Solving the Cultural Conundrum: the Essential Traits

After every tragedy or catastrophic failure, there is a renewed focus on the role of culture. The Cullen Inquiry into the Ladbroke Rail disaster in the UK in 1999 mentioned” … safety culture could not be separated from the wider culture of a business, and that a reliable view of it should not focus on safety alone but rather on the delivery of the business as a whole. The more management focused on the delivery of safety as an integral part of their business, the more likely they were to succeed.”

 In 2007, the Baker report into the Texas City refinery fire and explosion stated: “A safety culture evolves over time in response to various events, including changes in leadership and in management systems”. It went on to say, “An organization should recognize that a wide variety of stakeholders, including owners/shareholders, managers, workers, and the public at large, have interests in its safety culture. Moreover, an organization with a strong safety culture does not lose sight of the fact that the stakeholders with the most to lose—their lives—are workers and members of the public living near or working in the hazardous operating units”. These and other complex investigations point to safety culture as an important precursor to incidents, but the question remains what is the most effective way to define and adjust a culture?

We are all conditioned by the people around us. Habits, traits and norms are developed. The ways in which we look at the world and considerations of what we believe is important are influenced over time through repeated conversations, observations and feedback. This learned experience is part of who we are. However, as much as we would like to, it is not possible to control this ebb and flow of human influence in a large organization. Thus in the workplace, we need to understand the type of cultural traits that are important to build a risk aware culture and how these can be developed.

 This paper outlines the essential traits that can be beneficial to an organization in developing a risk thinking culture. We’ll also apply these traits to three specific situations - the prediction and analysis of abnormal operations, preventing build-up of risk in course of routine operations and making sound decisions to manage operational risk - and contrast them with traits that are typically observed in an organization. While the typical traits have merit, inculcating the essential traits highlighted in this paper will enable the organization to be aware and sensitive to risks, make risk-based decisions consistently and manage risk effectively.

---