All this talk about giving workers their freedom at
work, about allowing for self motivated decision making, about permitting
looseness, about letting go of rules and systems and ignoring the old ways is
fanciful on the pretext that workers will not do good with all this liberty and
relaxing of constraints and it will also add to the confusion; more freedom,
more choice, more choice, more chance to make wrong choice, more blame, more
fault. As dehumanising as it might seem, it is actually collectively humanising
us to be exactly how “those” want us to be.
The organisation is different from self governing
employment; a group cannot operate in a social system run without control/rules.
Egos must be controlled in the presence of others. Let me just say that in the
practice of safety, just like in all things that comprise civilisation, there are
all these things ordered onto us that are derived from negative results that grant
us an improved form of collective moral virtue and order that are for the
benefit and greater good of our existence as a societal creature. Teams work
better when they act in the same manner and within constraints, just as untouched
nature does. Even a single predator keeps a rule; do not kill off your host!
Let me also say that if we do allow for such small
deviations of loosening up, of relaxing rules that continue to creep into the
nature of order itself; that which gives us some sense out of chaos, then even those
newly set parameters will be tested and pushed into further and worse deviations
by nature of man I.e. allowing for a relax on speed from 100kph to 110kph will
still attract the same amount of deviations, you will have the same amount of
speeding fines as those who once sped at 110kph in a 100kph zone will now do
120kph in the 110kph zone, you may even have the same amount of incidents but
the consequences will be worse. Constraints are already tested with looseness
(and lucky for most there is a safety factor included in this process) and when
they are tested, there is more of a chance for things to go wrong. So what then
results is a greater negative outcome/trade-off that goes even further away
from the original sense based fulcrum point (by this I mean the rule). The more
loosening of the rope (the task at that current point to of time) from fulcrum
to bob, the wider the reach and the bigger the pendulum sway area. By this I
mean, more chance of floating unknown risks being caught and a knot formed that
will alter its smooth sway. It is best to keep the rope tight, the rules
governed, and system neat. Too much freedom in our current immature state of
being (by this I mean collective naivety and stupidity) causes greater chaos. We humans simply do not do the right thing
most of the time, and giving freedom will cause negative effects on the long
term goal of the governing body (society, organisation, family unit etc) i.e.
society needs control, the organisation need a goal and even the family needs a
goal.
I have made a quick drawing to show my concept. Simply
put, the more looseness that is accepted, the further out the risk bob goes,
and the more area where risk will be collected in its sway between point A and
point B (start and finish of task). By allowing for looseness to grow/expand,
the bigger the chance for unknown risk to be activated. In my concept there are
an unknown quantity of risks that are unknown (cannot ever be thought of) in
every single step within a single task. I would say that there would be at
least a factor of 10x for every known risk in every step in every task. I.e.
taking the cake to the oven (one step) might have 3 known risks 1) drop 2) burn
3) slip, so in this case there will be at least another 30 potential
uncertainties (grey areas, unknowns) that are floating around just waiting to
be activated by randomness. It falls in line of the old “who would have thought
of that happening” comments after an incident has occurred. I would say that
the unknown risks would look like something like the universe and be infinite
with endless possibilities the longer the looseness and the more possibilities could
be activated, it is only by keeping a relatively tight reign within governing
constraints that we can keep the many unknown risks out of the pathway swing from
point A to B. I will improve on this novel concept in more detail at a later
date.