Researchers and academics struggle with the notion of (safety) culture. Most begin with defining Culture. They try really hard but the harder they try, the more it tends to slip away. Frustrated by the C word, they start mocking it. Some become bitter and defensive and others replace it with ‘Systems’. And then there are those who have learned to adjust their pitch to dance to the needs of the industry. They call it ‘Socio-technical systems’. But in all this criticism and critique, there is a dominant theme: a deep desire for measuring and controlling the culture. There is little attempt to understand Culture.
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The problem with defining culture
Let me begin by saying this. Culture cannot be defined propositionally i.e. by declaring what culture is and what it is not. That would make it a purely intellectual exercise – a prerequisite common within the academic circles. Outside of academia, much of life is lived and learned through experience without getting into definitions. I once asked someone what justice meant to her. She responded with distress and trauma. Sarah had lost her father 35 years ago in a car accident and the verdict of the court had gone as far as dehumanising her entire family in their quest for justice. That was how she understood justice, not what she was taught in textbooks at her school. I have repeated this exercise with almost all social constructs (and physical too) – leadership, risk, accidents, learning, racism, and even apples, whiteboards and wine bottles. We are all products of our unique histories, personal and collective memories, traumas, phobias, motivations, orientations, aspirations and dreams. What we learn in lecture theatres and classrooms only forms a tiny part of our lives.
Another problem with defining culture is the implied exception. What is left out in one definition becomes the primary focus of another definition. Have you ever noticed the excitement in an academic’s eyes when someone suggests a tweak to their theories? But when you challenge the professor’s assumptions it is as if you have turned their world upside down. Many will live and die defending their thesis and reject alternative explanations. The few who I know have arrived at a point in time where their theories dictate their lives. But that is expected of academics (Read Nassim Taleb on Skin in the Game).
Academic mediocracy
The psychology of academics also needs to be situated within the wider context of the education industry. Universities are territorial by design and territories are reinforced through disciplines and departments. If you are a professor in evolutionary sciences and you have a credible biological theory on culture, your views will not be entertained in the school of social sciences. If you are a relativist your work will not be taken seriously in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). The education industry has historically underplayed the role of cross-disciplinary thinking under the false pretext of ‘contribution to knowledge’. Most traditional universities lack the infrastructure to think with and across disciplines.
Seeking truth is not always the goal of academia; it is about protecting careers and prestige of seasoned academics. (This is not a textbook hypothesis; it is my lived experiences of working in the education industry for over 5 years.) The safest academic output is the one that says nothing at all.
From research to practice
Is it the historical developments in academia rooted in mediocracy and mono-disciplinary thinking that has brought us to where we are today, I wonder? I see so many practitioners, regulators, consultants and managers have fallen for simplistic ideas and constructs of culture. Many conflate ‘systems’ with ‘culture’ in their language and culture change with rewriting processes or pushing for leadership programmes.
The problem is not that experts and consultants are not read on culture. What I often notice is that they have read only one book or submitted to one author as their Gods. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. A little knowledge about the moral and political truths of people who don’t share our values can be most dangerous. People become insidiously self-righteous when they hear about distant cultures who do not conform to their textbook thinking. If you have never seen a person eating with hands, your first instinct will not foster compassion and curiosity. If you have never met people who chew tobacco all day to avoid drinking water, your first reaction will not be to engage with their history and geographical characteristics.
Your first reaction will be to defend your beliefs and preserve your life processes i.e. fight, flight or freeze in your moral world. Many safety practitioners and consultants lack the ability to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar. According to one theory, the term Barbarians was coined when the Victorian anthropologists encountered an ‘uncivilised’ population muttering ba ba ba. Safety as an industry has not moved beyond Victorian anthropology. (I will return to this theme).
Safety culture and religion
Our most fundamental differences about good and bad, sacred and profane, heavenly and earthly, moral and immoral, pure and impure, and compliant and non-compliant are not based on textbook definitions. Our differences are deeply (and unconsciously) religious (Read The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt). I will never forget the day when I interviewed a forklift driver who suffered critical injuries after he fell off the vehicle. ‘What have you learned from this accident?’, I asked Khalid. His immediate reflex was, ‘it’s God’s will’. Hindus carry pictures of their deities to work and view all misfortune as the outcome of their own actions (Karma). The Buddhists view Time as impermanent and they do not view mortality as the end of the life. In certain cultures (and religions), the alphabet is written from right to left. People do not perceive right as correct. These differences are not trivial given that many models of safety (Bow Ties, Swiss Cheese, Fishborne, ICAM) depict a linear representation of reality. I am not convinced that the risk travels in such structural order and threat goes unidirectional from left to right. Are you?
Jonathan Haidt, in his book The Righteous Mind, shows that harm prevention, psychological safety, and the courage to speak up are embedded in Western values of autonomy and individualism. The Eastern world outrightly rejects these values and views community and divinity as the basis of all morality and social and political order. We keep pushing for more psychological safety in workplaces as if it is a universal Truth despite clear evidence that the tenets of psychological safety interfere with the core beliefs of certain societies. (I have previously written an article on Why People Don’t Speak Up?).
People don’t feel empowered to speak up even when threat is imminent because their moral compass points at respecting their elders. The values of hierarchy overrides autonomy. Khalid’s learning, according to Professor Jonathan Haidt, is the result of his ultimate faith in divinity. If all this sounds like nonsensical, chances are that you have arrived the limits of your imagination and cultural worldview. The secular western world is not as scientific as it pretends to be (Read Rupert Sheldrake on The Science Delusion or the British philosopher Mary Midgley on The Myth of Science). Religion (including the dogma of Scientism) segregates people and religion still remain the foundation of our perception about how we see and what we consider right and wrong.
Culture eats strategy, leadership and processes for breakfast
Books on safety culture categorically avoid even the slight mention of faith, religion, superstition, spirituality and rituals in understanding human behaviour. This is why those who don’t read outside of safety books cannot make the connection between religious structures (including their own) and how people’s faith interferes with their beliefs about safety. Far from engaging, we become threatened by alternative beliefs. We fight, we argue and we demean the other to prove our own beliefs, definitions and principles right (Read The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker).
We can laugh at the faith of Khalid or Shivaram and then turn to ‘risk metrics’ and ‘root cause analysis’ to determine what went wrong. It is not what we find but what we believe to be true. Safety sciences even direct us that we can alter the beliefs of others including Khalid and Shivaram to match with our documented processes. Andrew Hopkins’ book Structure Creates Cultureproposes that processes and systems can override people’s beliefs about safety. From Hopkins’ perspective, those two men on the cover image must submit their faith to Kantian deontology (follow the rules). The managers and supervisors, primed by the dogma of measurement and control, embrace these simplistic ideas quite literally and without thinking. Such belief systems can be extremely helpful for achieving deadlines and creating a temporary delusion of certainty thus escaping thinking and hard work.
The old saying ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’ proves the impotency of cultural theories beyond safety to include mergers, acquisitions, culture change, new technology and all acts of organising. After years of telling and selling hegemonic (top-down) culture change models we realise that it simply does not work (read Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo). If only processes, rules, tools and technologies could come to our rescue when our moral worlds collide (Read Peter Senge on The Art and Practice of Learning Organisations on how to successfully create culture change).
Step away from defining (Safety) Culture
If you see Apple as a source of nutrition and I see it as a device for entertainment, definitions and arguments produce bitterness and distance us apart. Definitions become a source of Cultural Imperialism: My culture knows better than yours.
Anthropologists (i.e. people who formally study culture) understand this conundrum. They make no attempt to define Culture through propositions. Instead, they travel far from their native lands to escape their imaginary ideas and textbook definitions. They travel so far away from the comfort and familiarity of their own culture that their language falls apart in making sense of the world. In this new world, they learn to meet with people without the temptation to judge them or fit their beliefs to match with their preconceived definitions.
In this meeting – commonly referred to as fieldwork – they are confronted with people whose habits, rituals and moral truths makes no sense. People who eat stuff that they cannot even smell; people who nod their heads sideways to affirm in agreement; people who climb poles without head protection or safety boots. Anthropologists understand the influence of religion, faith and rituals on peoples’ tastes, preferences and choices. What a society considers good and bad without questioning is not a matter of ‘what people do around here’; it is the deeply-held structure that religion leaves behind even centuries after God is Dead. (Read Robert Yelle on The Semiotics of Religion). (I see this a lot in accident investigations and near misses. The office staff, unaware of their own dogma of measurement, rationality, efficiency, time saving, and causal explanations are often left bewildered by the seafarers’ behaviour in a crisis situation.)
Anthropologists do not get into lecturing people, judging them, correcting their gestures or saving them from dying. Doing so implies many things including that the anthropologist 1) knows what is right from wrong, 2) is morally superior to the natives, and 3) exists to save the others. Instead, they chose to experience the culture. They learn to listen and observe in patience whilst constantly questioning their own beliefs and perceptions. This ongoing self-doubt, fundamentally missing in STEM sciences, is the bedrock for all humility in understanding culture.
I see what you did just now but I’m not sure if I have understood. Can you please tell me why you did that?
In this way, the natives learn to trust and share with these strange people from the foreign land, and the anthropologists learn a new way of living and being. In this doubt-full exchange, there is humility and change. Both the natives and the so-called educated persons learn from each other. In this mutuality, there is also dignity and respect. No one feels belittled, offended or proven wrong. Culture change is not imposed; it simply and effortlessly happens, and it grows. That is how change is achieved. It is not my way or highway; change, like all successful marriages, is a compromise and our ability to take a step forward in the unknown.
A little exercise
If you think I’m cooking up this stuff whilst sitting in the comfort of my couch with a glass of wine, try this exercise. Randomly select a sample of 100 authors, research papers, blogs, conference speakers and podcasts on safety and observe the demographics. You will rarely find a First Nations author, a Buddhist, a Muslim or a Hindu person. It is also rare to find women in safety and those who truly advocate for feminist ethics (for example Nel Noddings or Frances Ellen Harper on Care Ethics).
The most dominant voices in safety are often those of middle-aged men anchored to a materialist worldview, masculine ethics and cognitive-rationalist constructs of safety culture. Many have no formal education in humanities, ethics, theology, mythology, anthropology, biology or depth psychology. Many have never lived outside of their own country. Many are not qualified beyond engineering or cognitive psychology (brain-centric theories). Many dismiss the idea of ‘unconscious mind’ because the unconscious cannot be controlled.
Listen carefully to the language and you will uncover a worldview oriented towards behaviourism, positivism, empiricism, deontology and rationalism. In simpler words, a belief that all that cannot be measured against a universal standard simply does not exist. The material concept of harm avoidance and the finite nature of life are at the core of what we mean when we talk about risk reduction and harm prevention (zero harm) within the culture of safety.
It is also rare to come across a safety book or a safety journal written in first person. The myth of objectivity is central in safety research, but also in safety audits and investigations. Safety is not that scientific. Science is a humble and ongoing inquiry into the unknown and a dance between the observer and the observed. Safety, on the other hand, is a religion of absolute certainty and unquestioned submission to objectivity, measurement and control. Follow the process and thou shall be saved.
Now consider this. Nearly half of the world’s population is not male. And nearly 3.5 billion people do not view death as the end of life. Their view of life and death is not linear but cyclical. And they do not look up to the ten rules laid out by the Abrahamic God in their search for salvation.
What is safety culture?
It is somewhat an irony that we have to talk about safety culture by writing an article on safety culture. So I think the best way to end this article is to go back to the cover image.
What are those two men up to?
Why are they not wearing a harness?
Is it not our moral responsibility to save them both?
To answer this question, watch or read this story from Jenny Krasny
“I was working out of a country in Africa, and I was blown away with an initiative that one of my customers had introduced. The initiative was working from heights. He had sent a bunch of people on a course to learn how to work from heights only the week prior.
We got to the operation, and I was overlooking the area where trucks get loaded and unloaded. As we were looking down, all of a sudden, he says, my gosh, Jenny, there are people here working at heights and they’re not following process. We had a bunch of very proud workers with a glossy harness, but they weren’t tethered to anything. And he said, I need to go and tell them off.
And I said, hang on, let’s have another look. And then we saw another worker doing exactly the same thing, and then another worker doing exactly the same thing.
And he looked at me and turned white. And he said, Jenny, this is very embarrassing. And the issue was that the workers were wearing their harnesses, but there was nowhere that they could actually tether this thing off. So, if they did fall, there was nowhere to go. And I remember retelling that story to my manager at the time and he said, see this is good Jenny, this is why they need you here. These people are taking risks where they really shouldn’t be taking risks.
And I remember saying to my manager, I’m not sure about that. Because on the way to the facility, we passed by, I’ll call it accommodation that people were living in. And the accommodation was probably twice the size of my desk. That accommodation was being guarded by someone’s child while mom and dad had gone to work to earn for the family. And this child was guarding the accommodation either with a fairly large knife, a machete that was about as tall as them, or what was even more confronting for someone like me, a string of bullets hanging across their body and them holding a gun. And I said to my manager, you know, the average age for someone, the average lifespan for someone in that particular country is 45, if they’re lucky.
So I said to my manager, who had just turned 45 at the time, do you think you would live your life differently knowing that this might be your last year of life compared to our environment where people might live to 85, 90 if they’re blessed that way?
And he said, well, yes.
And I said, so would that change the way you see risk?
Because right now, someone falling off the back of the truck, that might only be a metre and a half off the ground is not the worst-case scenario for them at all. Not being able to feed their family and having to protect their family by using one of their youngest children. Yeah, life’s a bit different.”
Why we struggle to understand Safety Culture?
The scientific mind with a sense of moral superiority on a mission to save the world cannot engage with the lived realities, priorities, moral truths and sufferings of another culture.
Perhaps our problem is not with Culture or Safety Culture but the methods and ethics by which we claim our understanding.
May be our struggle starts and ends withunderstanding our hidden beliefs and assumptions?
Maybe we should first learn to look into the mirror before we look outside the window.
Readings beyond safety books
Some of the most groundbreaking work in influencing culture change has emerged from cross-disciplinary thinking. Serious thinkers including Ernest Becker, Solomon Sheldon, Karl Weick and Richard Shweder have worked hard to reconcile competing theories of culture: Universalism (abstract thinking); Relativism (comparative thinking); and Evolutionism (Progressive thinking).
Ernest Becker was of the view that broader understanding of human behaviour requires the courage to appreciate broader theories and even those outside of academic circles. These scholars have risen above either/or and embraced this-AND-that to widen our understanding about culture.
Recommended readings for beginners (across disciplines)
The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
Purity and Danger by Mary Douglas
Semiotics of Religion by Robert Yelle
The Feeling of What Happens by Antonio Damasio
Caring by Nel Noddings
Thinking through Cultures by Richard Schweder
Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff
Technopoly by Neil Postman
The Science Delusion by Rupert Sheldrake
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious by Carl Jung
Making Sense of the Organisation by Karl Weick
Mythologies by Ronald Barthes
The Hidden Power of Rituals by Bradd Shore
Discipline and Punish by Michelle Foucault
Culture and Power by Pierre Bourdieu
The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
The Art and Practice of Learning Organisations by Peter Senge
Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo
The Myth of Science by Mary Midgley
SEEK Investigations by Robert Long and Nippin Anand
51 Stories in Culture: To Live and Be by Dr Nippin Anand and Dr Robert Long
Free download at https://novellus.solutions/product/51-stories-in-culture-to-live-and-to-be/
And you need not travel to the Kalahari Desert to understand another Culture.
Watch this video:
Download your free copy of the book
Three Semiotic Walks: Visually Experiencing Culture by Dr Nippin Anand
https://novellus.solutions/product/threesemioticwalks/
How can we diagnose and positively influence Safety Culture
If you wish to learn how to diagnose and influence Culture Change, this video may be helpful as a start.
