Safety Culture Plus

Posted via web from jamesroughton’s posterous

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What is the government going to target netx?

Posted via web from jamesroughton’s posterous

A great friend, Bill Montante,  has just finished reading "Why we make mistakes" by Joseph T. Hallinan.  He found it to be a light, quick but very good read on the "why we do dumb things, our inherent, unavoidable, biases that cause us to nudge our judgments and shape our perspectives on the world around us.”  Hallinan gives explanations about why we fall into marketing as well as many other traps.

From the Amazon book site description:

“In his quest to understand our imperfections, Hallinan delves into psychology, neuroscience, and economics, with forays into aviation, consumer behavior, geography, football, stock picking, and more. He discovers that some of the same qualities that make us efficient also make us error prone. We learn to move rapidly through the world, quickly recognizing patterns–but overlooking details. Which is why thirteen-year-old boys discover errors that NASA scientists miss—and why you can’t find the beer in your refrigerator.”

Bill found the following noteworthy book quotes:

• "…systemic errors have their roots at a level above the individual. Which is why, when looking for the source of errors, it pays to look up, not down" [the organization structure]
• "We believe we will act one way, but often act in another – even in ways that would appear to be against our own self interest. Even worse, many of us don’t know when we’re being biased. Our judgments may be distorted by overconfidence (a key theme in this book) or by hindsight or by any other innate biases
• Overconfidence induces us to commit everyday errors
• "Almost everyone is overconfident – except for people who are depressed, and they tend to be realists." Stefano Della Vigna – UC Berkeley professor of economics

This one I’m putting on my list to read.

Another one I want to read is “Virus of the Mind” by Richard Brodie.

I think we should spend much more time studying how people think and might be already wired to respond in various situations.   In looking for the “root cause” of errors, accidents, screw-up’s, bad planning, etc., wouldn’t it be a good thing to have an in-depth knowledge of the basics of how the human brain is designed, develops, and gets used? 

How do habits and mental models (See Peter Senge (Fifth Discipline), Charles Perrow (Normal Accidents), Lawrence Gonzales (Deep Survival)) create our various worlds and actions.  I think that too often we operate on automatic pilot –are we wired that way?  We in turn rely on old outdated management and personal techniques in a recurring cycle of lost and wasted efforts.

Isn’t that optimistic…

Nathan Crutchfield

Crutchfield Consulting, LLC

www.crutchfieldconsulting.com

www.ncsafetyandlife.com

www.twitter.com/encrutch

Posted via web from jamesroughton’s posterous