Originally posted on June 20, 2016 @ 2:15 PM
Common Sense is Non Sense
Latest article by Dr Rob Long following on from Phil LaDukes article: https://safetyrisk.net/the-greatest-threat-to-safety-might-be-your-safety-training/
I highly recommend Rob’s other Articles HERE and his new book: For The Love of Zero
On Tuesday 12 March 2013, Rockhampton-based Arrow Property Maintenance faced the Queensland Coroner’s Court regarding a teenager electrocuted installing home insulation. The inquest heard from the Director of Arrow that the 16-year-old didn’t receive formal safety training because staying safe was ‘common sense’. http://www.industrysearch.com.au/Insulation-deaths-firm-staying-safe-just-common-sense/n/66145
Arrow director Richard Jackson gave evidence on the first day of a coronial inquest into three deaths on Monday 11 March. Appearing via video link he admitted the only safety training he gave workers installing insulation was to look out for hazards such as bare wires. The inquest will run for the rest of the week, with a further three days set down in early May. In light of the safety legislation the court should quickly dispel the nonsense of ‘common sense’. The notion of ‘common sense’ absolves people of responsibility to ‘ensure a safe workplace’ and is in direct contradiction to the Work Health and Safety Act. If safety is ‘common sense’ then we need no trainers, training programs, safety officers, inductions or safety legislation. The idea of ‘common sense’ simply means ‘fly by the seat of your pants’, or ‘work it out by yourself’.
The idea that ‘common sense’ exists or can be defined is a non-sense. The sooner we dispose of such illogical and unsafe language the better. The safety community needs to understand that language has a ‘priming effect’ on ideas and behavior. This is why supervisors and safety people should avoid language such as ‘common sense’, ‘can do’, ‘get the job done’, ‘zero harm’, ‘whatever it takes’, ‘she’ll be right mate’ and other generalistic and meaningless language that misleads and provides no definition around expectations or behaviour. I read recently a book by Difford entitled Redressing the Balance – A Common sense Approach to Causation and, nowhere in the volume is the concept of common sense defined. This is how the notion of common sense works, it only has special meaning for ‘me’ but there is no common assumed agreement between ‘us’. When we speak of ‘common sense’ we simply mean ‘my sense’ of the context or situation.
The language of ‘common sense’ is always used to blame others for a form of thinking that is not common. For example, ‘If they had only used their common sense, they wouldn’t have been hurt’ or ‘common sense would tell you not to do that’. We hear the constant declaration that common sense is required in a particular place or context and this simply demonstrates that it doesn’t exist. If common sense were a reality then there would be no need for inductions or training, people would somehow magically know what to do. The evidence shows that even after extensive inductions and training, people still don’t know what to do. https://www.ecu.edu.au/news/latest-news/2012/10/resource-industry-workers-oblivious-to-hazards
The reality is that people ‘sensemake’ differently depending on a host of formative reasons. Prof. Karl Weick was first to articulate the idea of ‘organisational sensemaking’. You can read more about organisational sensemaking at http://www.nifc.gov/safety/mann_gulch/suggested_reading/The_Collapse_of_Sensemaking_in_Organizations_The_Mann_Gulch.pdf
and
http://high-reliability.org/files/Enacted_Sensemaking[1][1].pdf
I simplified Weick’s idea of ‘sensemaking’ in my book Risk Makes Sense in order to help people better grasp the idea that there is no ‘common sense’. Weick discusses the essential tools and filters we use to make sense of information, these are:
Self Esteem: Your own confidence in yourself, personal identity and what you think of yourself in relation to others will affect the way you interpret information.
History: Your past story, from where you were born and lived to what got you to where you are. All things in your personal history have some influence in what you know and how you interpret the present.
Social Context: Where you are in relation to others, what is happening around you, the nature of those around you and the way they relate to the same information all influence the way you interpret information.
Confirming Evidence: We act something into belief, even creating a bias in our minds so that when something happens it confirms the belief. For example, if we rev up our own car in response to the hot car full of young men mentioned earlier, we enact a new scenario which may confirm or disconfirm what we believe. If we hold our finger up or tactically ignore their behaviour, each act brings into being a new act. Something new changes the sense of what is happening.
Cues and Indicators: What we see, hear and feel doesn’t necessarily carry information with it. We recognise indicators and cues which give us information similar to things we have experienced before. We recognise the importance of the revving motor and know it means power, provocation and aggression. All information is subjective and interpreted.
Believability: Isn’t it peculiar that when something unexpected happens we express surprise, amazement and disbelief? Our capacity to imagine is directly linked to not only what we believe but also to what we are willing to believe. Our ability to imagine extends or limits our ability to make sense of things. Believability is an important part of prediction, and combines with past experience and cues to help us imagine what is possible. If we don’t think something is possible, we don’t plan for it and certainly can’t imagine the risks associated with it. We now know a tsunami can kill 250,000 people, we now know in Australia that a bushfire can kill 250 people and we now know that an earthquake and tsunami can put a country into nuclear crisis. Such evidence changes the way we interpret new information.
Flow: The final tool we use to make sense of things is flow. The pace and speed of events affects the way we interpret them. Much of what we sense goes quickly to our subconscious and triggers a rapid intuitive response. Our intuition or gut feeling bypasses the need to process things step by step in a slow logical pattern. Our intuition gives us the ‘flight or fight’ response we need in a crisis.
These are the factors we bring to bear in how we ‘make sense’ of things, including safety. It is simply not good enough to rely on some mythical idea of a common point of shared knowledge to keep people safe. It is not enough to through together a Powerpoint presentation saturated with text as if this somehow helps people become inducted into hazard and risk identification on site. How can people ‘make sense’ of so much information when their mind is ‘flooded’ by such an ‘arse covering’ exercise. There is no ‘common sense’ but organisational sensemaking can be created. This requires a new approach to inductions and training that has a focus on learning, education and creating safety through communication and consultation about risk. https://safetyrisk.net/the-greatest-threat-to-safety-might-be-your-safety-training/
Do you have any thoughts? Please share them below