it is not defined and means little more than knowledge of content, a shift in ideas and data. Contrary to the assertions of Conklin, learning is NOT the product of feedback (p.26). Again, the model of power remains with the authority of Safety. The one in power then puts the focus on ‘outcomes’ (used 25 times) and ‘performance’ (used 35 times) in the book, just more traditional safety. A discussion of an ethic of learning appears nowhere, the power remains in Safety. There is no discussion of an ethic of care, essential for effective questioning, the power remains in Safety. There is no discussion of an ethic of helping, the power remains in Safety.
When safety is about what we do to and for ‘others’, its just more traditional safety, packaged in different rhetoric.
Most often, those in safety proclaiming knowledge about learning, have no expertise in learning. This is traditional safety culture, where we get engineers to conduct training in learning and ethics with no expertise in either (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-the-expert-in-everything-and-the-art-of-learning-nothing/).
Most of the language of ‘learning’ in HOP is NOT about learning but training (https://safetyrisk.net/what-theory-of-learning-is-embedded-in-your-investigation-methodology/). Learning is not defined in HOP, much like the so-called ‘truths’ of HOP. Assumptions and assertions are not definition, just as declaring some principle a ‘truth’ doesn’t make it so. However, in an uncritical industry like safety, it’s perfect marketing.
If learning is NOT embodied, its NOT learning (https://safetyrisk.net/embodied-learning-in-risk/).
I heard some safety people talking to each other recently about a workshop they attended and they used the word ‘learning’ in their discussion. What they were really talking about was entertainment.
- Ideas and entertainment are NOT learning.
- Getting some kind of warm buzz from being entertained, is NOT learning.
- Information is not learning.
- Marketing rhetoric is not learning.
- Repeating accepted common safety language is not learning.
- Being told you are learning is not learning.
Yet, the word ‘learning’ is regurgitated over and over just like Safety regurgitates the word ‘professional’. The repetition of a word doesn’t make it so.
Where is the priority on ethics in safety that makes it essential to being known as a ‘professional’? and don’t tell me that amateurish AIHS BoK Chapter on ethics (https://safetyrisk.net/the-aihs-bok-and-ethics-check-your-gut/) is professional. Where is the philosophy of learning or declared ontology essential to understand learning? Look at the discourse: When the word ‘determined’ is used, who does the determining? When the word ‘start’ is used, who does the starting? When the word ‘build’ gets used, who does the building? When the idea of ‘tracking’ is used, who does the tracking? Safety, of course!
- Unless there is movement and change in safety, then you’ve just been entertained and given a few ‘ideas’.
- Unless there is a move in methodology and method, there has been no learning.
- Unless there is a cultural shift, there has been no learning.
- If the power remains situated in Safety, there has been no learning, there will be no ‘better’ questions.
And when one fad fades, safety looks for a new entertainment angle because it doesn’t know its methodology and has no new method. This is how we end up with all these new brands like SD, NV, S2, RE, HOP seeking a methodology and when the fad fades wander back to the next package of rhetoric but return to the same systems, same dynamic and the same focus on performance.
There is an positive and constructive, practical alternative that is like none of this and you can find out about it here: https://safetyrisk.net/free-introduction-to-spor-methods-2/
Dr Rob Long
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