Re: Safety Culture

[Jim Muckerheide <muckerheide@mediaone.net>]

Sandy Perle wrote:
> 
> Jeff Eichorts said:
> 
> >  The corporate structure MUST include provisions to hold people
> >  accountable for their
> 
> Admiral Rickover stated,  and rightly so,  (and I had it on a plaque
> which is still sitting in FL),  that someone must always be
> responsible, and accountable. You can't run from it, it is always
> there. One can NOT delegate away accountability... Without
> accountability, there will only be chaos.
> 
> Workers must not live in a punitive environment. I worked in such an
> environment. What that does is foster low morale, employees who shred
> loyalty to the organization, and more importantly, will cover-up
> problems when they occur. When that happens, the problems will not be
> fixed, and a disaster is waiting to happen. This is not to say that
> willful violation or protocols, or, when an incident causes serious
> harm, that there shouldn't be disciplinary actions taken, to include
> termination if necessary. We all must be held accountable. It is
> management's "accountability" to ensure that the process is managed
> in a fair and equitable manner.
> 
> Excellent point, Jeff.
> 
> ------------------
> Sandy Perle

Very good, Sandy.  I'd also add in question to the idea that the "worker is
ultimately responsibile" that the fundamental concept that "management can
delegate authority and hold people accountable, but it can not delegate
responsibility". Most "front line" problems are failures in management
responsibility, including holding people accountable ("conflicting signals"
about what's rewarded and tolerated in "getting the job done"). Management
must define and pay for safety in its process and budget across the
organization. Except for wilfull acts by people who are clearly trained and
supported to do the job right, who are summarily dismissed, management is
responsible. It can never be a "safety group" or other support function within
that process, who has neither the authority over the line managers, nor the
budget authority over the process, either to allocate or spend organization
resources, nor to be responsible for the "bottom line" of the organization. 

See the most fundamental treatment on this in the "Management and Oversight
and Risk Tree" formulation of the System Safety Development Center at INEL.
It's nominally being used in incident/accident investigation, but the
bureaucracy and senior organization managers have mostly managed to gut the
part that shows management's responsibility/accountability since the answers
hit too close to home. :-)

This also shows the principles of managing safety, with little on concepts of
"safety culture". Most, and very different organization and management
"cultures" can be managed to be essentially safe. It's in the process and
structure, not in fuzzy concepts (and destructive in some) as being applied in
nuclear organizations today. If you consider where "safety" is applied in a
vast number of very different organization and management environments, the
centralized philosophy of "safety culture" that is being sold in nuclear
circles as "the answer" is essentially irrelevant. 

The Chairman of AT&T could explain the safety requirements of and for a
lineman on a pole. Safety was built in to the processes that were managed, and
paid for, from the top of the organization. Any organization that does approve
"safety programs and procedures", including investigation and application of
all related safety data, at the top of the organization has not taken
responsibility for safety.  

Regards, Jim Muckerheide
jmuckerheide@delphi.com