SPEAKERS

Nippin Anand

Nippin Anand  00:01

Welcome to another episode of embracing differences with me. Nippin Anand. Anand a podcast aimed at understanding and promoting transdisciplinary ways of living and thinking, meaning, assimilating different viewpoints, different subjects, different disciplines, but focused on a very simple question, how do we human beings, learn, unlearn, relearn and make decisions, and how can we tackle risks in an uncertain world? In this session, I would like to present the power of framing using the Costa Concordia accident, the passenger ship that ran aground of Italy in January 2012 I interviewed the captain before he was sentenced to prison, and I was surprised by how the captain responded to my open ended questions during the course of our interview, and how it led me to a completely different view of this accident and learning than the One presented in the public domain. I have also written a book on this accident. In this session, we will focus on the following questions, why was the caustic and cardia accident framed as a problem of speaking up and the failure of bridge resource management, as it highlights in the accident investigation report? What are the parallels between concepts such as psychological safety, true resource management, non technical skills and soft skills? Why do these concepts appeal so much to the risk and safety industry? What are the alternative frameworks to think about speaking up and most importantly, what is the power of framing and why we should never underestimate the power of framing. When we ask questions or throw statements, we underestimate the power of how we frame our questions, how we frame our questions and statements gives us an insight into how we perceive the world and what we believe is true or untrue. Framing of questions reveals of a world view the limits of our imagination, and more importantly, framing can bring to the surface what we consider morally right and morally wrong. Think about it. You tell one of your friends about a pickpocketing incident in your neighborhood, and your friend responds by saying that stealing is bad. You try to explain to your friend that this person stole the money save his daughter who needed a medical treatment, but your friend refuses to listen. Well, it goes to show that you have hit the bedrocks of their beliefs. Most people do not change their beliefs when they are put on the spot. In fact, they will reorganize the facts to fit within their frame of mind and argue their way. The framing of our minds explains why the world is so divided about everything from politics, climate change, gay rights and perhaps one of the most universal truths of life, that we are all going to die one day, and whether there is life after death or not, our framing eventually ties us to what we believe is morally wrong or right. And interestingly, framing is always unconscious meaning, while others can see through your differences, your biases, you’re not aware of your frame of your mind. My advice to you is never argue with people’s framing, because that would mean you are challenging their beliefs. Reasoning does not help. We will return to this topic in a while, but in this session, I want to focus on the underlying belief when people say speak up, or an after an accident or an undesirable outcome, when we are quick to judge by saying, Why did no one speak up? What is the hidden belief in the framing of the question? Why don’t people speak up? Why do we need to be cautious about that framing, and why it is always a good idea that from time to time we reframe our questions if we continue to face the same problems in life, at work, in relationships with our children, chances are that we have not framed the problem well. Kalyun once said, Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate. When things go wrong, most people start to project and blame it on luck, misfortune of fate, but few realize that they may be stuck in their frame of mind. Framing and reframing our problems helps us to learn, unlearn and relearn and move on in life. So what really is the power of framing? If you speak to an anthropologist, we don’t believe in definitions, concepts and propositions. Rather, anthropologists will tell you a story or take you on a walk, because we learn best through stories and experiences. So in order to elaborate the power of framing, I will draw upon the example of Costa Concordia accident and my interviews with Captain Francisco scattino A. Ever since, I have been researching accidents, and I also wrote a book, which is called, are we learning from accidents? Based on this story, my work draws widely from all disciplines, traditional and topical, and I’m driven by one simple question, how do human beings learn, unlearn, relearn and make decisions? I’m motivated by the idea of understanding collective sense making and decision making. The official Accident Investigation framed the captain as the main cause of the accident. The recommendations of the report and the public perception became heavily focused on the captain’s character, his individual personality, which is why no one dared to speak with him to alert him when the ship was running into the rocks. Some of his colleagues even called him a bully. Projection and hatred are so easy, learning and understanding takes a lot of effort by destroying the character of the Captain, what have we really learned? That’s my real question. So in this video, we will delve deep to examine the framing of this accident and more specifically, why no one speaks, even when the stakes are high and the danger is imminent. What can we learn about ourself from that is where learning and change really begins, or so it should. For background, this is a short clip of the voice data recorder, also referred to as the black box in the aviation world of the situation on the bridge of the ship moments before the accident. I have edited the video To keep It Short You

Nippin Anand  09:17

allow me now to narrate the situation on The bridge of the caustic and Courier before the accident on the bridge, there are three officers, one helmsman and the captain. The ship is approaching the Julio islands for a sail past. The captain is looking out of the window. Two officers are monitoring the electronic charts. A third officer is at the navigation console, and the helmsman is on the wheel moments before the accident, as you saw, the captain can be overheard correcting the helmsman at least twice for misinterpreting his orders. On one occasion, the captain even chuckles when the helmman mistreats his orders. The captain says, pay proper attention, or else we go straight on the rocks. In light of this context, I empathize with anyone who asks, Why did no one speak to the captain or warn him of the looming danger? I too was confronted by that question when I saw this maneuver for the first time, but over the years, I’ve realized the power of framing our questions. If we are not conscious of our framing, we will remain locked in our worldview. It is my intention in this session to surface the unconscious in our questions, and more specifically, to explore why the reframing is so essential in addressing the assumptions behind why people don’t speak up, even when it is so obvious to many of us from the outside that they should think of frames as glass we wear, just like those glasses frames act as a mental structure and influence the way we see the world. When we realize how we frame our narratives, we can more easily recognize our hidden expectations and goals and, more generally, our beliefs, which we will come to towards the end of this session. So Why won’t people speak up for this? Let’s go back to the Tenerife air disaster back in 1977 I just want you to see the narrative of this accident. The disaster occurred because the co pilot did not question the judgment of the pilot. The co pilot knew the correct course of action, but did not feel psychologically safe to question the pilot. The co pilot would die rather than questioning the authority. If the copilot had spoken up, the crash wouldn’t happen. We now train our people. We even have protocols for them to speak up and when they don’t, we reprimand them. So you can see the hidden belief in this narrative, which is defying hierarchy, challenging authority. We get a same sense of this when we look at the concept of psychological safety. The Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson, who I interviewed on this topic, believes that people don’t speak up because of a lack of psychological safety, a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes. What is the unconscious bias in this framing for a start, speaking up means the vulnerable and the powerless raising concerns to someone in a position of authority. Secondly, speaking up is a relational issue, because it takes at least one other person for a speaker to speak with. However, with any exchange, there is the possibility of an imbalance of power, and in any act of speaking up, this implies issues of ethics, hierarchy and justice. Most speak up courses models and images I have reviewed do not address the ethical assumptions and power relationships. More on this as we go through this session. Now, let’s look at how this accident was actually framed speak up managing error true resource management. When we review the cause of the accident, we find the same unconscious inferences and assumptions as when we were discussing psychological safety errors, mistakes and questions that were never raised by the bridge team to the captain in the official report. As you can see here, the following contribution factors were highlighted as the cause of the accident, keeping high speed in night conditions still close to the shoreline, masters, inattention, stroke distraction, to the presence of persons, externals to the bridge watch and a phone call not related to the navigation operations bridge team, although more than suitable in terms of number of crew members not paying the required attention, Master’s arbitrary attitude in reviewing the initial navigation plan, making it quite hazardous in including a passage of 0.5 miles off the coast, by using an inappropriate nautical chart, disregarding to properly consider the distance from the coast and not relying on the support of the bridge team. Overall passive attitude of the bridge staff, nobody seemed to have urged the master to accelerate the turn or to give him warning on the looming danger. Therefore, the accident may lead to an overall discussion on the adequacy in terms of the organization and roles of bridge team. The same report also proposed that regarding the competency, not having attending a training course on bridge resource management, not mandatory at this stage could have represented a weakness in terms of competency human factors, as in bad human performance in this casualty. In fact, none of those deck officers on duty before the contact had attended a BRM course. Now this is an important thing, because how we frame the problem actually leads to how we then frame the solution to the problem. As we looked at various course providers in this industry, we started to see there were some common metaphors included, for example, situational awareness, language barriers, cultural differences, crisis management, decision making, workload management, communication and assertiveness. When you go deeper into this analysis of various service providers who provide this kind of training, two key themes. Out good communication and assertiveness. Another issue that caught my attention was a simplistic divide between technical and non technical skills in the core structure, while technical skills include practical ship handling, the collision regulations and the knowledge of the weather and nautical sciences, everything related to the cognitive and behavioral aspects of training was bundled into a package title, non technical skills, or soft skills. Once a service provider who joined my workshop once said, you have to be innovative with your words. If you’re trying to sell soft skills to a technical industry, you have to use the word non technical skills. Now that tells us a lot about the power of framing mental models and culture in general. I then spoke to the captain of the ship to understand his perspective of the accident. So I’m going to introduce the captain to you now and hear him what he thinks about the idea of training.

15:57

I understand that the industry no is organizing many leadership training, whatever, and I appreciate this. But this is not a matter of leadership. This is the very start of the education of a decade where even if you know how to share the information. But before of sharing the information, you must have this professional skill to recognize the danger. If you don’t recognize the danger, how can you share the information with the others? And who capitans, if an officer says, capital, we are one cable from Iraq doesn’t react. The problem is that I have reason to believe that nobody had the experience to recognize the danger and to overestimate the professionalism of the capital that maybe can have some magician way out. Maybe, because the capital is so skillful, is so a good semen that he has, is a way to Don’t provoke that. Come on, we are going I hate I show you the black box is unbelievable when I saw that white form, I don’t know how I didn’t fade.

Nippin Anand  17:30

As I listened more to Francisco’s version of the accident, a powerful story was waiting to be told. Francisco told me that one afternoon he had visited a Jacuzzi on one of the passenger decks, and on finding that it was filled with fresh water instead of sea water, he called one of the junior officers to seek an explanation. The captain was told that a sea water pump was not working and the crew had decided to use fresh water instead. Francisco then asked the officer to get some salt tablets from the ship’s hospital to turn the water saline. The next day, the captain returned, but found that a Jacuzzi water tasted the same. He asked the officer why he had not added the salt to the water. The officer responded, but I added three tablets. Captain, a frustrated Cate know, looked into his eyes, three tablets. Can you believe three tablets for a Jacuzzi filled with water, it shouldn’t need a maritime expert to understand Francisco’s frustration and the symbolic meaning of the story in his world view, an officer whose understanding of a basic principle such as the salinity of sea water was so far from the fact, which is approximately 35 grams per liter was a person who could not be trusted as an independent Watchkeeping officer at sea, there was no trust between the captain and his subordinates. The basis for the lack of trust was the captain’s perception that his officers were not competent to perform their duties. This brief anecdote became a turning point in the analysis of the narrative, helping me uncover my own assumptions about the accident thus far. Now, one thing which is important to understand is the concept of power gradient before I delve deeper into it. When I first heard the captain saying that people don’t speak up because they don’t know what to say, it almost felt like a naive and oversimplified view of the problem, a team of competent people on the bridge of a ship are reluctant to tell the captain that the ship will hit the rocks because they don’t recognize the danger. Could it be that the captain is being so arrogant about himself, as some people told me when they watched him on this video? Now, the industry has traditionally framed this problem as one of power gradient. Many accidents at sea can be explained basis on the power gradient. Myth. It is a familiar narrative of dominant captain and meek subordinates, some of whom are citizens of the Third World. The officers struggle to speak up because of the power gradient, the disproportionate use and sometimes abuse. Of power by those in position of authority makes it difficult for people in lower positions to raise their concerns and share their ideas. If we extend this discussion to other areas of work and life, the issue of power or authority gradient is not to the organizational discourse the principles of true resource management training in the aviation sector, which emerged from the Anglo Saxon culture, fit naturally within the concept of the power gradient. An overconfident captain and a subservient co pilot struggling to raise his concerns to the captain is a familiar pattern in the Risk and Safety discourse, as well as well within the maritime history. But if, even if the captain is being arrogant, falling back to an abstract concept such as power or authority can only take us so far. What is the nature of power and how does the power gradient manifest in this relationship between the captain and his officers? What is the basis for the captain’s arrogance? What hinders his officers from speaking up, even when the ship is heading onto the rocks? How well does the power gradient fit with the captain’s narrative that his officers lack the basic competence to detect and report a ship heading onto the rocks? Is this a problem related to the cost of Concordia alone? Is it that simple? The more I pondered on the story of the three Sol tablets, the more I became convinced that Francisco perceptions cannot be disregarded as simple moaning. I decided to take a step back to observe the historical trends in the maritime labor and economics, and the data from the cruise line International Association revealed a very different world view. I started by observing an unprecedented increase in both the demand for and the supply of cruise ships between 2003 and 2013 the global demand for those ships increased by 77% and within Europe as much as 136% similarly, the global supply of cruise ships capacity increased by 84% in the Mediterranean alone, it surged to 160% understandably, the rise of tourism in the cruise sector to the increased number of ships translates into another problem, which is a shortage of qualified seafarers. The operators and shipping companies attempt to address this requirement through fast track training and promotions of seafarers to higher ranks. Under normal circumstances, it would take anything between 12 to 15 years for a cadet to progress through ranks to become a captain, all the way from a cadet to a third officer, second officer, chief officer and a captain, as you can see in this picture. But when there is an acute shortage of personnel, seafarers are promoted more rapidly in order to meet the demands of the industry. In other words, it is a cyclical nature of the demand in the maritime industry that the labor market must learn to respond to in order to ensure a steady supply of seafarers on ship. An exponential increase in the demand and supply of the ship is often addressed by faster promotion of officers through the ranks and production line training to bridge the gap in the training needs of the industry, but here in lies a problem at sea. There is a ceiling to progression. Once you have been promoted to the captain, that’s the end of your career development. Now Add to this a steady supply of junior officers at entrance level, while Captain and the chief officers continue to grow in their ranks and experience, they must also be prepared to work with an influx of junior officers entering the profession in order to meet the demands of the industry. Things get a little bit more complicated, and this is something that I found in my own research, in my own PhD, for a myriad reasons, such as socially isolated, lifestyle, limited chances to travel the world beyond the port, limits comparable opportunities. Ensure based jobs, limited internet connectivity on the ships. These young entrants are not driven by the same motivations as their old counterparts, a pattern that I’ve seen myself while on the one hand, experience starts to accumulate in senior ranks. On the other hand, a transactional approach to the profession is adopted by the new recruits means a very different problem, which is a dearth of skills and motivation at entry level. Seafaring has always been characterized by hierarchy and by rank based organization of work, but the emerging patterns of work and skills have given this hierarchy a new form and a new meaning. The story of the three Sol tablets was now beginning to make a lot more sense to me.

Nippin Anand  24:36

What you see in this picture is the emerging form of hierarchy, which we call the scale gradient. The skill gradient between the ranks is when the difference between domain specific experience become significantly large. Typically, this will lead to two subcultures in the same space, experts and novices, and as we will discover as we go when we reframe speak up. As an expert novice issue, it takes on a very different meaning in most high skilled jobs, work experience has always been a prerequisite, but a single minded focus on ensuring that the captains and chief engineers are adequately experienced in their ranks, from both a regulatory and commercial perspective, steepens the skill gradient even further when the industry tries to ensure that the senior officers on the ship are adequately experienced, and it does not mandate the same requirements for a junior ranks, and imbalance emerges, leading to expert novice pattern on both the Costa Concordia, the senior officer on duty at the time of the accident was barely half The age of the captain and had significantly less relevant experience. Similar crewing patterns have emerged when we examine accidents in other high risk industries. In the case of Ethiopian Airlines Flight described here, the co pilot had clocked a mere 200 hours of flying experience alongside a pilot with more than 8000 hours. The co pilot was on his first flight aboard a Boeing three seven as a fully approved pilot, and it was his first assignment without a training pilot overseeing him. Here we see how organizations succumb to cost pressure, struggle to attract the required talent and find innovative ways to deal with systemic problems. It is in the rare occurrences of catastrophes of this nature that we begin to see how serious issues of this nature are obscured by audit trails, benchmarking standards, assurance reports and training programs that are so distanced from reality. Think how the framing of the problem is speaking up cloaks the seriousness of an industry wide problem. How can courage and empathy become a replacement for the requisite knowledge and skills? The expert novice relationship complicates the problem of speaking up in more ways than that, in a functional sense, the bridge flight deck and operating theater are intended for piloting, navigating and surgery, but in the same space, young novices also receive training from expert staff. How does this impact on their social identity, power, perception and relationship? A ship captain becomes a teacher and a subordinate switches the role to become a trainee. How might they speak up and challenge the authority of a teacher? Where do we draw the line between a teacher and a captain during the course of the day, the boundary is breached on so many occasions when we reframe speaking up in the context of the expert novice framework, we arrive at a different understanding of the problem. What does it mean to be assertive? How can junior officers raise concerns? How to speak up when in doubt? Let us examine how the construct of speaking up translates in practice, typically, an example of effective communication is that the captain issues an order, and then, to minimize the risk of miscommunication, the officer repeats the order for the communication to be effective, it is imperative that the receiver acknowledges that what they have heard and understood from the person giving the message. This is often referred to as closed loop communication, but in an expert novice culture effective communication in more than just the feedback loop, depending on the culture the novice might fear speaking up or being labeled wrong, while the expert does not see much value in what the novice has to contribute. The novice, on the other hand, is likely to live with a constant fear of being exposed as incompetent. This is not a problem that can be addressed to psychological safety, in that even with a high level of psychological safety in the work environment, the expert will not take the word of the novice seriously in a professional relationship, the basis of trust is not psychological safety, but the level of competence, the supply of competency failures, has not kept up with the neoliberalism and the rise in the demand for crew services. Rather, the systemic issues have been framed as a problem of speaking up, lack of assertiveness and communication, and presented as a behavioral problem. How can a short course in non technical skills be a substitute for years of experience and expertise acquired in the profession? Let’s take another example. A typical reaction to the problem of lack of resources in the maritime world is to ensure that the areas of high traffic density the bridge is adequately crude. But consider, once again, the expert novice culture, and we see that a captain surrounded by more junior officers will only lead to a yet more uneven cognitive workload for the captain. All of this can be amplified depending on the levels of stress and distress on the ship. Now the Captain has to navigate the ship and monitor the actions and movements of the novices. So in an expert novice work culture, more people may not always be an appropriate solution to a lack of resources on the bridge of Costa Concordia, at the time of the accident, there were at least three junior officers around the captain. When in doubt, speak out, this is the captain’s Knight order to his junior officer before retiring to bed at. Right? It is an assurance to the subordinate officer that help is always at hand from the captain should a situation arise. Imagine, however, what this means from a novice perspective, when faced with doubt. Do I really want to call the captain and expose my incompetence? How useful is this construct of psychological safety in an expert novice work culture. The problem is not one of speaking up, but of understanding the tensions between two different subcultures at play, expert and novice, created by the commercial competition. The problem is both social and relational. And to illustrate my point, I will now use a model that we call one brain and three minds in social psychology of risk, this is a foundational model to illustrate the embodied nature of the human mind, one brain and three minds together, the three modes of being, head, heart and gut represent the whole person, instead of the prevailing brain centric view of humans in mind. One we are in rational, logical and analytical mode. Think of mind. One is a state when we learn to follow the rules of the trade and slowly start to earn the confidence and respect within our profession when we follow a checklist instruction or a procedure in order to carry out a particular task, we usually do it slowly and methodically at the start. Decisions made in this mode are not efficient. They are not fast, even simple, hand eye coordination when using a tool can take months or years of repetitive practice. We then come to mind too, which is about thinking heuristically, thinking that relies on Learn shortcuts and practice habits. This mind state is in the process of developing into automaticity. This kind of decision making is essential for humans in order for us to be fast and efficient. This is decision making based on patterns, trial and error and habits that have become infused or embodied into our thinking through experience and is triggered by perception, experience or memory. Much of this type of decision making does not involve any rational choice or analytical thinking. It is quick and efficient. And then we come to mind three which is about total automaticity, which is what the neuroscientist DiMaggio states as a non conscious decision making in this day one is unaware of the process of deciding thinking or rational processing. This is often referred to as gut thinking or intuition, and it is commonly understood as being on autopilot together mind one, mind two and mind three is the holistic approach to human mind, also termed as the embodied mind. It is well documented in a range of studies, in theology, mythology, analytical psychology, neurosciences, latest neurobiology, biology and evolutionary studies. People, for example, Martin Buber, guy, Claxton, Antonio Damasio, Mark Johnson’s are worth a read. It means that our whole body has its own mind, and hence the word embodied mind. In other words, decision making is not restricted to the brain. Our entire body participates in the process. I will do another podcast on this in more detail in a few weeks. For now, the embodied mind and one brain three minds model should not be confused with kahneman’s theory of system one and system two, the fast and slow mode of thinking. What Kahneman proposes is an oversimplified and dualist metaphor to illustrate how human beings make decisions based on the principles of behavioral economics and hedonic psychology. A metaphor is not a replacement for a conceptual model of how the human mind functions and how consciousness needs to be understood. It does not attempt to understand the mind body connection or the fact that the human body is itself a mind. Moreover, kahnemans model excludes the idea of an intermediate developing aspect of learning in mind two, that connects the novice and the expert with this in mind, let’s come back to the expert novice relationship, as we see in this picture, typically, the novice enters the profession in mind one and slowly learns the rule of navigation and ship handling. In the early stages of the novices career, their decision making is systematic, slow, conscious and inefficient. The novice has developed few heuristics and has little understanding of the extensive experience and felt knowledge of the captain, according to Malcolm Gladwell, such knowledge takes 10,000 hours to develop what might be all in a day’s work for a captain, could be a tight safety margin for the novice officer, but knowing that the captain has the power in this relationship, the novice learns to exercise caution in questioning the captain’s decision and expressing his concerns the captain on the other. And is an expert operating in mind three this, as we know, is non rational, intuitive, automatic and unconscious, and above all, super fast. Over the years, the captain has learned the skills of the trade, and it is for their efficient implicit knowledge and work experience that captains are rewarded by the ship owners and held in regards by their peers, the decision made by the captain are embodied and tacit, and therefore not even knowing to the captain themselves that they have absorbed within their body so much knowledge and experience over the many years in the profession, routinely navigating the ship close to the islands adds to the captain’s skills, pride and confidence. Perhaps it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that in the absence of another team member who questions their ability, the captain can become overconfident. Many accidents at sea are the results of an expert operating in mind three, while the novices are still training and learning. In mind one and mine, too. The problem is no longer of speaking up or down or sideways, but how well the experts relate with the novices. In other words, the problem is not with the individual, it is cultural and relational. So we return to the point raised at the outset, when the ship sails a few 100 meters from the rocks, the captain is left frustrated, not understanding why none of his officers had spoken to him about the danger. The rest of us are also convinced, watching the black box and questioning why the hell did no one speak up. Our framing of the problem does not allow us to look beyond managing the fallible humans, ie Crew Resource Management and psychological safety. But when we reframe the problem of error management and shift our focus onto the embodied mind, we come to understand a different view of the problem. A frustrated may not have realized that the answer to his problems lies in his own unconscious with an expert surrounded by novices and beginners. Perhaps, as the captain pointed out in the video, he has turned into a magician. Maybe that’s what he is in the eyes of his officers, at least. And if so, No one warned the captain, because no one doubted his mystical powers. When a maneuver that requires years of expertise stands far outside the competence of these officers, what choices did they have when the margins of safety have been eroded and risk becomes embodied in one single expert? What is there left to say who should become aware that a ship is heading into a rock at what point, why and how? So you can see that by reframing the problem, we arrive at a different place. And this is precisely the point our first question to scatino was an open question, what have you learned from this experience? And a willingness to engage with him as a whole person helped me to arrive with a completely different understanding of this problem. In an interview that lasted for about 12 hours, the captain spoke openly and passionately about all the things from his own perspective. How far would I have gone if I raised the question, Why did no one speak up? Professor Gail Fairhurst once said, through faming, we create the realities to which we then respond. I think that sums up the gist of the story so well,

Nippin Anand  38:23

I now want to spend some time to reflect upon the hidden assumptions in the framing of our questions. Why did no one speak up to the captain? What is the hidden belief in this question? Why does this question appeal to us so much in the industry, we often speak about asking better questions, but a judgment about better or worse can only be made once we understand the hidden beliefs and assumptions in the framing of our questions. I think it was the English social psychologist Graham Wallace who first said, How can I know what I think till I see what I say? So what explains this ultimate faith in the myth of speaking up when things go wrong, why is speaking up the first question on our mind? It occurs to me, after reading a number of books on morality and ethics and traveling the world around, that speaking up fits so beautifully well within the western view on morality, the Western society is founded on the philosophy of autonomy and individualism, the moral foundation of autonomy and individualism can be summed up into one word, harm. First, do no harm. Children figure out early through education and life experiences, that harm is not acceptable. Harm creates suffering. Harm is painful. Harm should be avoided at all costs. Suffering should be avoided. When I first came to the UK in 2006 I was shocked by the wide variety of painkillers sold over the counter. The western view on morality is centered on the concept of harm aversion. When we read the Marxist. Literature, we also see that harm is viewed as a sign of oppression of the poor and the marginalized by the powerful and the rich in the society. Harm can be physical or psychological, although the latter is much more difficult to recognize, because it cannot always be measured in a materialist society where we give so much attribution to measurement and matter, psychological harm can go undetected for long periods of time, until there are revolutions and revolts against the powerful and the elite. Metoo is a classic example of that the antidote to harm is fairness, justice and giving voice to the marginalized and the poor. In that sense, concepts such as bravery, justice, just culture, courage, stop the work, authority, psychological safety and speaking up seem like a natural solution to moral wrongdoings. When things go wrong, speaking up or a lack of psychological safety makes intuitive sense. But the problem with intuitive solutions is that we don’t think twice about the problem before we propose solutions. And as we saw in the case of the acoustic Concordia, clearly speaking up was not the issue, but so strong is the power of framing in our minds that we never slow down and question ourselves about how others might think about the problem. In fact, if anyone tries to offer an alternative solution, we will reject their views outright, outcast them and even demonize them. But like me, if you have been fortunate to travel the world, live around the world, and felt challenged by a wide variety of beliefs and stories, you will notice that not all societies are based on the principles of autonomy, fairness, justice, and in that sense, speaking up may not be the panacea. When we step outside the western model of autonomy, we realize that there are other worldviews that don’t necessarily agree with ours. For instance, there are other forms of life that base their moral reasoning on a strong sense of community in such societies, social relationships come before individual needs. Hierarchy is rigid and inflexible. Elders expect the respect that they have gained through experience and wisdom. Women eat last. Leaders can be autocratic, but autocracy is not necessarily a bad thing. Autocracy can also be benevolent. Think of your role as a parent to ensure that all the kids get an equal share of the dessert after the meal. Hierarchy is not always bad. I once watched a large group of Chinese family eating a meal, and I was pleasantly surprised by how old parents eat first and then they take care of their grandchildren with affection, whilst young parents can enjoy a peaceful meal. My point really is that we tend to think negatively about autocracy, but it’s another way of looking at the world. And then there are other forms of life where God comes first. God is everywhere, on the roads, at the office entrances, in the taxis, and customer is God. Captain is the God. So it makes a lot of sense why people don’t speak up to challenge the captain. Remember, the captain is not only the boss, but also a teacher, and in some cultures, teacher is a god. So why would anyone dare to challenge and speak up to the God? God knows it all, isn’t it? Morality comes in different shades and colors. The morally superior world of reasoning and science tends to reject, or rather push back, alternative colors of morality. The trouble is that unless we question our our own frame of mind, the basis of our own morality, we cannot understand another person’s point of view and their basis of morality. All the three frames of reference, autonomy, community and divinity, are right in their own ways and furthermore, very impregnable, very coherent. Each of them have a very, very clear view on everything from from heaven at the top to hell at the bottom, as Professor Jonathan Haidt so beautifully explained in his book The righteous mind. Each version of morality gives people from each culture a coherent way of how to live life, safety and risk as an industry draws heavily from materialist philosophy and the moral values based on autonomy and harm utilitarianism, maximizing pleasure and avoiding pain, or everything we do is for the greater good. So when we speak about justice and just culture and letting go of someone because they did not follow the process, that is utilitarianism at work, deontology, what is the logic behind Can we have some universal laws that can override the context of the situation. When things go wrong, the first thing with the mind is not the context of the situation, but whether or not those universal laws, that is safety procedures were followed or not. Rationalism, what is the underlying reason? Can we get to the root cause through proper reasoning? Five Whys positivism, evidence based thinking, when things go wrong, what were the facts? Can those facts be verified? Subjective opinions don’t matter. What matters is facts and evidences and finally, pragmatism. What really matters is the end result. No one asked the question and for whom all these philosophies are situated in the wider umbrella of materialism, everything can be reduced to matter. The universe is made up of matter. It’s a reductionist and an analytical approach to life. One only needs to look at the symbols and rituals of safety, and it starts to make sense, while nothing wrong with the material philosophies, they have brought us very far, except that when chaos ensues, or, as some would say, when we are faced with uncertainty, or rather radical uncertainty, all material theories go hiding behind the walls because they cannot give meaning to human sufferings. Ask anyone who has lost a child or a loved one, what an incident investigation report will mean to them when a loved one dies. We wish we could have spent more time with them, enjoyed with them, hugged them more, loved them more. But I think the second, and my view, a more serious problem in relationship with our discussion is that nearly three and a half billion people on this planet do not believe in materialist thinking and zero harm. And as you travel the world, you can see people have different beliefs about safety and what is safe and what is unsafe and what is pure and what is impure. How a clean and pure area is elevated above and therefore separated from unclean and impure, even within the same space, you’d be surprised how often even such seemingly simplistic ideas of what is clean and unclean on the surface are deeply penetrated into people’s lives, and how our deepest beliefs continue to influence our views about what is wrong, what is right and what is safe and what is unsafe, what is clean And what is unclean. It is tempting to push our beliefs onto others and say, no, no, no, my way is safer than yours. My way is more hygienic than yours, but what that would mean is that my culture knows better than yours, and there lies a problem of cultural superiority, which is why most culture change programs and safety culture initiatives fail so miserably. But as a start, if we learn to ask open ended questions, come to terms with our inner beliefs, respect others and help them to see through their own beliefs without offending them, change can be more fruitful and less resistant. The first thing that comes to mind when we see a ship hitting the rocks with a team of competent people on the bridge is Why did no one speak up? I urge you to slow down and reflect on the framing of your question. Essentially, there are two problems with the framing of this question. The first one is fairly straightforward. We have already labeled this as a problem of speaking up. Someone needs to have the courage to rise to the challenge, but you can’t speak to a wall, can you? And you can’t speak up until someone else is listening in. In other words, the problem is relational, not individual. The second problem, in my view, is more serious, but it is also a continuum of the first problem. Once we have framed the problem in a certain way, we look for solutions along the same lines, where else will we look so from the start, we have made up our mind that this is a problem of autonomy, harm, injustice, which can only be resolved through familiar solutions such as psychological safety, non technical skills and soft skills. And the accident report has clearly highlighted that this is a failure of bridge resource management. But as we saw in the case of this story, this is not a behavioral problem. This is an issue of expertise. Expertise cannot be developed in a three to five days course. Expertise takes a different approach and it takes time. Furthermore, expertise cannot be concentrated in one person. Expertise is relational. When people work in teams and groups to carry out high risk work, but we cannot understand the holistic nature of the problem until we ask open ended questions, challenge our frame of mind and step into another person’s frame of mind and their beliefs. Change becomes effective, and people take ownership for change when they realize that you have understood the nature of their problem through their eyes and their frame of mind, that, in my view, is the power of framing. I hope this video has challenged your beliefs and assumptions. If you are interested to read more, I have just written a book. Are we learning from accidents? The book addresses a range of questions in. Loading. How can we truly and genuinely learn from accidents and everyday work? How can we interview people involved in accidents? How can we recognize our biases and assumptions when we interview people, analyze information, observe people’s behaviors, write reports and review accident reports. How do human beings make decisions under pressure, and how can we become strategic and deliberate about learning and change? The book is available on our website, novellas, dot solutions, forward slash shop. It’s also available on Amazon, Kindle and apple. Apart from this, we also have a three days extensive program on learning from accidents coming up in London from 23rd until 25th October, where we will cover this topic in much depth and give you a range of methods and tools to put your learning in practice. Check out our website, novellas, dot solutions, forward slash events. In the next video in this series, I will discuss how to understand and improve the safety culture in younger organizations. Hi. I hope you enjoyed watching this video. My name is nippin Anand. My work really lies at the intersection between anthropology, social psychology and the latest neurosciences. We are a small group of researchers and practitioners, and our interest lies in organizational sense making, collective sense making, which is how do people make decisions in groups? We also look at organizational culture. Some people like to call it safety culture, and trying to diagnose, understand and improve the culture of the organization, please subscribe to our channel at Team novellus on YouTube, and also visit us at novellus.solutions, our website. Thank you for watching foreign.