Work from Your Present State
Focus on the current state of safety management rather than idealized future visions, using Cynefin mapping to understand complexities and avoid applying ordered solutions to complex issues.
THE IDEA
Every company’s safety environment will vary depending on the nature of the sector, its business history, and its unique operating culture. What is almost uniform, however, is that most safety executives (at the blunt end of the Safety Spear) focus on the idealized state and not sufficiently on the present state. In their expected role as company visionaries, they focus on creating future-oriented visions such as “Safety Excellence,” “Zero Harm,” “Incident Free,” “Safety is Priority 1” with far-reaching statements and posters. Indoctrinated with these idealized states, leaders and managers believe that they can achieve it through an engineering-like approach. Guided by “what gets measured gets done,” safety leaders set targets using Safety-I measures often mandated by regulatory bodies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The output is a “work-as-imagined” three to five-year corporate top-down safety plan with minimal input from front-line workers.
Annual operating plans serve to manage the implementation of the corporate plan – deviations from the plan are treated as non-compliance. When safety performance does not improve, faults are found in the plans typically with finger-pointing attached. The reaction is to create a brand new safety vision based on the latest fad and start the cycle all over again. If you have lamented about this cycle (some have called it a downward spiral), what can you do differently? You can’t change the past, and, you can’t predict an idealistic future. What you can do is disrupt this pattern by staying in the present and evolving its potential.
Mapping your operating environment and comparing the safety tools in use can help you understand the present. The preceding key-point #1, which describes that exercise, is not included here. Realize, however, that different operating units, functions, and management levels likely will have diverse views of your environment. Part of the work is recognizing the different perspectives and arriving at a wider agreement across the organization.
Cynefin mapping helps a team examine which safety issues fall into the Complex domain. A major mistake far too many leaders make is applying ordered safety solutions to “fix” complex issues (i.e., hammering a screw), which then creates false expectations. Working from your present state to handle complex issues means viewing the safety vision as directional instead of an end-state: there is no gap to close. The practical task is to take action suited to the system’s present conditions and learn from its effects. The following key-point #3 is not included in this excerpt.
When to use it
When developing annual safety plans, start by assessing the present state through tools like Cynefin mapping and worker input instead of imposing top-down targets.
When safety incidents recur, examine why existing safeguards are insufficient and which parts of the problem need reliable procedures, expert analysis or bounded experiments.
When leading a safety transformation, use the Cynefin framework to categorize issues and choose appropriate actions (probe-sense-respond for complex vs. sense-analyze-respond for complicated).
When evaluating safety performance, consider qualitative feedback and local adaptations rather than only lagging indicators that reinforce a 'work-as-imagined' view.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Safety Vision Misalignment
A manufacturing company sets a 'Zero Harm' vision and creates a 5-year plan with lagging indicators like injury rates. Front-line workers are not consulted, and when incidents still occur, managers blame the plan's execution rather than the mismatch between the complex reality and the ordered approach. By shifting focus to the present state, they map actual workflows, identify latent conditions, and adapt through iterative experiments rather than top-down mandates.
Cynefin in Practice
A hospital team finds that medication errors persist despite checklists. It examines how staffing, patients and technology interact, rather than treating the checklist’s failure as proof of complexity. For aspects that are complex, the team can use bounded tests and observe the results while retaining established safeguards for tasks they address well.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
What safety visions or targets does your organization currently chase? Are they based on an idealized future or the actual current state?
How can you map your operating environment to identify whether your safety challenges are in the Complex, Complicated, or Simple domain?
What would it mean to view your safety vision as directional rather than an end-state? How would that change your planning and actions?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Cynefin - Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World ED02 (Dave Snowden Sonja Blignaut Zhen Goh)