Nippin (00:02.094)
Hello and welcome to another episode of Embracing Differences with me, Nippin Anand. Today, I would like to discuss with you whether safety is a value or not. Can safety be a value?

I don’t think so.

Many of us put safety as one of our values in our vision and mission statements. And my point is that if somebody comes and argues with you that safety is a value, the first thing you should do is to never argue back with them. Don’t argue. In fact, if you want to help someone understand something,

do not argue with them because an argument by its very nature is a very cognitive exercise. It involves reasoning, involves rationalizing and it involves winning.

And none of that is very helpful if you want to help someone understand something. Because understanding is not a cognitive exercise. Understanding must be felt in the body and in between bodies.

Nippin (01:29.44)
Only when we feel another person’s feeling, we are able to understand their point of view. So how do we help people understand something? We don’t argue, we tell them a story or we take them on a walk. Now we cannot go on a walk because I’m sitting on a computer, but I can tell you a story. So let me tell you a story about why safety is not a value and can never be.

Nippin (02:01.25)
The story is about a young officer who falls in love with a young woman on board a ship. And seeing the two of them in love, the captain feels very very jealous. The captain actually starts to like this girl and he wants to flirt with her. He often comes to tell this girl how beautiful she looks when she wears a pair of jeans or when she

ties her hair into a pony. And all this makes the girl very uncomfortable. But who would want to mess with the captain on the ship?

So.

Nippin (02:47.938)
This girl, she has to live with this captain on board the ship. And you know what? When you allow someone to bully you, it would only get worse from there. So one day in his deep desire for this woman, the captain decides to do something even more dreadful. Without informing her,

He decides to do an unannounced inspection in her room. So he enters into her cabin.

The lady is actually keeping a watch on the bridge at that time so she’s not in her cabin. So the captain enters into her room and he finds a condom in her bin.

and this used condom belongs to the same young man who’s in love with this girl because the next thing he goes to his room and he finds a box of condoms

Nippin (04:03.362)
The next thing he does is, now that he has evidence that they are both in love with each other, he makes it a public affair. He sends an email out, not just to the safety manager, but also to the HR team, to the technical team, to the operational team, and also to the cargo owners and the ship owners.

who have nothing to do with the day to day running of the ship and certainly nothing to do with who is having an affair of with whom on board the ship.

So.

The young girl, she’s very ashamed. She cannot be on this same ship anymore. In fact, she cannot even be in the same company anymore after her affair is made public. And so she decides to leave the ship and leave the company.

The safety manager, when he sees all this, goes to the captain, he invites the captain to the office and the captain appears in the office and the safety manager asks him, why did you have to do that? And the captain said that, what’s wrong with that? They were having an affair. I found evidence. I did an inspection. I found this condom.

Nippin (05:38.848)
in her room and it belonged to this young man so I just made it all public.

The safety manager, he decides to fire the captain. He gets rid of the captain, so the captain is no longer in the company. The next thing, he writes a message to this girl to invite her back to the company. He says that, look, we have fired the captain, he’s no longer in the company, and we would appreciate if you could please resume your employment with us.

Nippin (06:18.892)
The girl says thank you but no thank you I’m not interested.

and she doesn’t agree to his request which makes the safety manager very frustrated that he’s done all the right things

And why has she turned down his request?

But I think there is something very powerful in this story that can help us understand why safety is not a value and can never be.

You see, captain comes to know about, the safety manager comes to know about this affair and he makes sure that justice is served by firing the captain.

Nippin (07:14.306)
That’s his values. That if somebody harms the reputation of the company, somebody does something that goes against the company procedures. In this case, making a private affair public, he doesn’t deserve to be in the company anymore. And so from his point of view, he has served the justice by firing the captain.

Nippin (07:45.868)
Not once he makes an attempt to understand that that’s his values, that’s his moral compass, that’s his ethical framework. While the young girl may value it, it’s not her values.

I may value eating good food, I may value going for a walk, but that’s not the basis of who I am. That’s not the basis of my ethical framework. To this girl, once her affair is made public and she has lost face in a society where community and saving your face in the community is more important than

being served justice through the firing of the captain is far far more important and so in his own mind he has served justice by firing the captain

But not once he has engaged to understand what are the values of this girl. What does she value? What is the basis of her ethical framework of living?

Nippin (09:13.708)
And I think we do the same thing in safety. We declare safety as a value. But what we are doing is when you ask somebody, so what does that mean to you? Well, what that means to me is I don’t want anyone getting injured. I don’t want anyone getting physically harmed.

Nippin (09:39.352)
But we never care to understand what is it that people who work under us value. What are their values? Their values might be to preserve their employment after an accident happens, after an injury happens. Their values might be that they want to be listened to.

their values might be to tell you something much much more deeper.

than just avoiding accidents. They might want to tell you that we have a problem in this organization. I have a problem with my supervisor. My supervisor does not give me the right level of support. My supervisor is a bully.

Nippin (10:33.984)
And so when you put safety as a value, you don’t realize what other people value. And quite often what they value does not coincide with what you value.

But if for example, if your values are something along the lines of compassion, empathy, listening, then regardless of whether there is a safe outcome or not, whether people get injured or you have success, which means you don’t have injuries and accidents during operations, you can live by those values.

And when people do get injured or they get hurt, you can still live with those values because the most important thing in those moments is to listen when somebody gets hurt.

So we have to be very, very careful when we create unrealistic values like safety, because we are unfallible and we will get hurt and we will get injured when we do high risk operations. Why create values that we cannot even live?

Why not create values where…

Nippin (12:03.756)
Regardless of the outcome, we can still be very proud and we can still live our values. In other words, create values that each one of us will value.

Nippin (12:24.85)
I leave you with those thoughts. I hope it makes sense and I think the best way to help someone understand the difference between a value and values is to tell a good story and I leave you with those thoughts. Thank you for listening.