Risk Culture and Cultural Risk When the risk and safety industry defines culture it doesn’t consider critical aspects of culture. The most common definition is that culture is ‘what we do around here’ which fits in nicely with the behaviourist-cognitivist worldview that dominates the sector. So people in the risk industry role up to training […]
Safety Culture
Enculturing Safety
Enculturing Safety 30 July Speaking at a rally in Washington DC on 2011 Matt Damon stated: “As I look at my life today, the things I value the most about myself are my imagination, the love of acting, my passion for writing, my love of learning, my curiosity – all come from how I was […]
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Organisational culture
Organisational culture See the mice in their million hordes from Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads David Bowie 1 Safety culture like many soft system change management elements is somewhat vague and subject to definitional dilemma. It is often envisaged as a predictable and concrete entity that is easily managed and measured in isolation using psychometric […]
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Canada Culture Workshops Vancouver and Calgary November 2018
Canada Culture Workshops Vancouver and Calgary November 2018 The mis-definition of culture as either: systems, behaviours or leadership causes so many problems for people and organisations in their journey in risk and safety. Then leaders wonder why they find it so challenging to influence change in culture because of all of the critical factors […]
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Regulation Madness
Regulation Madness I saw the Conference topic ‘Regulating Workplace Culture’ and thought, you can’t make up such bat crazy stuff. In what universe of sensible thought could one possibly think that culture can be regulated. You might as well assert that one can regulate the weather and clouds. Culture is best understood semiotically or as […]
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WHS Legislation is NOT about Safety it’s about Culture
WHS Legislation is NOT about Safety it’s about Culture. I asked a couple of managers the other day what they thought the WHS legislation was about. You see, my client had asked me to make sure that their managers knew of their legal compliance obligations – a fairly typical request often from senior management. So, […]
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Building Cultural Maturity in Safety and Risk
Building Cultural Maturity in Safety and Risk Introduction – The Culture Paradox Culture represents a paradox for many organisations. While most people can readily comment on it (it’s good/bad, supportive/toxic, weak/strong), few can meaningfully define it. Common attempts tend to be vague and focus on culture as behaviour (“Culture is the way we do things […]
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By What Method?
By What Method? One of the strange beliefs of Safety is that the publication of injury statistics invokes change? Ah, how does it do that? Since when did information become motivation? When one looks at the many promises made in the safety industry and all the propaganda about zero, injury reduction etc. there are three […]
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No Hope for Safety
No Hope for Safety One of the fascinating things about culture in safety is an extraordinary satisfaction with a lack of definition and a phenomenal acceptance of assumptions about critical issues. For example, you won’t find discussion anywhere in safety about the nature of Hope, nor the nature of Faith for that matter. This is […]
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Safety Surveying What You Already Know
Safety Surveying What You Already Know I received a post this week from someone who had conducted the typical orthodox safety survey. There are many such surveys on the market, all infused with STEM-only assumptions about materialist-rationalist safety. As I looked through the survey results and analysis there was nothing stated or measured that organisations […]
