It makes you think

It is a neat double entendre. Not surprisingly, “safety is no accident” is a slogan that is widely used to convey the importance of taking a positive approach to safety, along the lines of: “our record of no accident did not happen on its own, you know!”. While this makes us smile, it also carries a serious message.

It keeps you awake

In areas of operation where safety is taken particularly seriously, it provides a useful focus on the need for continuous vigilance, effort and development. “Safety is no accident” is perhaps best known in the field of aviation. Writing this just before boarding a transatlantic flight, with “the world’s favourite airline”, makes me particularly mindful of this!

It shares responsibility

One of the most important requirements in the field of safety relates to the need to depersonalise everything, although this might at first seem counter-intuitive. It is important to focus on “what is right” rather than “who is right”, because it is important to pursue information and facts; and this requires us to avoid blaming people.
The objective is to improve safety but, of course, “safety is no accident”. So, when any incident has occurred, the pursuit of blame is counter-productive. A cost has been incurred, so the objective is to maximise the benefit available. This involves learning as much as possible, with the purpose of reducing as far as possible the chance of a similar incident happening again. If there is any suspicion among those involved in an incident that blame is likely to be apportioned, then those people will naturally tend to react by withholding information, by fabricating information and by deflecting blame onto others. All of these behaviours are extremely counter-productive in the pursuit of knowledge of what actually happened.

…and another thing!

“Safety is no accident” carries a broader message: this applies not only to dangerous situations, but also to any outcome that we would prefer to avoid!

The expensive consequences for computer systems, airlines, railways and many other systems and organisations having to mess about with times and schedules are completely unnecessary. And I have lost count of the number of times I have heard of people missing calls or online meetings due to misinterpretations of time zones and distortions in the name of “daylight saving”.

One would have thought that people who spend the most time involved with nature would find it the most ludicrous and that among those would be farmers. However, it seems that this is not the case as there is a discussion about introducing permanent BST or even “double BST” on the NFU website.

The news article is titled “Should we change the clocks?”. My answer is a simple “no”. In case the answer is unclear, I mean “no”! That is “do not change the clocks”! That is “leave the clocks alone”! That is “stop messing with the clocks”! In the UK that means “leave the clocks on GMT, the correct time”!

Does no one else understand this? Well, thankfully, many people do. For example, the whole of the aviation industry uses Zulu time (UTC) worldwide. Let’s be clear what that means. When pilots get a weather reports from any airport in the world (whether it is Heathrow or Los Angeles airport), the times are in Zulu time which is UTC/GMT. Yes everyone uses UTC.

The really funny part is that the NFU news article even states “analysts have claimed an extra hour’s daylight could be worth £3.5 billion a year to the economy”. This is the ultimate fallacy.

Let us be clear about something, in case you had not noticed: THERE IS NO EXTRA DAYLIGHT!! Where, on earth, did farmers get the idea that there is?!

As a follower of GTD, I am fortunate to receive many things, including the Productive Living newsletter. This particular edition included some “food for thought” about decision making, which I found extremely nutritious!

Information and accuracy

It brought to mind two things that I have often thought, and perhaps there is a link between them.

Firstly, there is a feeling that if we gather enough information about something that the decision can often become obvious. We sometimes even say things like “the decision made itself”!

Secondly, if there is very little to separate two (or more) choices then we often have difficulty in accepting that the inaccuracy of our assessment of the benefit of any choice may be greater than the actual difference between them; as in the story of the donkey which starved because it was unable to decide between two equal sized piles of hay. In other words, either one will do; and next time it might be a good idea to pick the other one so that we learn more about both!

Information and time

So, in line with David Allen’s thoughts on accepting more ambiguity and lack of clarity, the approach to relaxing about making decisions would seem to be to become comfortable with accepting a certain range of outcomes of our eventual choice, while working to gather increasing amounts of information so as to bring the estimated outcome of at least one of the choices within that range.

David’s point about increasing the discomfort with not making a decision seems also to be helpful, but by applying pressure in the opposite direction. As we become more uncomfortable over time, the perceived cost of not deciding is increasing. So, with time, we either increase the range of outcome that we are prepared to tolerate; and/or we accept that no significant new information is arriving to affect the decision.

I find that it sometimes also helps to make an assessment of how much new information is likely to arrive in the future. If I now know all that I am likely to know before a deadline, then (logically, at least!) I might as well make the decision now.

Information and blame

On a personal note, I have found one area where this issue seemed easier. I have limited experience (about 350 hours) of flying light aircraft and, in the aviation domain, I have found that decision making can often (but by no means always) be quite quick and easy. It seems to have something to do with combination of two elements, both relate to time (one in the past, the other in the future) and to (lack of) blame.

One element is the advantage of thinking ahead (the time aspect), often with the help of discussions with other people, about the priorities and what one would do under certain circumstances. This is coupled with the acceptance that if one follows a specific approach, then that is likely to lead to the most beneficial outcome (the lack of blame aspect).

The second element is the advantage of thinking back (the time aspect) again often with the help of stories and discussions with others, about what happened and what one might have done and why certain things occurred and all, again, without any attachment of blame.

The presence, in aviation, of these two elements together contributes to a relaxation in the present about the decision actually being made, which seems to be extremely effective in enabling rapid decision making. One might think that this would only apply to common situations or to preplanned eventualities and it certainly is effective in those cases; but the interesting thing is how the culture seems to extend the benefit into the area of one-off decisions in a way that is difficult to describe.

Make light work of it!

A somewhat comical example of this kind of thinking, that arises within the dry humour of aviation and that some people might appreciate, is the advice on the procedure for carrying out an emergency landing at night (something which is such a difficult situation that we all hope that we never have to do it).

On the assumption that the aircraft is without power and, therefore, descending in the glide in the dark, the version that I have heard goes as follows (with my supporting comments): “head for the darkest area you can find” (because, away from built-up areas, there are likely to be fewer obstructions on the ground); “when you get down to 300 feet, turn on the landing light” (assuming it is working and you know your height, so as to have a some chance, however small, to avoid obstacles); “if you do not like what you see, turn it off again!” (that is, if you get a view of lots of buildings, power cables or anything else unpleasant, then why worry yourself?!!).

Of course, although it is often delivered as joke, the real question is: so if not that, then what are you going to do under those circumstances? In this case, the answer is probably to omit the last step!

Are these the kinds of comments you have heard from beginners at … well anything that they consider “counter-intuitive”?

And how much experience does it take before the “counter-intuitive” becomes “intuitive”. (And, by the way, “experience” is the stuff that you get, when you don’t get what you want!)

In a recent CNN article, Penn Jillette draws parallels between:

• dealing with the banking mess
• correcting a skid while driving
• eating fire
• … anything “counter-intuitive”.

This is very interesting, because there are many things which are counter-intuitive.

Even more interestingly, some of them are not only counter-intuitive to “beginners”, but also to “intermediates” in the relevant skill or field … and, according to Alan Cooper in “The Inmates Are Running The Asylum” most of us spend most of our time as “perpetual intermediates”!

Have you sailed offshore and encountered weather which is worse than you expected? When inexperienced, your instinct is to return to the safety of the harbour. If you are lucky, then … you are lucky and you make it in time. But if the weather deteriorates rapidly, then you may find that, by the time you reach the harbour, it is too dangerous to enter it. More experienced sailors head for the open sea when the weather deteriorates because, out there, it is less likely that you will run into large objects, such pieces of land (as well as other vessels)! For the less experienced, this may be counter-intuitive; but experience has the effect of reversing the reaction.

Similarly when pilots are relatively new to flying, their reaction to deteriorating weather (particularly reducing visibility) is to descend so as to attempt to maintain visual contact with the ground. With more experience and training in additional skills (particularly instrument flying) comes the realization that as the visibility deteriorates it is safer to climb than to descend; as with sailing, this takes one away from the hazardous terrain. Again, experience has resulted in a response which, to the inexperienced, can appear counter-intuitive.

Not only does this apply vertically, but also horizontally. When contemplating flying when there is bad weather in the area, inexperienced pilots are inclined to fly away from the weather; whereas experienced pilots are likely to do the opposite and fly towards it.

Flying away from the weather puts the airfield between the aircraft and the weather; this risks ending up trying to race the weather to the airfield, which is not a healthy thing to do (as with sailing back to a harbour). Flying towards the weather means that the aircraft is between the weather and the airfield and can always return safely, although this may initially seem counter-intuitive.

There are many other counter-intuitive things in aviation. Perhaps the most specific example is, during an approach to land, the use of power to control height and pitch attitude to control speed; this even eluded early designers of automatic landing systems who omitted to ask pilots about this well-known model! Another example relates to safety: there is a joke that, when a young man joined the air force, his mother said: “Be very careful up there, Johnny. Don’t fly too high! And slow down for the corners!”. Well, flying low and slow is a notoriously dangerous combination; and to be turning at the same time risks a spin from which there may be too little height to recover! Clearly something which, it seems, Johnny’s mother would find counter-intuitive. And talking of spin recovery, the use of the “opposite rudder” can also be initially counter-intuitive; for many years, it seems to have eluded early pilots for whom entering a spin was likely to be fatal.

Where else do we find examples of counter-intuitive behaviour? Of course, it does depends on what one finds “intuitive”!

In parenting, the instinct to protect one’s children can have the effect of making them more vulnerable. First-born children seem to be less at ease with their surroundings than children born later; this seems to be a consequence of parents being more protective of their first child; they see and imagine every possible danger and strive to prevent the child being harmed by it. By the time that they have had three children, parents are more relaxed and realise that the minor bumps on the head are likely to help them to learn not to bump their head and decreases rather than increases the danger. It is better to make small mistakes and learn from them, than to be protected from them and, therefore, not to learn. Whether this is counter-intuitive depends on one’s experience of parenting!

Presumably, for people brought up in a political regimes in which all economic activity is controlled centrally, their familiarity with reliance on that control must make it more difficult to understand how a free market can possibly operate effectively. The idea that everyone does their own thing and the ensemble behaviour ends up being effective must seem like some like of optimistic mumbo-jumbo. The differences of viewpoint taken when describing creation and evolution might be considered to be of a similar counter-intuitive type.

There are business models which can appear counter-intuitive. For example, the eventual purpose of “lean” approaches to business processes is to generate “pull” (after having generated flow, mapped value streams and identified value in various forms). Starting from the more usual “push” messaging in the value stream, this reversal takes a leap of trust which is likely never to be undone. As with the sailing and flying examples, once “the penny has dropped”, additional experience serves to reinforce the new view; a watershed has been crossed.

How can things which actually work very effectively, not make sense to everyone? Well, it is just counter-intuitive, isn’t it?!