Nippin 0:03
Nippin, well, welcome to embracing differences with me, Nippin Anand, and what do I say? I’m joined by one of my very early friends and like minded thinker. We did a podcast together some years ago. It’s called, we called it boxing and dancing at that time. Christine, do you remember?

Kristine Storkensen 0:25
I remember that conversation, very good, but I had forgot about that nice name.

Nippin 0:32
Yes, it was a it was a good conversation. So welcome, Christine. Very nice to have you. And maybe, maybe you can say a little bit about yourself, and then we will, we will start the conversation.

Kristine Storkensen 0:45
Yes, thanks for inviting me again. I’m Christina. I work as research manager at syntev, which is a research institute in Norway and across Europe. I’ve been working with safety at sea for 20 years. I’m a sociologist, so it’s usually about the people, about the work they do, how the organization and the framework conditions affect them when they do their work, and that’s how I got into talking about safety management and regulations, because it’s very important when people are trying to work as safe as they can. Great.

Nippin 1:30
And my experience Christine comes from being a seafarer and then a researcher, and then also about six years with dental school, it has doing safety management system work. And now, of course, I have my own consultancy, but Christine, the conversation, actually, my interest in this, in reaching out to you, was as a result of a post that I created on LinkedIn. And this was about the Hague Osaka, the car carrier, the accident on board. And what happened, just for the listeners, is that the ship, this is a car carrier that came to Southampton, carrying plenty of cars. And as the ship was departing the port, and she was taking a turn outside the channel. The ship capsized to one side. And I looked at this accident, and went very deep into it. I wrote several papers on blogs on it. And one of the things that that hit me really hard was that there were about 213 checks to be done and for the chief officer alone at the time when the ship was in port for a limited period of time. So what this accident gives us is an opportunity to see how far paperwork has reached on board ships and made not only created a lot of bureaucracy, but that bureaucracy is now turning against its original intent, which is to manage risk and safety at sea. And I think that’s very problematic, that you create a framework, you create a regulation, it fires back at you. And I think, and I will put a link to your video that you created in this area, and I play that video at every meeting that I go to in every company, and people are almost always shocked. They can’t see the connection between the rising bureaucracy and how it has led to many accidents at sea. But I will leave the link to that video in this podcast for people to see. But before that, maybe Christine, you can tell me what, what? What do you think about that? I mean, just talk about that video would be so, so powerful as a start.

Kristine Storkensen 3:55
Yeah, thank you. It is really, it’s really serious. And I’m so glad that you bring this to the table. And just for the listeners, that video is one minute long, so it’s very easy to see, and it is made by I’m very lucky that someone made it to me, but it’s also very cartoonish, so I think it’s, it’s simplicity makes the point quite strong too, and that the point is that when in this world, when we have all those procedures in the safety management systems are, for most of us At work, it’s we have quite large safety management systems. We have many procedures that we have to attend to and and comply with, and receivers. For navigators, it’s particularly much and for everyone, it’s quite easy to understand that navigators on the ship ridge. That should be attentive to the world around them and to what they can see at sea and on their screens and equipment, and not be attentive to documenting procedures or to checklisting 213 procedures, and that is the simplest way of describing that. It’s a clear connection between the safety management, the formal systems and the safety at sea. And that is also that video is describing that we might actually hit rock bottom because of our safety management systems.

Nippin 5:50
Absolutely, it’s very powerful. And we call it professor. Michael power calls it audit explosion, and I think this is be a very appropriate title for this conversation also. So here we are in a situation where procedures and checklists and documentation is actually creating risk. And the video makes it very clear that although we might have gained in personal safety, in in controlling slip strips and falls, but the major accidents, like groundings and collisions are on the increase. We will come to the evidence to that. Why you think so, and how you can how you discovered that in your research. But the starting point for me is that because your work, you looked at the maritime industry, Christine, and you have been researching this area for many years now, two decades. As you said, what makes this industry so susceptible to to audits or an audit explosions, for example? You think,

Kristine Storkensen 6:59
I’ll try to take the short version, because the maritime industry is one of the oldest industries. It is one of the industries that got saved the regulation first. And you could discuss if it was because someone wanted people to survive, or if it was because someone wanted their cargo to come to the right places and be sold. But it’s a long tradition of safety management. You have the Plimsoll line, you have stability rules. And before, I guess everyone who listens know about this story, and they know about that it used to be the captain was really the captain. They were far from shore for a long time, or far from the some kind of office for a long time. And so it has to be quite strict rules in what the captain should do and how the captain should perform and do the decision making on board. But when all of the world have changed, and we and everyone have this, we’re a part of a system we are part of organizations wanting to control what we do, or having control over what is happening for every organizations, not not not only in the maritime industry, we get more regulations, and we Get More both internal bureaucracy and and from other parts, but on the maritime side, I think this has collided more than in other industries, because you still have that the reliability in the tasks that has to be done on board the different kinds of ships, the different crews it, it is still different or units sailing along and the captain or the officers have to do what’s best for their crew and Their variability and their operations, but they have been getting more and more or that the land offices want more and more control over what is happening. So I think that is why it has gotten many procedures and all the audits from all the different organizations wanting to control them, and I think it’s particularly much collides because of this that it doesn’t always fit with the actual operations or the actual how they need to perform their work and be when they’re at sea or sailing.

Nippin 9:59
Yeah, absolutely. Certainly there is the nature, the unpredictable nature. There is the multinational crew on board. There’s the cost pressure. There is, as you very rightly said, there is things change every moment, and it’s very, very hard to control things through procedures. But the default when you can’t control through procedures is to create even more procedures and more measurements and more KPIs, which creates even more of that. So we have gone into that vicious circle, in a way. But just to add to what you’re saying, also, Christine, I think there is also an element of the over regulation from different stakeholders. So you have the flag state, you have the port state control, you have the classification societies, and you have the the oil majors, using wetting and and inspections and assurance exercises, and then on the dry, dry cargo side, you have also have a wetting, which is equivalent, but slightly different, from from the the the oil tankers. So we have different entities, different stakeholders, often doing inspections, audits, assurance exercises, but repeatedly asking the same questions from the seafarers. And I think that’s also one aspect that creates more bureaucracy for its own sake.

Kristine Storkensen 11:35
Absolutely, I’ve mainly studied the safety management regulations, and those are quite easy to grasp, and they’re mainly about and I think a lot of the regulations are mainly about organizations responsible for their own safety And and their cargo and the things that they do and that they have to have a management system in place. And as we will talk about later on, I think that also because you talk about how it’s quite complex, but also it’s quite simple, you have to show that you’re in control, but how to show that you’re in control? I think that’s where we really struggle now. So all the organizations you talk about send out their auditors to check that everything is in the right place, and the only way they know how to do it is to say that, okay, I need to see your management system. I need to see your documentation. I need to see this and this and this and this, so I can write it down, and then we can believe that we’re in control.

Nippin 12:58
And that’s a very interesting thing. Christine, yesterday, I was doing a workshop on enclosed space entry with a group of managers, shipping company managers. And this seems to be one of the burning topics for the industry, that lots of people are dying in enclosed spaces

Nippin 13:17
because of paperwork. And this is very interesting, the paperwork has already been signed off, and yet people are dying. So the one of the things that came up is I asked the question, so what are the three or five most important risks to you in enclosed spaces? And the first one, or the first three things that came was gasses and atmosphere. And what about the gasses and atmosphere?

Nippin 13:44
The thing is that we do not know it’s unknown gasses, so you have an unknown risk that you’re trying to control. And how does that make any sense at all?

Kristine Storkensen 13:57
Isn’t it? I think we’re in a time where we can see that our how we have tried to manage and keeping control, that it’s not working, but for the time being, we’re still just trying to do more of what is not working, and we think that our signing off on a risk assessment and and signing off some work permissions, will it seems safe, and you climb into that enclosed space and you just hope for the best, because you know that this is your job, and you have to do it. And someone created a system. You send it off, it should be hopefully okay. I think quite many people go around do not feeling that secure.

Nippin 14:55
And I I just think that when I look at the risk assessment. This is not done by the seafarer. This is a risk assessment that is done by somebody in Singapore or enclosed spaces. So that risk assessment is then sent on the ship. It’s a standard documentation, and it’s from from everything, from Red is has to be turned into yellow or green for the Seafarer to enter inside. And what I’m trying to say is that there is an unknown risk which has been made to look like it’s been controlled, but it’s also made to look like it’s been controlled by somebody who’s not doing the job, but somebody who’s sitting 5000 miles away and creating that picture of the risk so, and that’s that’s fascinating, because now the Seafarer believes, genuinely believes, because he has signed the paper, he believes that he’s safe now, because the risk assessment is carried out. So here’s the connection between controlling the risk that you do not understand, and then leading into an accident. I think that’s that’s where I see the link that the Seafarer takes that risk assessment on the face value that he was not even a part of. So he doesn’t even realize that what he signed up, but it gives him the permission to say, You are safe now you can go inside, and therein lies the problem, I think. And this is no this is no surprise, because a lot of times you read in the accident investigation reports that the first thing is that the seafarers, the Seafarer died, he did not follow the procedures, but in the beginning, it will say the permit to work and risk assessment was carried out and completed. So how do you reconcile between these two things, that procedures were not followed but risk assessment was completed?

Kristine Storkensen 17:00
I’ve never heard exactly that they didn’t follow procedures, but it was completed. But I often hear that they didn’t have sufficient procedures, or so they need to add more procedures, and that that could possibly also be in the case you were talking about now that so after an accident, you need to add procedures, because it was something that didn’t go right, and you can fix it by adding procedures. I’m not sure if that was sufficiently what you were talking about now, but it, I think, in the hergosaka case, that was some of the case or some of the problems. It was too many procedures. It’s difficult to have an overview, of course, with 213 procedures, even though you’re given a work permit, you don’t have overview over all those procedures, even though you know what you do when you for instance, or in the circle case, it was maneuvering or and it was about the cargo, but if also in a case where you climb into an enclosed space, you don’t have overview over all the procedures and how each risk is taken care of. And I think for the hergosa case, 213 procedures when it’s made this clear, it’s obvious to everyone that you can’t have overview. And I really wonder when audits will actually audit that that it’s not possible to follow this and do a good job. It’s not possible for people to have an overview, to do the job and to follow everything, and that is why, I think it’s very this conversation is so important. We have completely safety management systems that are not they’re not possible to follow, and they, of course, then can create unsafe conditions.

Nippin 19:33
And from your point of view, you know, doing the kind of work they didn’t. How did we arrive at this stage?

Kristine Storkensen 19:44
Age, I think that, as I said earlier, is particularly obvious, or it’s very easy to see in the maritime industry. But I think it is in across the society, and I think it has to do with trying to improve regulations, trying to improve working conditions. I really believe that it’s good intentions behind when your organizations, you’re a regulator or you’re a company, you want to make sure that the ones you’re responsible for do the job safe, get the ship going, get the cargo where it should be. You want the operations to go as smoothly as possible. And you see that you want that you don’t have control. But potentially you could have control by telling them what to do, writing it, and they need to write that they did it, so then it’s documented that they know what they should do. And regulators and people, other people responsible are not they can’t, in detail, have an overview over everything. So they try to make as simple as possible regulations. And I for safety management, the regulations, as I said, they tell you, tell the organizations to just have a management system with procedures over critical operations, and it should be documented and internally controlled. And it seems so easy, but then it comes to organizations are afraid of lawsuits. They are afraid of media. They’re a bit afraid of accidents, but mostly afraid of others coming to say that they didn’t do enough to keep things safe, to keep things in order, and that’s why they just add an add to those management systems and put in as detailed as they can what should be done in each situation. What are the responsible of each person or their roles on board? And that’s why they all of a sudden have 213 procedures,

Nippin 22:45
yes, and that’s fascinating, because you’re very right in saying the core,

Nippin 22:52
the core purpose was to keep things simple, as simple as possible, by creating a maybe a 50 page document that we call the ISM code, the International Safety Management code. But that code then meets with fear and anxiety,

Nippin 23:09
because the simplicity of it scares people that it you know, managing a critical operation cannot be that simple, so that fear and anxiety then turns it into micromanagement and prescriptive regulations, which was what it was all against in the beginning.

Kristine Storkensen 23:30
So we went from, you could call it deregulation, that regulator wanted to have some a simple, function based system. It is deregulation. It is trying to have a simple regulation, but it turned into over regulation in the companies. And I have written about, I used to say that it’s three, mainly three causes creating that that the over exaggerated systems and one thing is that it’s actually very difficult to describe work. I mean, the management systems need to describe at least core tasks, or at least the critical tasks. But if you think about your work, everyone who’s doing work knows that what is really important in their work is quite difficult to describe, so then it’s quite natural that it, it’s it’s not the essential stuff that is described, because that’s not possible to to lay out on a paper so, and I think that is also one of the reasons why we describe so much of the nonsense, because that is just easier to write up. And then, yeah, go ahead. No, no, you go first. Yeah. So the. That is one of the reasons why it’s quite understandable that safety management system will contain a lot of things that’s not the most important stuff. And another thing is also that what you said about the insecurity of the managers. They don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. They don’t know when the media will come. They don’t know what an auditor will say. And there they are the ones who are responsible. So they just have to add as much as they can to just try to hope that it’s sufficient. And when this is combined with the third thing, which is audit practices, I think that you have the perfect too large system, because when we try to write up what we do, and we try to write up everything because we’re afraid, and we need to write it in a way that it is easily audited. In combination, it’s too many things that is easy to describe and gives too much documentation in ways that are not very practical, because it’s it doesn’t get practical when it should be easy to audit, because auditors want things so they can check out what they plan to and they want it to be easy to understand from boats to boat. They don’t want it to be perfectly matched with each vessel. Wow.

Nippin 26:49
Can you repeat that once again? The three things, I think it’s very important what you said.

Kristine Storkensen 26:55
I call it, I think the most proper word is legibility. But I think it’s

Nippin 27:05
very difficult to say variability, no, the

Kristine Storkensen 27:09
legibility, how to how to write up something so that

Nippin 27:14
legibility? Legibility, yeah, yeah.

Kristine Storkensen 27:18
And managerial insecurity, yes, are the two first and audit practices?

Nippin 27:26
It makes perfect sense. So we arrive at a position. I’ll give you an example of that. A Boson on the ship was asked that, what are the enclosed space procedures? And he started to say, and the auditor listened to everything, and came to the chief officer and said, Your Boson doesn’t understand the enclosed space procedures. And the captain got very scared because of that. And I think that little example captures everything that you’re trying to say, because a lot of what the Boson does cannot be described and articulated in words. It’s not possible that you can turn implicit knowledge into explicit knowledge for somebody else to understand legibility as you very rightly use the word, which then creates this managerial insecurity and fear for the people who are being measured that maybe we didn’t do good enough to the standards of the auditor. And I think this is the third aspect is the audit practice, which is taking no cognition, or no respect to the idea that somebody is responding to you under stress, and therefore, by definition or it’s not possible for them to tell you everything under pressure, people cannot express themselves fully. We know that through lots and lots of studies, so we arrive at, you know, the outcome of the audit would be because the Boson could not articulate everything. There is something wrong with the safety management system, so put more processes there. And so we end up in a situation where we keep increasing the paperwork as a result of what you just described. The other thing, yeah, sorry, I

Kristine Storkensen 29:17
was just saying that we keep, we keep increasing and adding, although we know, most of us know that it’s not a good idea. But what to do? Because we still feel like we need to describe it. We need to. We are insecure, and the audits tend to maybe they will want it the next time,

Nippin 29:40
at some stage. Yes, but just to finish off, Christine, is there anything we can learn from other industries or other or even within the maritime industry? Any any good stories of how this relationship is managed better in order to meet its original intent? Which. To manage risk and safety. So how do you create frameworks? Or how do you? How do you, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you got the message.

Kristine Storkensen 30:10
I think that we, the different industries, should learn from each other, but I don’t think that other industries can learn the maritime very much more than already because the industries we often say that we should learn from is is aviation, it’s oil and gas, it’s nuclear, but those are industries that are so much more standardized have completely different potential for having simple management systems, checklists that work. It’s the different, it’s different operations and different people and everything is more not people, but the operations and and equipment are more standardized. I think, of course, we can learn. We can get some tools from those industries, and we already have checklists and simplification and some things that work from those work to a degree from the those industries, but usually we tend to believe that the other industries are so good, but they’re mainly more standardized. So I think it’s one way could then be to standardize more in the maritime industry, but I think that’s a long way to go, and perhaps it’s not the best thing, because we have a reliability in the operations. We have reliability in the vessels, and we will continue to have that. So I think all those industries still need simplification in their own way. And actually, what I don’t think I ever told you is that Norway have a new vision zero for avoiding seriously hurt and disease at sea. And the Norwegian maritime authority made an action plan together with different parties, and one of the measures there is simplification. So they really want to work with simplification of safety management systems, and I’m working with them about that too. And we I have this plan of working with auditors, as we’ve talked about today, and I think that this could also be a measure for other industries, absolutely.

Nippin 32:39
And what I realized after this discussion with you is that, especially after you spoke about the aviation and the oil and gas, I think in many ways and bureaucracy shouldn’t be seen as a negative term. I think it’s a very bureaucratic structure and culture, both it’s very standardized, very rationalized, and that structure and the culture can can somehow be managed through bureaucratic tools and bureaucratic systems. So it kind of works both ways, standardized equipment, standardized services, predictable work environment to an extent which is possible to work well, we can use bureaucratic tools for a bureaucratic culture, let’s say, or a structure. But here we have a very ad hoc way of living and being autocratic. I call it so it’s very ad hoc. It’s non standardized. We have, we have Mother Nature. We have we have multi language linguistic crew. We have real cost pressures. We have over regulation and deregulation at the same time, but we are trying to manage it through bureaucratic tools, and I think that’s very problematic that you’re trying to manage an ad hoc cratic problem through a bureaucratic tools, and that’s, that’s a difficult thing, and that’s where the real problem lies. And I’m, I’m happy to share something with you that I’ve been thinking about. Maybe I could, yeah, maybe we can. Is there anything else you would like to say before we end the call?

Kristine Storkensen 34:26
I think this is more than enough. You know, I had this term of auditism that I’ve been talking about. I didn’t use it here, but I think the world is suffering from audit ism, and it’s not only the maritime industry, but I think that we are, and in the audit is term, which is kind of an, I invented a disease, but I think, and I think we suffer from this disease that we are. Mainly concerned with compliance and to easily pass audits. So we and that actually influence how we create work, or how we describe work and organizations. And I don’t think no, none of us want that we’re not going in the right direction. So I think that it’s time to get some tools to simplify, to be able to to respond or to do our work and our life without having too much of that the bureaucracy is surrounding us from by regulation. But I know what. Don’t know how

Nippin 35:44
that’s a very powerful thing. Autism. I should not say anything more, because that would destroy this conversation. It’s a beautiful place to end it. Thank you, Christine,

Kristine Storkensen 35:55
let’s keep strong.

Nippin 35:59
Thank you, and thank you for taking the time to talk to me. I am very grateful for your time. Miss, likewise.