We return to a favorite subject, the
impact of goals and incentives on safety culture and performance.
Interestingly this subject comes up in an essay by Oliver Burkeman,
“The Power of Negative Thinking,”* which may seem unusual as most
people think of goals and achievement of goals as the product of a
positive approach. Traditional business thinking is to set hard,
quantitative goals, the bigger the better. But futures are
inherently uncertain and goals generally are not so. The counter
intuitive argument suggests the most effective way to address future
performance is to focus on worst case outcomes. Burkeman observes
that “...rigid goals may encourage employees to cut ethical
corners” and “Focusing on one goal at the expense of all other
factors also can distort a corporate mission or an individual life…”
and result in “...the ‘overpursuit’ of goals…” Case in
point, yellow jerseys.
This raises some interesting points for
nuclear safety. First we would remind our readers of Snowden’s
Cynefin decision context framework, specifically his “complex”
space which is indicative of where nuclear safety decisions reside.
In this environment there are many interacting causes and effects,
making it difficult or impossible to pursue specific goals along
defined paths. Clearly an uncertain landscape. As Simon French
argues: “Decision support will be more focused on exploring
judgement and issues, and on developing broad strategies that are
flexible enough to accommodate changes as the situation evolves.”**
This would suggest the pursuit of specific, aspirational goals may
be misguided or counterproductive.
Second, safety performance goals are
hard to identify anyway. Is it the absence of bad outcomes? Or the
maintenance of, say, a “strong” safety culture - whatever that
is. One indication of the elusiveness of safety goals is their
absence as targets in incentive programs. So there is probably
little likelihood of overemphasizing safety performance as a goal.
But is the same true for operational type goals such as capacity
factor, refuel outage durations, and production costs? Can an overly
strong focus on such short term goals, often associated with
stretching performance, lead to overpursuit? What if large financial
incentives are attached to the achievement of the goals?
The answer is not: “Safety is our
highest priority”. More likely it is an approach that considers
the complexity and uncertainty of nuclear operating space and the
potential for hard goals to cut both ways. It might value how a
management team prosecutes its responsibilities more than the outcome
itself.
* O. Burkeman, “The Power of Negative Thinking,” Wall Street Journal online (Dec. 7, 2012).
** S. French, “Cynefin:
repeatability, science and values,” Newsletter of the European
Working Group “Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding,” series 3, no.
17 (Spring 2008) p. 2. We posted on Cynefin and French's paper here.
This brings to mind Erik Hollnagel's book ETTO, the Efficiency-Thoroughness Trade-Off. I hope you'll add it to your review list.
ReplyDelete