| As is often the
case, this month’s TBD was formed while
thinking about what seemed like a completely unrelated
topic. I finally got around to watching the documentary
film Bowling for Columbine the other
night. I had put it off because I expected it
to be depressing and accusatory in some way. Basically,
I didn’t expect it to be fun or very interesting.
It turned out to be very engaging and quite interesting
— I recommend it.
One of the main questions posed by the film is
why America seems to have so much trouble with
guns and violent homicides while other similar
countries do not. The most striking comparison
was between a city in Canada and one in the United
States (Windsor and Detroit, I believe). In many
ways, they appear to be sister cities, separated
only by a bridge and an international border.
The U.S. city is larger, but not enough to have
a significant impact on the numbers of gun-related
homicides. The two cities are so close together
that they create a single metropolitan region,
yet the U.S. city has a homicide rate more than
two orders of magnitude larger than its Canadian
sister. Obviously, something is very different.
The differences are not just between these two
cities, but continue to exist between the two
countries on just about whatever scale is being
investigated.
The number of guns owned by Canadians is not significantly
different from that owned by Americans. The Canadians
are very outdoors and hunting oriented, having
many hunting weapons. There may be differences
in the types of guns (i.e., rifles versus handguns);
the film didn’t go into that level of detail.
It appears that, whatever the important differences
are between the two countries, those differences
might not be as simple as gun ownership.
In one of the most interesting sequences in the
film, the commentator asked Canadians in the large
and very metropolitan city about their practices
regarding locking their doors. They all had the
same answer — they don’t lock them!
The commentator checked this out by walking up
to homes and opening the doors. Sure enough, they
weren’t locked — and he didn’t
get shot for his actions. The behavior of leaving
the doors unlocked didn’t appear to depend
upon whether or not the homeowners had been burglarized
in the past. Even if they had had that experience,
they continued to leave their doors open. I am
not positive about how many Americans, especially
in cities such as Detroit, lock their doors, but
I suspect it is a very high number. I know that
when I was a contractor working in people’s
homes, it was not unusual for the homeowners to
follow me around and lock the doors behind me
whenever I went in or out of the house. It was
a big pain in the neck to have to work this way,
but they didn’t want the doors ever to be
unlocked.
The film ended with the proposition that the primary
difference between the two countries is fear.
It proposed that, for some reason, Americans are
more fearful of their neighbors and other people
than in many other, similar, countries. I wonder
if that’s true. I don’t feel very
fearful, but maybe I’m the exception rather
than the rule.
A few days after watching the film, I was informed
that one of my larger clients is embarking upon
a process intended to change the "safety
culture" of their company. My first question
was, "What is the safety culture of this
company now, before it is changed?" I also
began to wonder what it should be changed to.
I think I agree with the idea of changing the
culture for this company, and for almost all of
the companies that I have worked for over the
past couple of decades. In fact, it seems like
it’s time for a global change in the safety
culture. But I’m not sure just what that
means.
Over the years, I have noticed (and worried about)
the ubiquity of the approach that a goal is to
minimize the amount of safety associated with
a project. There seems to be a constant battle
between the safety experts and the rest of the
project team whereby the design team is always
trying to find ways to minimize safety. Not that
anyone is trying to make the product more dangerous.
Rather, I think that they feel it’s their
duty to meet just the minimum safety requirements,
under the belief that anything beyond the minimum
is unnecessary and simply adds costs. If these
minimum requirements are not explicit legal requirements,
then they become defined by the minimum that the
safety experts will stand for. Thus, there comes
a series of battles whereby designers "hide"
safety information and known hazards so that the
safety expert doesn’t know of the problem.
For some reason, it’s assumed that if the
safety expert doesn’t know about a problem,
it’s therefore acceptable. Hiding information
(or, more generously, not bringing it to the attention
of the safety expert) is very effective in minimizing
the number of safety requirements that get created.
There is also a tendency to rush through the design
and testing processes without adequate safety
review. Creation of a nearly finished design prior
to adequate safety evaluation results in the design
becoming "cast in concrete" so that
it’s too expensive to change. This forces
the project to depend upon warning labels and
safety procedures rather than safety by design.
It seems to me that the problem with the safety
culture has something to do with the approach
of the design team trying to do the minimum that
they can get away with, while the safety team
plays the role of policeman trying to catch the
designers to enforce rules and requirements. Maybe
the problem with the "culture" is associated
with the approach of the safety expert being the
enforcer (policeman).
I believe that the proper approach is to design
as much safety into products as is practical,
rather than minimize it to the least level of
acceptability. The switch in approach might not
actually end up making significant differences
in what is done, but then again it might. It would
at least make the job of being the safety expert
more enjoyable. I have always been convinced that
an early, proactive approach to safety results
in vastly superior products and systems, at a
reduced cost. Putting off safety efforts until
the last possible minute results in an overall
program cost that is much higher than would be
the case if the teams worked together throughout
the design and development cycle to include as
much safety as they can into the project.
What this means is that all members of the team
need to work together to achieve the highest level
of safety as is practical within the constraints
of time, cost, practicality and the other concerns.
The safety expert needs to be in the role of consultant
and expert resource rather than rule maker and
policeman. I believe that this change in point
of view is a critical aspect of the required cultural
change.
I also believe that the required change is bigger
than just what is required for safety. The cultural
change I’m talking about is related to the
problems identified in Bowling for Columbine.
I am not convinced that the difference between
Canada and the United States is fear; I think
it’s more closely related to the problems
that we see in the safety culture within American
industry. I think Americans have developed a feeling
of separateness rather than of unity. We habitually
interact in a way that pushes against others rather
than embraces them. It isn’t so much fear
that causes these pressures, but a feeling that
our responsibility is to do the least that we
can, and that we are to be as self-sufficient
as we can. Allowing others to assist us is seen
as a sign of weakness and failure rather than
as a celebration of our unity and the diversity
of people’s abilities and knowledge.
I think that a change in the safety culture is
a wonderful idea, but it will only happen if it
is somehow embedded within a larger change in
the culture of society as a whole. Somehow we
need to find ways to understand that we are all
better off pulling together, rather than continually
fighting for our share of the pie. I have no idea
how to approach changing the culture of the world
to allow this point of view to prevail. If we
can make small pockets of change in the part of
the world we inhabit (our safety jobs), maybe
it will spread — and in the end, problems
such as those experienced at Columbine, 911, Iraq,
and other places will fade away.
I don’t know how to change the entire world,
but I do know how to make changes in the little
part of the world that I live in. Maybe that is
enough. 
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