Understanding Risk Compensation — Because Error Proofing Isn’t Enough Road safety is an excellent example of a system where many have tried to change the public’s behaviour and stop things from going wrong. Error proofing is a common approach, making things easy to get right and difficult to get wrong, but it isn’t without its […]
Reducing Complexity
Avoiding Overwhelm In their book Meltdown, Clearfield and Tilcsik show how complicated systems fail. They discuss nuclear accidents, financial disasters and medical mishaps and show how we can avoid disasters by reducing complexity. The more complex our systems become, the less easy they are to understand. So they become harder to fix when they break. Add […]
Preventing Human Error
A Problem with the envelope On February 26th 2017, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held its 89th award ceremony, celebrating the best films of 2016. The ceremony was a case study in preventing human error (or not depending on your perspective). It went swimmingly until the very last award for best picture. Faye Dunaway […]
Stopping the Suicidal
Preventing bad behaviour From the start of the industrial revolution to the mid 20th century, we British have used town gas. It lit our streets, fired our boilers and cooked our roast dinners. Town gas was a by-product of the coke manufacturing industry. Heating coal in the absence of oxygen removes the impurities and produces […]
Heavy Metal and Process Improvement
The checklist It isn’t very rock and roll is it? Checklists are up there in the train spotting school of management. The sort of activity carried out by dull earnest people who ought to put their clipboards down and get out a little more. Tiresome and tedious. Heavy metal I’m not big into heavy metal. […]
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