Movements of many kinds have encountered a tension between the need for detailed understanding and the need for popular acceptance. On the one hand, expertise is necessary to form an adequate understanding of a situation, phenomenon or system in order to intervene (or not) appropriately. On the other, a requirement for deep expertise will tend to reduce popular acceptance and involvement. The conflict often calls for trade offs involving simplification and translation. This is a difficult balancing act for many innovators and promoters. Simplism and populism are two traps awaiting both, though they are also employed deliberately as strategies.
Simplism involves over oversimplifying complex issues by reducing them to basic concepts, explanations, causes and solutions. Simplism ignores nuances, details, interconnectedness, conflicting perspectives, and potential complications in a situation. This may be out of lack of awareness or deliberate choice. Either way, it can lead to misunderstanding, flawed decision-making, and unwanted consequences. Simplism is core to one of the steps that are characteristic of work-as-imagined solutioneering.
Populism is a related but different phenomenon, which can both boost and threaten movements. It involves appeals to the ‘common people’, and often positions itself in opposition to established ideas, expertise, professions, and institutions. Populism appeals to so-called common sense, and tends to rely on simplism (simplistic ideas, methods and solutions). Populism also tends to involve manipulative appeals to emotion via slogans and narratives, often combined with a form of authoritarianism (see egoism and leaderism).
Simplism and populism are characteristic of the ego trap that besets ‘oversimplifying popularisers‘, but is also characteristic of ‘gooroos‘. Some symptoms that are relevant to New Safety Movements (NSMs) are as follows. (See this post for an introduction to the series.)
Overstatement and overreach
Many movements throughout history have had a habit of claiming to explain more than they really do, and promising much more than they can deliver. Some new movements offer a ‘theory of everything’ in their general domain. This is typical of some branches of alternative medicine, such as traditional Chinese medicine and energy healing, which lack strong scientific foundations (scientific credibility seems to correlate negatively with overstatement and overreach). Vague or esoteric language is common in such movements, sometimes with the use of emotion or authority (especially in personal development movements), to override critical thinking, doubt, and challenge.
Implications for NSMs: NSMs should be circumspect and realistic in expectations and communications. Barriers to new thinking and practice are significant; some are structural and almost impossible to change (e.g., regulation). For example, most safety work in high-hazard industries will remain in a ‘Safety-I‘ mindset for the foreseeable future. But there is scope to introduce language, concepts and activities, aligned with Safety-II, in a productive way. Care should be taken to avoid overstatement and overreach in anything that may become solidified in a movement. The five HOP principles are a possible example, at least in the way they are popularly promoted and used. These are: 1. People make mistakes; 2. Blame fixes nothing; 3. Context drives behaviour; 4. Learning is vital; 5. Response matter. There is an elegant and efficient simplicity in these, which is appealing (see also the International Civil Aviation Organization’s five principles of human performance as an alternative). But the HOP principles do not describe, define or delineate ‘human and organisational performance’. Human performance and organisational performance are fields with multiple disciplines and professions including biological sciences, sport science, medicine, psychology, human factors and ergonomics, management science, anthropology, sociology, organisational development, etc. The five principles are really about error, an aspect of performance. Similarly, other NSMs are valuable, but limited and context dependent, and practitioners should remain balanced and realistic. As I wrote in this post, we need the self-awareness to recognise our own mindset, wisdom to see its limits, and mentally agility to choose another when appropriate.
Monolithic explanations
Overstatement and overreach often involve monolithic explanations. Many movements have exploited the human tendency to prefer simple or single all-encompassing explanations or causes. These may be conveniently paired with silver bullet or one-size-fits-all solutions. In other words, a lack of whatever is being offered is the cause of your problems. More generally, solutions tend to be sourced from the same limited worldview as the problems, whether spiritual, nutritional, behavioural, cultural, or mechanical.
Implications for NSMs: New Safety Movements differ in their susceptibility to monolithic explanations, but there can be a tendency to substitute an old one for a new one (a conceptual sleight of hand). Some of the classics include ‘human error’ and ‘lack of safety culture’. Newer variations include lack of resilience, poor organisational culture, poor leadership, lack of a just culture, lack of psychological safety, performance variability, and production pressure. There is value in these concepts and in associated theories, but the use of labels to characterise a complex situation (complexity may be another monolithic explanation) is a tradeoff that results in different interpretations of what is meant. For this reason, efficient labels are sometimes best avoided as descriptors for complex and problematic situations, in favour of more thorough descriptions, but at risk of losing popular acceptance.
Monomethodism, formularism and silver bullet solutions
Several previous movements have failed to innovate and improve, and instead relied on monomethodism and formularism – the inappropriate or rigid use of a method or formula that is not suitable for the range of applications, compared to alternate methods. Monomethodism and formularism often come hand-in-glove with silver bullet solutions: simplistic solutions to complex, intractable problems, developed via work-as-imagined solutioneering. In previous social movements (e.g., pseudopsychometric testing, meditation and yoga movements, large group personal development, and leadership events), simplism has been combined with commercialism and leaderism in a sort of club culture; ‘insiders’ are introduced to simplistic, pupularist and convincing ideas, methods and solutions.
Some implications for NSMs: NSMs will not thrive if they rely on single methods and solutions. Monomethodism creates blind spots that require multi-method approaches, while silver bullet solutions fail to solve problems and create new ones, at the same time stifling innovation. Consultancies may end up selling the same thing, which may prove to be only partially helpful, or even counterproductive. Diagnosis should precede treatment, and diagnosis requires a range of methods. A very wide range of methods for the analysis, evaluation and design of tasks, processes, artefacts, jobs, training, teams, organisations, and working environments is available from HF/E, psychology, ethnography, engineering, and other disciplines, but these require investment in training.
Lack of self-criticality
With previous movements, there has often been an unfortunate tendency to lack self-criticality. Over time, writings, methods and solutions became calcified and canonical. This is a hallmark of pseudoscientific approaches, and is especially linked to commercialisation. Since there is commercial value in readings, methods, training courses, and so on, it makes little commercial sense to be critical toward them, even where good evidence exists. Why critique your own personality test, meditation method, or large group training approach, when they continue to be very profitable?
Some implications for NSMs: Self-criticality is essential for any movement with a basis in science, including safety science. For NSMs, it is curious that the founders of ideas (who I describe here as innovators – quite often researchers with a less commercial orientation), are more likely to write critically of their own (old) writings than are promoters, who may still have a personal (and especially financial) interest in the ideas or methods. This is especially problematic for organisations that have formed their whole identity and offering around a specific method. Evidence of self-criticality and self-doubt may be a sign of integrity in NSMs.
Lack of scientific rigour and a research-practice chasm
A related expression of simplism for previous movements has been a lack of scientific rigour, expressed as a lack of use of the scientific method for empirical work, method development, and theory development. The effort and expertise required for planning, data collection, analysis, synthesis, interpretation, critique, and reporting is high, and requires particular expertise that may not be available. This has led naturally to a preference for more commercially-lucrative opportunities (e.g., selling products and training). Simplism has sometimes been expressed via a lack of underlying (testable and tested) theory based on empirical work, with published findings. Many self-development and leadership books and courses lack of sound theoretical basis, for instance, and are at odds with well-supported theory, or overextend the applicability of fragments of theory. Ultimately, developments may invalidate the central claims and methods of movements, but simplism and populism can help to ensure that they remain appealing and commercially viable.
Lessons for NSMs: One would hope that NSMs would be founded on empirical work to try to develop and refine the underlying theory and evidence base for ideas. Practitioners who promote theories and methods should ideally also be engaged in research, in order not to drift too far from pragmatic science, or too far into popularist science. This may involve empirical work or otherwise collaboration with researchers with a strong background in the field. Those reading or using the work of innovators and promotors might usefully look for research outputs, especially where strong claims are made and where there are significant commercial interests. While a research-practice gap exists in most professions, this should be a field of study in itself in safety (something I wrote about here) as it has been in other fields such as management, psychology and human factors and ergonomics. This may prevent the gap becoming an ever-widening chasm, and ensure that NSMs are grounded in evidence.
Simplism and populism are rooted in a genuine need to translate safety theory, sometimes with a basis in research, for non-academic audiences who need a different language and more practically-oriented methods. This is difficult to balance, and is probably the most well-meaning of the seven threats (unless combined with egotism and over-commercialism). It remains a difficult balancing act to find the right levels and combinations of communication and engagement for New Safety Movements. Indeed reluctance to simplify is a characteristic of ‘high reliability organisations or HROs (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2001), one particular NSM, which “take deliberate steps to create more complete and nuanced pictures of what they face and who they are as they face it” (p. 10). For NSMs, this may mean addressing some of the symptoms of simplism and populism highlighted above.
Postscript
This series outlines seven possible threats to New Safety Movements, based on my observation, listening, reading, and reflection over many years, concerning a wide variety of other movements: religious, social, health, and business. Not all threats apply to all New Safety Movements, but most of the threats seem to apply to most of the movements, to varying degrees. The seven threats below will each feature in subsequent posts (this post will be updated with summaries and links to each threat).
- Over-commercialism
- Egotism and leaderism
- Simplism and populism (this post)
- Dogmatism (coming soon)
- Ethnocentrism (coming soon)
- Unprofessionalism (coming soon)
- Cynicism (coming soon)
My hope is that we can be mindful of each of these threats, and reduce – as far as possible – the destructive potential of each. This way, the positive potential that may exist in some of the various New Safety Movements can be realised without too many unintended consequences or otherwise unwanted effects.
Humanistic Systems 