In this short series, I will highlight seven foes and seven friends of system safety, both for explanation and intervention. Each is a concept, meme, or device used in thinking, language, and intervention (reinforced by more fundamental foes that act as barriers to thinking). They are not the only foes or friends, of course, but they are significant ones that either crop up regularly in discussions and writings about safety, or else – in the case of friends – should do.
Learning Teams, Learning from Communities
In this article, I refer to some of the ideas and writings of asset-based community development to reflect on Learning Teams in health and safety, and small group conversations and action more generally in organisations. I highlight four lessons from ABCD for learning teams and host organisations.
Safety-II has become a talking point. It is discussed not only among safety professionals, but – perhaps more importantly – among front line practitioners, managers, board members and regulators in a wide array of industries. But what is the real focus of Safety-II?
A legendary rivalry: one mountain and two climbers seeking to be the best. We join…
On 26 April 2018, I presented at the ‘Philosophical Breakfast Club’ (@philosophicalBC) conference on High Performing Teams (#PBCHPT2018). It was a remarkable conference bringing together healthcare professionals, psychologists, sports scientists, athletes, managers, human factors/ergonomics specialists, military officers and specialists, and others, My first conversation while having tea before the conference was with a spinal surgeon and bomb disposal expert. Throughout the conference I had many other fascinating conversations with people from a diverse range of backgrounds.
This leads me to the focus of my talk: collaboration at the interfaces, and what happens between teams, groups, professions, layers of management, organisations… In this post, I summarise the talk, slide by slide, with tweet-sized explanations.
This is the fourth in a series of posts on different ‘kinds’ of human factors, as understood both within and outside the discipline and profession of human factors and ergonomics itself. This post explores a fourth kind of human factors: Socio-technical system interaction.
This third post explores another perspective on ‘human factors’: Factors Affecting Humans.
This is the first of a short blog post series, on four kinds of ‘Human Factors’: ‘The Human Factor.
The analysis of work cannot be limited to work as prescribed in procedures etc (le travail prescrit), nor to the observation of work actually done (le travail réalisé). Similarly, it cannot be limited to work as we imagine it, nor work as people talk about it. Only by considering all four of these varieties of human work can we hope to understand what’s going on.
Written and directed by Matthew Wilkinson. A thrilling modern tragedy about a Russian architect driven…
Humanistic Systems 