Collected by @reinh.
The Safety Anarchist by Sidney Dekker
Dekker, S. (2017). The Safety Anarchist: Relying on Human Expertise and Innovation, Reducing Bureaucracy and Compliance. United Kingdom: CRC Press.
- First, stories appeal to people’s moral intuition or system 1’s ‘fast’ thinking. Stories can inspire action. As in: “Wow, that’s bad (or really good). I had no idea. We have to do something about this!” A leadership group that is told an incident story will more likely want to do something about it.
- Second, statistics can be mentioned, but stories are told and re-told. This can obviously change them (for better or for worse), but our memories have evolved to favor narratives and storylines. This can help keep a discussion about a particular safety issue alive in an organization in a way that a number cannot.
- Third, stories offer the leverage points for such action; statistics don’t. Also, a story has a substance and richness that offers mooring points. You can connect to things in the story: a procedure that didn’t seem to apply well, a piece of technology that didn’t work the way it was supposed to, indications about process that were unclear or went unnoticed. Stories also contain the assessments and actions of people that are in turn connected to these things. These are all starting points for doing something, for changing something.
- Fourth, think about the message you send when you discuss a particular case, when you discuss an incident that happened in your organization and that affected real people. What you tell the rest of the organization is that you value people, that you care about the persons you employ. You are not simply worried about a statistic, about how it makes you look good or bad. You have stopped worshipping a particular target or number. (p. 292)