The article below was made fourteen years ago for an in-house magazine.
Everyday goes in our life without some incident that would have caused rise in heart beat. If it is during the driving on the road, either we shout or get earful hearing from the other side. Here, always the bigger vehicle driver is at the receiving end. If it is at some other place, like at home, work place, bus, train, or market place, both sides will be vocal in airing the views.
Every time after the incident, consciously or unconsciously we try to analyze what happened and who is responsible. Most of the times, we conclude that we are not wrong and that the incident happened because of the other person. After ascertaining this again and again in our thoughts, we feel satisfied that we did nothing wrong. If we were the affected during the incident but were at the receiving end, we think that we can’t do under the circumstances as we are less in numbers. If, someone got injured in which we are also a party, we tell ourselves that we are right and feel sympathy or that they deserve it for not being correct.
If we are the third party, i.e. we were at the place of the incident or came to know through different media, depending upon the incident and our interest, we try to analyze the incident and take the position that suits us the most. During this analysis, we assume ourselves as one of the two parties depending upon our past experience in similar situations and draw the same conclusions, which we would have thought right at that time. But, one day or the other, we too get involved in incidents whatever be the magnitude.
At home, when children make mistake, as the head of the family and having seen/committed enough of such mistakes when we were at the same age or learned, we shout at them and tell them what should have been done. But, if we ourselves commit mistake, we do not want to listen and only listen / understand what we want.
When we see the warring parties during the incidents as a neutral person, these arguments appear to be silly and that one wants to be more vocal than the other to cover their mistakes.
If we analyze any incident without bias, we can draw lessons and can ensure preventing occurrence of similar incidents. There is saying that people’s memory is short. For this reason, we see recurrence of many incidents, same or similar in nature, either at the same place or some other place. We do not want to learn either from our mistakes or that of the others. This is true in all fields; let it be personal life, industrial organizations, financial institutions, stock markets, economies, etc. A few years ago, there was collapse of economies of countries like Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, etc. Again, the story is same now with USA and other developed countries due to lack of financial discipline. Most of the times, apart from technical reasons, incidents take place because of psychological, social and cultural reasons.
It is not advisable to make mistake, or experience and learn. Already there were many incidents for which some one paid the price. We can learn lessons from others mistakes without paying a price.
When major industrial accidents took place like Bhopal accident in the year 1984, or Piper Alpha offshore platform explosion in 1988, stringent legislations were made and were enforced even when there is no history of such incidents in their countries. This increased the cost of production even for organizations that followed good safety practices. Mistake committed somewhere had cascading effect on entire industry irrespective of the territory.
In every organization, there will be established systems to ensure that nothing goes wrong. Though systems are nothing but procedures, their implementation depends on persons in the place.
Accidents are really not accidental, i.e they did not occur all of a sudden. They are not unpreventable random events. Before every accident, there will be warning signs which we might have seen and ignored or we failed to see those signs. But, mistakes do not take care of themselves or cease to exist. Every inaction on a warning is a lost opportunity and compounding of warning signs will have huge impact on the organization. There is nothing like minor or major accident when someone gets injured or lost life. We can’t keep quiet saying that it is minor accident. We realize only when we are affected.
Most of the times, there are common and simple causes for the accidents. Accidents take place when short term benefits were given importance over long term benefits or when regulations and established procedures are compromised or personal goals are set above that of the organization. Generally, benefits for following safe procedures are not visible. But, accidents due failure of not following safe procedures cause huge losses many times the cost of corrective action or even can lead to closure of the facilities like Union Carbide at Bhopal, Enron, etc.
It is human tendency to believe what we see for most part of the time as correct. Any occasional incident is considered as an exceptional case and do not give much thought to it. In a study, it is observed that people do not hesitate to take great risk while making decisions on processes which they have knowledge, information and experience. We think that we can handle any emergency situation that may arise in such routine activities. Thus, in routine activities, we see less danger though it exists because there was no loss in the minor incidents occurred earlier. Even if something happened, only field persons would have been blamed, but not the decision makers.
It appears that our mind is tuned to not making worst decisions, like ancient humans, rather than making best decision. For this reason, we tend to ignore all warning signs, as the worst is yet to come.
We should not live in the past, or soak in the glory of achievement and close our eyes to wrong doings. If some thing happens, we should not think that we will not do such mistakes, or that we are right, and so on. We should analyze for root causes and eliminate them to avoid occurrence or recurrence. What we think impossible or impracticable at one time becomes possible and practicable later, either because of the initiatives of the Head of the organization or because of the regulators or government. Now-a-days, non-governmental organizations and judiciary are taking active role about how we should operate our organization so that employees and public will not be affected.
One should understand for particular behavior exhibited in different circumstances. A mistake is a mistake and repeating the same mistake will not become right. We should unlearn our mistakes and start afresh. If we behave like a bystander; not voicing our concern properly to the proper authorities, or keep quiet for the lack of courage, fear of reprimand, not concerned to us, frustration because of inaction on our earlier concerns voiced; if some incident occurs later causing loss, definitely it will pinch us. If lives or lost because of our inaction and we take action after the incident to correct the mistakes, then definitely such earlier inactions are not pardonable and this is nothing short of crime. World is changing fast and we too should move else we will be caught offguard and have to pay heavy price. Only when we accept that worst will come after sufficient warning signs, we will make our best effort after the appearance of every warning sign to avoid the worst and thus ensure safety for all.
