Safety Beyond the Binaries

Whenever we tackle a phenomenon so apparently large and complex as a human organisation, we inevitably run into boundary problems. – Karl Weick The Social Psychology of Organising. (p.27)

One of the rude shocks in being forced back on Linkedin is just how much is binary it is. It seems every post is: black and white, S1 vs S2, old vs new, good vs bad, blame vs no blame or fast vs slow. It’s Mind numbing.

The trouble is, the real world is not like this, the real world is messy, diverse, ambiguous and wicked. The reality is that risk is in the in-between, between certainty and uncertainty. In SPoR we would say, we exist in the hyphen, in the dialectic between i-thou. Whilst this may make people uncomfortable, it is much better to live in reality than a concocted delusion.

The next step is to learn how to live in the in-between, how to tackle the nature of uncertainty and risk. Richardson (The End of Binaries) helps tackle such a reality.

The binary worldview is a constructed worldview, usually concocted to keep life simple and comfort those who lack the skills to live in and about uncertainty. The trouble is, it is not just a delusional worldview but a dangerous worldview. It is a worldview that lives in the extremes for example, in HOP we have this silly extremist and unethical slogan ‘blame fixes nothing’. Only a fool with no expertise in ethics or moral meaning would invent such a slogan. The reality is much more complex (https://safetyrisk.net/the-meaning-of-blame-thinking-beyond-the-spin-and-slogans/).

But this is the attraction of slogans to safety (not principles). It seems safety would like an untrue narrative that face up to the reality that blame-praise is a wicked problem. We see this exemplified in all the religions that try to tackle the problem of fallibility and blame. But in HOP, its much better not to research the complexities of this, it’s much easier to make money from slogans. This is the safety way. But, having raised the issue of religion we all know there are those who are theists, those who are atheists and those who are in-between and agnostic. We see exactly the same challenge with sexuality and those who identify as non-binary.

We see from the quote at the start from Weick, that anything that involves human organisation runs into boundary problems. Once we identify that we are in a wicked problem (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-investigations-are-they-vuca-bani-or-wicked/) we realise that we need to transcend and transverse disciplinary lines (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332667542_Design_principles_for_addressing_wicked_problems_through_boundary_crossing_in_higher_professional_education). In SPoR, this is known as Transdisciplinarity. In Transdisciplinarity, we leave the boundary of our own discipline and enter into conversation with disciplines that are unknown and challenging for us. We then enter into the dialectic where learning happens best.

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Prof. Robert Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions

Latest posts by Prof. Robert Long (see all)

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PhD., MEd., MOH., BEd., BTh., Dip T., Dip Min., Cert IV TAA, MRMIA Rob is the founder of Human Dymensions and has extensive experience, qualifications and expertise across a range of sectors including government, education, corporate, industry and community sectors over 30 years. Rob has worked at all levels of the education and training sector including serving on various post graduate executive, post graduate supervision, post graduate course design and implementation programs.