Friday, June 18, 2010
Assessing Safety Culture
We are particularly interested in their comments on safety (performance) indicators, another tool for assessing safety culture. We agree that “. . . most indicators are lagging in the sense that they summarize past safety performance” (§ 6.2) and thus may not be indicative of future performance. In an effort to improve performance indicators, the authors suggest “One approach towards leading safety indicators may be to start with a set of necessary conditions from which one can obtain a reasonable model of how safety is constructed. The necessary conditions would then suggest a set of variables that may be assessed as precursors for safety. An assessment could then be obtained using an ordinal scale and several variables could be combined to set an alarm level.” (ibid.)
We believe the performance indicator problem should be approached somewhat differently. Safety culture, safety management and safety performance do not exist in a vacuum. We advocate using the principles of system dynamics to construct an organizational performance model that shows safety as both input to and output from other, sometimes competing organizational goals, resource constraints and management actions. This is a more robust approach because it can not only show that safety culture is getting stronger or slipping, but why, i.e., what other organizational factors are causing safety culture change to occur. If the culture is slipping, then analysis of system information can suggest where the most cost-effective interventions can be made. For more information on using system dynamics to model safety culture, please visit our companion website, nuclearsafetysim.com.
* Björn Wahlström, Carl Rollenhagen. Assessments of safety culture – to measure or not? Paper presented at the 14th European Congress of Work and Organizational Psychology, May 13-16, 2009, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. The authors are also connected with the LearnSafe project, which we have discussed in earlier posts (click the LearnSafe label to see them.)
Monday, March 22, 2010
Safety Culture Dynamics (part 1)
How does one explain these types of evolutions in culture? Conventional wisdom has been that culture is leadership driven and when safety culture is deficient, new management can “turn around” the situation. We have argued that the dynamics of safety culture are more complex and are subject to a confluence of factors that compete for the priorities and decisions of the organization. We use simulation models of safety culture to suggest how these various factors can interact and respond to various initiatives. We made an attempt at a simple illustration of what may illustrate the situation at a plant which responds as described above. CLICK ON THIS LINK to see the simulated safety culture dynamic response.
The simulation shows changes in some key variables over time. In this case the time period is 5 years. For approximately the first year the simulation illustrates the status quo prior to the change in leadership. Safety culture was in gradual decline despite nominal attention to actions to reinforce a safety mindset in the organization.
At approximately the one year mark, leadership is changed and actions are taken to significantly increase the safety priority of the organization. This is reflected in a spike in reinforcement that typically includes training, communications and strong management emphasis on the elements of safety culture. Note that following a lag, safety culture starts to improve in response to these changes. As time progresses, the reinforcement curve peaks and starts to decay due to something we refer to as “saturation”. Essentially the new leadership’s message is starting to have less and less impact even though it is being constantly reiterated. For a time safety culture continues to improve but then turns around due to the decreasing effectiveness of reinforcement. Eventually safety culture regresses to a level where many of the same problems start to recur.
Is this a diagnosis of what is happening at any particular site? No, it is merely suggestive of some of the dynamics that are work in safety culture. In this particular simulation other actions that may be needed to build strong, enduring safety culture were not implemented in order to isolate the failure of one-dimensional actions to provide long term solutions. One of the indicators of this narrow approach can be seen in the line on the simulation representing the trust level within the organization. It hardly changes or responds to the other dynamics. Why? In our view trust tends to be driven by the overall, big picture of forces at work and the extent to which they consistently demonstrate safety priority. Reinforcement (in our model) reflects primarily a training and messaging action by management. Other more potent forces include whether management “walks the talk”, whether resources are allocated consistent with safety priorities, whether short term needs are allowed to dominate longer term priorities, whether problems are identified and corrected in a manner to prevent recurrence, etc. In this particular simulation example, these other signals are not entirely consistent with the reinforcement messages, with a net result that trust hardly changes.
More information regarding safety culture simulation is available at the nuclearsafetysim.com website. Under the Models tab, Model 3 provides a short tutorial on the concept of saturation and its effect on safety culture reinforcement.
Friday, February 26, 2010
As is the case with many simulation applications, a significant impetus for their use is that they are inexpensive and allow people to develop skills without being directly exposed to the consequences of their actions. As pointed out in the article, “....computer games are cheap and can be played anywhere. And because the students all run the same scenarios, they can compare the efficacy of different approaches.”
The simulation was developed with significant input from soldiers who had returned from Iraq. It is a type of simulation referred to as “agent-based simulation” that can be quite useful in portraying the dynamics of groups. The game’s characters are modeled as autonomous agents that react not just to specific actions, but to the climate created by a player’s overall strategy.
These types of simulations are not intended to be predictive tools or to teach a specified series of actions in response to given situations. “Rather, the intent is to teach commanders new ways of thinking about multiple problems in a fast-changing environment, always reevaluating instead of fixating on one approach...You have to think through the cause and effect of your decisions...”
Many of the benefits of simulation described in this case are the same as for managing nuclear safety culture. As we pointed out in a prior blog post (“Social Licking”, October 6, 2009) , building and sustaining cultural norms can be significantly influenced by networked relationships - as in a nuclear plant organization - and that individuals are likely to model their behaviors based on the network. The challenge of course is that the modeled behaviors need to be those that support safety culture.
Link to article.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
“Culture isn’t just one aspect of the game. It is the game.”
First, the issue of trust is addressed on several slides. For example, on the Engaged Employees slide (p. 24) it is noted that training in building trust had been initiated and would be ongoing. A later slide, Effective Leadership Team (p. 31), notes that there was increased trust at the station. In our thinking about safety management, and specifically in our simulation modeling, we include trust as a key variable and driver of safety culture. Trust is a subjective ingredient but its importance is real. We think there are at least two mechanisms for building trust within an organization. One is through the type of initiatives described in the slides – direct attention and training in creating trust within the management team and staff. A second mechanism that perhaps does not receive as much recognition is the indirect impact of decisions and actions taken by the organization and the extent to which they model desired safety values. This second mechanism is very powerful as it reflects reality. If reality comports with the espoused values, it reinforces the values and builds trust. If reality is contra to the values, it will undermine any amount of training or pronouncements about trust.
The second point to be highlighted is addressed on the Culture slide in the Epilogue section (p.35). There it is noted that as an industry we are good at defining the desired behaviors, but we are not good at defining how to achieve a culture where most people practice those behaviors. We think there is a lot of truth in this and the “how” aspect of building and maintaining a robust safety culture is something that merits more attention. “Practicing” those behaviors is the subject of our white paper, “Practicing Nuclear Safety Management.”
Link to presentation.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Schrodinger’s Bat
Dare I put forth a sports analogy? In baseball there is a defined “strike zone”. In theory the umpire uses the strike zone to make calls of balls and strikes. But the zone is really open to interpretation in the dynamic, three dimensional world of pitching and umpiring. The reality is that the strike zone becomes the space delineated by the aggregate set of balls and strike calls by an umpire. It relies on the skill of the umpire, his understanding of the strike zone and his commitment to making accurate calls. The linked article provides some interesting data on the strike zone and the psychology of umpires' decisions.
Link to "Schrodinger’s Bat" July 26, 2007.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Primer on System Dynamics
System Dynamics is a concept for seeing the world in terms of inputs and outputs, where internal feedback loops and time delays can affect system behavior and lead to complex, non-linear changes in system performance.
The System Dynamics worldview was originally developed by Prof. Jay Forrester at MIT. Later work by other thinkers, e.g., Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, expanded the original concepts and made them available to a broader audience. An overview of System Dynamics can be found on Wikipedia.
Our NuclearSafetySim program uses System Dynamics to model managerial behavior in an environment where maintaining the nuclear safety culture is a critical element. NuclearSafetySim is built using isee Systems iThink software. isee Systems has educational materials available on their website that explain some basic concepts.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
The Economist on Computer Simulation
The Economist has occasional articles on the practical applications of computer simulation. Following are a couple of items that have appeared in the last year.
Agent-based simulation is used to model the behavior of crowds. "Agent-based" means that each individual has some capacity to ascertain what is going on in the environment and act accordingly. This approach is being used to simulate the movement of people in a railroad station or during a building fire. On a much larger scale, each of the computer-generated orcs in the "Lord of the Rings" battle scenes moved independently based on his immediate surroundings.
Link to article.
The second article is a brief review of simulation's use in business applications, including large-scale systems (e.g., an airline), financial planning, forecasting, process mapping and Monte Carlo analysis. This is a quick read on the ways simulation is used to illustrate and analyze a variety of complex situations.
Link to article.
Other informational resources that discuss simulation are included on our References page.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Reading List: Just Culture by Sidney Dekker
Question for nuclear professionals: Does your organization maintain a library of resources such as Just Culture or Dianne Vaughan’s book, The Challenger Launch Decision, that provide deep insights into organizational performance and culture? Are materials like this routinely the subject of discussions in training sessions and topical meetings?
Friday, July 24, 2009
Safety Culture Insights from Simulation (MIT #1)
Future posts will highlight several of the key insights from this paper and their applicability to issues of nuclear safety management.
Link to paper.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Can Driving and Texting Coexist?
I thought this would be interesting to nuclear safety management practitioners for several reasons. First, it is another illustration of how simulation games can provide realistic experiences of situations they may have to manage in real life - without the risks associated with the real life activity.
Second, this game demonstrates the impact of competing priorities (texting and driving) on the ability of the driver to maintain performance at a consistent level. In the nuclear operations world, safety management failures are often associated with the impact of competing priorities or pressures on the ability of personnel to perform reliably. The driving game suggests that there is always some diminution of performance due to the competing priority of texting. Is that true of nuclear safety management or is it possible, with sufficient training and practice, to manage competing priorities?
Link to article.