• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

SafetyRisk.net

Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE
    • Slogans
      • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
      • When Slogans Don’t Work
      • CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
      • 500 OF THE BEST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
      • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
      • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
      • Safety Acronyms
      • You know Where You Can Stick Your Safety Slogans
      • Sayings, Slogans, Aphorisms and the Discourse of Simple
      • Spanish Safety Slogans – Consignas de seguridad
      • Safety Slogans List
      • Road Safety Slogans 2023
      • How to write your own safety slogans
      • Why Are Safety Slogans Important
      • Safety Slogans Don’t Save Lives
      • 40 Free Safety Slogans For the Workplace
      • Safety Slogans for Work
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • Free Hotel and Resort Risk Management Checklist
    • FREE DOWNLOADS
    • TOP 50
    • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS
    • Find a Safety Consultant
    • Free Safety Program Documents
    • Psychology Of Safety
    • Safety Ideas That Work
    • HEALTH and SAFETY MANUALS
    • FREE SAFE WORK METHOD STATEMENT RESOURCES
    • Whats New In Safety
    • FUN SAFETY STUFF
    • Health and Safety Training
    • SAFETY COURSES
    • Safety Training Needs Analysis and Matrix
    • Top 20 Safety Books
    • This Toaster Is Hot
    • Free Covid-19 Toolbox Talks
    • Download Page – Please Be Patient With Larger Files…….
    • SAFETY IMAGES, Photos, Unsafe Pictures and Funny Fails
    • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
    • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • Social Psychology Of Risk
    • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
    • Safety Psychology Terminology
    • Some Basics on Social Psychology & Risk
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk – Prof Karl E. Weick
    • The Psychology of Leadership in Risk
    • Conducting a Psychology and Culture Safety Walk
    • The Psychology of Conversion – 20 Tips to get Started
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk And Safety
    • Psychology and safety
    • The Psychology of Safety
    • Hot Toaster
    • TALKING RISK VIDEOS
    • WHAT IS SAFETY
    • THE HOT TOASTER
    • THE ZERO HARM DEBATE
    • SEMIOTICS
    • LEADERSHIP
  • Dr Long Posts
    • ALL POSTS
    • Learning Styles Matter
    • There is no Hierarchy of Controls
    • Scaffolding, Readiness and ZPD in Learning
    • What Can Safety Learn From Playschool?
    • Presentation Tips for Safety People
    • Dialogue Do’s and Don’ts
    • It’s Only a Symbol
    • Ten Cautions About Safety Checklists
    • Zero is Unethical
    • First Report on Zero Survey
    • There is No Objectivity, Deal With it!
  • THEMES
    • Risk Myths
    • Safety Myths
    • Safety Culture Silences
    • Safety Culture
    • Psychological Health and Safety
    • Zero Harm
    • Due Diligence
  • Free Learning
    • Introduction to SPoR – Free
    • FREE RISK and SAFETY EBOOKS
    • FREE ebook – Guidance for the beginning OHS professional
    • Free EBook – Effective Safety Management Systems
    • Free EBook – Lessons I Have Learnt
  • Psychological Safety
    • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
    • Managing psychosocial hazards at work
    • Psychological Safety – has it become the next Maslow’s hammer?
    • What is Psychosocial Safety
    • Psychological Safety Slogans and Quotes
    • What is Psychological Safety?
    • Understanding Psychological Terminology
    • Psycho-Social and Socio-Psychological, What’s the Difference?
    • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
    • It’s not weird – it’s a psychological safety initiative!
You are here: Home / Robert Long / Who Gives a Toss?

Who Gives a Toss?

December 15, 2017 by Dr Rob Long 2 Comments

Who Gives a Toss?

clip_image010The current cricket test is between Australia and England and they play for ‘the ashes’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ashes). I guess people in Europe, USA and non-English parts of the world would find it hard to believe that two teams can play a game that goes for 5 days and still end up in a draw. One of the most critical parts of the game is the toss. This is where on the flip of a coin, heads or tails, one gets to choose to bat or bowl. This flip of the coin allows the winner to make the best use of the conditions and we call this ‘the toss’. Whilst the turf pitch is new one can take advantage of conditions before it deteriorates after a few days. The game can be won or lost on that flip of a coin just as it was in the second test (https://www.cricket.com.au/tours/The%20Ashes%202017-18%20Australia%20England/HHRxd84OsU-rC2OzT5J5-Q).

Australians accept that winning the toss on luck is an accepted part of the game. If anyone suggested that an outcome is determined or ‘fixed’ would be cheating. It is interesting that Ed Smith who wrote the book Luck was a cricketer (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/28/luck-means-ed-smith-review ). As he states in his book, it was while he watched the coin spinning in the air that he realized just how helpless he was. He defines luck as anything that is beyond ones control. The Greeks and Romans wrote about Fortuna as a terrifying, unknowable power, greater than the gods.

Nassim Taleb (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb) in writing The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness also discusses the realities of luck and limits of control in the economic world. Indeed, in his book Antifragility Taleb shows how fear and risk aversion creates new problems, new risks, new by-products and trade-offs in mechanistic efforts at control. He argues in The Bed of Procrustes that all binary constructs manufacture the ‘wrong map of reality’ that create a blindness to volatility and fragility.

Of course this is not the view of Safety that speaks the nonsense of ‘all accidents are preventable’ and ‘safety is a choice you make’. Such language can only have a trajectory of blindness to volatility. The more Safety counts TRIFR rates and statistics the more it believes it has everything under control. Indeed, the favourite word in safety is the word ‘control’.

There is another meaning to the word ‘toss’ than the flip of a coin and it’s a derogatory term in Australia for people who talk nonsense or do the wrong thing. When one is called ‘a tosser’ in Australia one has been significantly insulted. Such language has been used recently by the NSW Government to try and influence people not to litter. See the examples below:

clip_image002

clip_image004

clip_image006

clip_image008

 

Unfortunately, like the ‘bloody idiot’ campaign this approach doesn’t work (https://safetyrisk.net/its-projection-you-bloody-idiot/, https://safetyrisk.net/whose-the-bloody-idiot/). The semantics of insult and deficit rarely work.

Unfortunately, safety crusaders are often identified in Australia as ‘tossers’ (https://safetyrisk.net/beware-the-tossers-from-the-office/). The fixation on petty risk, counting injuries, filling out checklists and collecting paperwork that no one ever uses or discusses helps create such an identity. For a worker this is also reinforced by nonsense language that denies luck and reinforces blame. This is the language of ‘all accidents are preventable’ and ‘safety is a choice you make’.

Moreso the language of zero harm, zero harm managers, zero harm meetings and zero harm reports tells workers that the company is all about numbers not people. There can be no tolerance for mistakes in zero. There can be no luck in zero. Anything that happens is under the control of the worker, there can’t be any such thing as luck. When a fallible worker, in a fallible organization, in a fallible world undertakes a task with uncertainty (risk), there can be no toss! So Good Luck to The Luck Deniers (https://safetyrisk.net/good-luck-to-the-luck-deniers/). Even your body state changes your world (http://www.bps.org.uk/news-and-policy/imagining-bodily-states-feeling-full-can-affect-our-future-preferences-and-behaviour).

  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
  • More about Rob
Dr Rob Long

Dr Rob Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions
Dr Rob Long

Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)

  • Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual) - January 23, 2023
  • Getting the Balance Right in Tackling Risk - January 23, 2023
  • What is SPoR? - January 23, 2023
  • How Bias Inhibits Learning in Safety - January 23, 2023
  • Afraid to Let Go of What Doesn’t Work in Safety - January 17, 2023
Dr Rob Long
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.

Please share our posts

  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Robert Long, Social Psychology of Risk, Zero Harm Tagged With: luck, Zero Harm

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Rob Long says

    September 22, 2021 at 12:32 PM

    Thanks Andrew.

    Reply
  2. Andrew Böber says

    September 21, 2021 at 9:29 PM

    Great post. Well set out and very informative

    Reply

Do you have any thoughts? Please share them below Cancel reply

Primary Sidebar

Search and Discover More on this Site

Never miss a post - Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,495 other subscribers

Introduction to SPOR – FREE!!

SAFETY MYTHS SERIES

The Mythic Symbology of Safety

Posture Myths and Holistic Ergonomics

Safety Mythbusters

Don’t Be Emotional! Another Safety Myth

Tackling the Challenge of Heuristics in Safety

The Myth of Normal

NEW! Free Download

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

Recent Comments

  • Rob long on Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)
  • Matt Thorne on Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)
  • Anonymous on Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)
  • Jason on How Bias Inhibits Learning in Safety
  • Rob Long on How Bias Inhibits Learning in Safety
  • Admin on How Bias Inhibits Learning in Safety
  • Rob Long on 400,000 Free Downloads
  • Gustavo Saralegui on 400,000 Free Downloads
  • Rob long on To Err is Human, You Better Believe It
  • Wynand on To Err is Human, You Better Believe It
  • Rob Long on To Err is Human, You Better Believe It
  • simon cassin on To Err is Human, You Better Believe It
  • Rob Long on Records of safety activities: evidence of safety or non-compliance?
  • Matt Thorne on Free Online Workshops
  • Rob long on No Good Reason to Follow Reason
  • Brian Edwin Darlington on No Good Reason to Follow Reason
  • Risk Diversity on Book Launch – For the Love of Zero – in Portuguese
  • Rob Long on No Good Reason to Follow Reason
  • Risk Culture Builder on No Good Reason to Follow Reason
  • Mark Taylor on All Things Must Pass in Risk

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Footer

VIRAL POST – The Risk Matrix Myth

Top Posts & Pages. Sad that most are so dumb but this is what safety luves

  • Free Safety Moments and Toolbox Talk Examples, Tips and Resources
  • Road Safety Slogans 2023
  • 500 OF THE BEST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
  • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)
  • How Bias Inhibits Learning in Safety
  • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
  • Safety Acronyms
  • 15 Safety Precautions When Working With Electricity
  • What is SPoR?

Recent Posts

  • Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)
  • Getting the Balance Right in Tackling Risk
  • What is SPoR?
  • How Bias Inhibits Learning in Safety
  • Afraid to Let Go of What Doesn’t Work in Safety
  • When You Don’t Know What to do in Safety, Have Another Blitz!!!
  • Gloves and Glasses Compliance
  • A Case of Desensitisation – What Would You Do?
  • How to Leave the Safety Industry
  • The Mythic Symbology of Safety
  • Dark Waters, The True Story of DuPont and Zero
  • 400,000 Free Downloads
  • Am I stupid? I didn’t think of that…
  • Don’t Look Now Safety, Your Metaphor is Showing
  • Ratio Delusions and Heinrich’s Hoax
  • To Err is Human, You Better Believe It
  • Culture as a Wicked Problem, for Safety
  • Safety Leadership Training
  • Cultural Orientation in Risk
  • The Stanford Experiment and The Social Psychology of Risk
  • Objectivity, Audits and Attribution When Calculating Risk
  • Records of safety activities: evidence of safety or non-compliance?
  • Zero, The Seeking of Infinity
  • Safety Leadership Essentials
  • What Can Indiana Jones Tell Us About Culture
  • Safety as a Worldview
  • The Loathing of Limits
  • Culture Cannot be Framed Through Safety
  • Free Online Workshops
  • Safety Culture–Hudson’s Model
  • Book Launch – For the Love of Zero – in Portuguese
  • Advancing Backwards in Safety
  • The ‘Noise’ of Safety, Silence and Practicing of Mindfulness
  • All Things Must Pass in Risk
  • I’m just not that into safety anymore
  • Sticks and Stones and the Nonsense of Zero Harm
  • Courting Infallibility in Safety
  • Indicators of Risk
  • What Can Safety Learn From Playschool?
  • No Good Reason to Follow Reason
  • Just as Well Culture Doesn’t Listen to Safety
  • What Are the Benefits Of Social Psychology of Risk?
  • Short-Sighted Lenses by Safety
  • Is Safety the Empire of Non-Sense?
  • No Wonder Safety is Confused About Culture
  • Building High Performance Safety Cultures
  • Understanding iCue, a Visual, Verbal, Semiotic Method for Tackling Risk
  • On Culture and Safety
  • Focus on ‘Meeting’ people, not legislation – a path to risk maturity
  • The Moral Harm of the Zero Cult

VIRAL POST!!! HOW TO QUIT THE SAFETY INDUSTRY

FEATURED POSTS

What is a Safety and Risk ‘Thinking Group’?

A Masters Degree in ‘Tick and Flick’

A Professional Ethic of Risk

A Parallel Universe in Safety

The Challenging Psychology of Ergonomics

Human Dymensions Newsletter September 2016

Free Poster–What is Safety

Study at The Centre for Leadership and Learning in Risk

Reality vs Theory, The Binary Divide

Human Dymensions Newsletter–Feb 14

Suffering – Sometimes There Is No Reason

Safety and the Spin of Disruption

Binary Opposites and Safety Goal Strategy

Failure Must be an Option

Brain-Centredness and Occular-Centredness in Risk

Risky Conversations Book Launch in Perth

The Tension of Opposites and Binaries in Risk

I’m Concerned That We Can’t See The Safety Forest For The Safety Trees

Free Online Workshops

Non-Binary Decision Making in Risk

Fooled by Certainty

How is the unconscious in communication critical for understanding and managing risk?

The Reason Safety Has Gone So Crazy

Holistic Well Being in Risk Differently

The Seduction of Measurement in Risk and Safety

Risk as a ‘Leap of Faith’

The Emperor has no Clothes – Beyond Behaviour-Based Safety

Safety is not Just a Choice

Investigations and Heuristics

Sayings, Slogans, Aphorisms and the Discourse of Simple

Humanising Leadership in Risk, Shifting the Focus from Objects to Persons

What Are the Benefits Of Social Psychology of Risk?

Seven Essential Safety Reminders

The Domino Myth in Safety

Expecting the Unexpected

Understanding Safety as an Archetype

Psycho-Social and Socio-Psychological, What’s the Difference?

Perfectionism in Safety and the Denial of Humanity

A Poetics of Safety

Social Psychology of Risk Two Day Workshop

More Posts from this Category

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,495 other subscribers

How we pay for the high cost of running of this site – try it for free on your site

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY?

What is Psychological Safety at Work?