Importance of Learning - II

Most discoveries are made regularly every fifteen years – George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), in his play, The Doctor’s Dilemma, (1906)

When organizations put all their efforts, over a period of time,the number disabling accidents will come to single digit, but stagnate and not much progress is made beyond this (w.r.t. safety).

Some of the departments working for a long time without accidents may start having accidents again after some time. Like fortunes, safety record also undergoes different cyclical periods.

Man is an animal without education. We are educated animals. We make mistakes again and again, may not be at the same place / operation / plant or by same person; but similar mistakes are made, may be by different persons. Most of the mistakes are made not because of lack of knowledge or skill. Rather, it is because of an overdose of it.

When we join in the department or new to work, we have formal education but not the specific knowledge and skill about the job to be done. At this time, we are likely to get involved in accidents because of lack of knowledge and skill. After some time, we acquire both knowledge as well as skill and will be attentive. Once, we are used it, over a period of time, we try to find short cuts.

SHORT CUTS IN SAFETY CAN SHORT CIRCUIT OUR SAFETY AS WELL AS OF OTHERS

Once this mentality / attitude sets in, we are prone to accidents. Most of the accidents occur to persons who are either new or well experienced.

When an accident occurs, every body becomes emotional, may be, even take oath not to repeat such mistake(s). BUT soon, we forget or we assume that it will not happen to us and go back to our old ways of doing it. This is called NIMBY syndrome i.e Not In My Back Yard Syndrome. (A term used by Trevor A. Kletz - as I understood).

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," (sometimes called Santayana's Law of Repetitive Consequences) – George Santayana (1863 – 1952), a philosopher

We have to UNLEARN the WRONG LEARNINGS and LEARN the safe ways of doing the job.

ORGANIZATIONS HAVE NO MEMORY. ONLY PEOPLE HAVE MEMORIES AND THEY MOVE ON – Trevor A Kletz, an internationally acclaimed safety professional, in his book, Lessons from Disaster.

Organization fail to learn the lessons from accidents. Even if the lessons are drawn, then remembering and following them subsequently is a question. How long they remember is another question. Lessons are forgotten, when persons attitude changes or persons are shifted / retired without passing the lessons to youngsters.

God gives us enough opportunities (near misses). The issue is that we should be ready to grab it (analyze the near misses for root causes and remedy the system). Else, the opportunity is lost (leading to accident).

Definitely, time will heal the wounds (of accidents and its pain), BUT we should not loose our sight of lessons from it. We should have an eye to observe the near misses that occur before an accident. Nothing will happen all of a sudden without warning.

Near misses and accidents, either in our plant or others, are the best sources of learning and correcting. If we are not bothered, or afraid to discuss these near misses, then some thing bigger awaits us and we have to pay for it. No body will be penalized or punished for noticing and discussing the near misses. Most of the employees have fears to face the queries raised during root cause analysis / discussions and therefore may not report it. By doing this, we are making self goal not bothering about long term benefits.

Seminars / workshops on case studies are a way of learning, particularly, when we hear from the persons who are actually involved in it.

It is well recognized that training helps to create awareness among the employees and thus reduce the accidents. Though, we can not attribute seminars as the only reason, however, safety statistics over a long period (including before and after training) lead to a downward trend in accidents and severity (man-days lost).

The benefit of such programmes can be seen only when the message (lesson) is carried and spread to all those who did not participate in these programmes.

Importance of careful reading

It is important for anybody to read any document that comes to his attention. Glancing the document or reading here and there and then coming to a decision or conclusion is not correct. If a person is intelligent, he can even understand the intention behind the writing also and will understand properly before taking a hasty decision.

However, most of the persons do not bother to read and instead will mark to their subordinates for briefing them. Then, it all depends on these assistants. If these persons are not intelligent / do not have experience / not in stable mind / have grudge against colleagues or superiors or the organization as whole, then it is not difficult to understand which way they guide their superiors.

Acts, Rules, Standards, Codes, Guidelines, etc made for safety, environment, etc are to be understood clearly. If we read only titles and drawn different meanings, then we can't escape from the arms of the law and oneday we may end up in custody, in a worst situation.

However, may persons even do not bother about punishments met by others because of their faults and assume that they are very intelligent and knowledgeable persons and others are fools. Or, they think that they got God Fathers to protect them and therefore do the things totally not acceptable to law.

When we fail to read between lines, we are trapped by those lines. Nothing can be taken for granted in this world. Today's famous persons may become tomorrow's most hated fellows by the society.

Make a wrong step, all your past good deeds are forgotten and you will be displayed everywhere. Particularly so, in this world of so many news channels, which employ all available means to find and discuss threadbare about the issues.

When we issue safety work permits with suggestions, procedures to be followed, registers to be maintained, etc, I doubt very much how many of the executing agencies really go through these lines. They file it as soon as it is received and does the work in the manner which they are doing for so many years, even if the nature of work is different. They think, they invented standard procedure that meets all situations.

Similarly, conduct any training programmes, the contents will be same, irrespective of the target group. Variations in delivery may come only when the audience are interested in asking questions and then our instructor got sufficient knowledge and experience in that field. Else, the standard replies like, "I will come back to you later, or, you find and tell me, or an intelligence question - any of you can answer - think it over and tell me tomorrow, etc" will come. This kills the interest of the audience and they may become rigid to training programmes.

So, it requires a careful reading for any person to succeed in his field. There is a old proverb, TALK LESS - LISTEN MORE.

On similar lines, we can say, READ THOROUGHLY - TAKE DECISION.