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Safe Management

I commend Bart Crotty on a great article "Defining Safety Culture and Safety Climate," (see AM, December 2007, page 48) but the difference between culture and climate was identified by W. Edwards Deming in the 1950s and could be traced back even further. The University of Illinois research paper devised a complicated definition that has previously been simply and eloquently defined. The "wheel" was reinvented to be a set of points on a plane equidistant from and connected by radiated bars emanating from a central point. I still prefer "wheel."

I wish to add one more layer to this confusion — policies. In general we all sort of know what policies are, but I agree, we tend to use organizational culture and climate interchangeably but they have very distinct definitions.

Policies are the organization’s documented guide to how they want things to be, culture is the way things really are, and climate is how those involved feel about how things are. These are the physical, physiological and psychological factors affecting an organization. These are accepted definitions in the organizational management ranks but not well publicized.

Problems arise when there is a gap between policies (the ideal) and culture (the reality). Add to this climate, which can affect culture and vice versa, climate and culture intermingle. We have been indoctrinated into the human factors (HF) dirty dozen: Lack of Communication, Complacency, Lack of Knowledge, Distraction, Lack of Teamwork, Fatigue, Lack of Resources, Pressure, Lack of Assertiveness, Stress, Lack of Awareness and Norms. That is how we have attacked the issue of safety.

Now management wonders why they have recurring safety issues even though they have dealt with the dirty dozen issues. They "fix" one HF issue and then there is another HF related safety issue. The reason being is that the HF dirty dozen is not the root cause but a surface cause and until the root cause is identified, safety will continue to be an issue.

Now let’s look at this in respect to policies, climate and culture. Lack of communication, lack of knowledge, lack of teamwork and lack of resources could be due to lack of policy, the physical level.

All of the 12 HFs, except lack of resources, can be affected by an organization’s culture; the physiological level. Climate affects everything that is related to culture but on an psychological level.

Management is good at addressing the policies — these are tangibles — but fail at understanding the underlying HFs related to culture and even less to climate. The downward spiral continues as production slips and safety incidences rise, management pushes more; the climate of the action thus becomes the culture of the organization.

As mentioned by Mr. Crotty, "Maintenance organizations, have received a lower priority...." in relation to pilot and controller errors. The reason is due to public perception. Maintenance errors are just not as dramatic or newsworthy, plus the fact that many maintenance errors are not immediate. If the public doesn’t push the issue, it will not be given much attention by the regulators.

Words of wisdom from Peter F. Drucker, world-renowned management consultant, "So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work."

Patrick Kinane

A&P/IA, Ph.D. (ABD) Adjunct Professor Quality Management Systems