Reflections of a ‘Doer’

Does learning more about ourselves help us to better understand and influence others? I’ve learnt that if we are going to change the way things are done in risk and safety that the focus needs to be more on ‘influencing’ than ‘controlling’. In this piece, I’d like to explore the concept of learning more about ‘self’ in […]

Newsletter # 4 – May 2015

Dolphyn Newsletter # 4 – The Learning Adventure Continues Learning to Embrace Ambiguity “Organisations, despite their apparent preoccupation with facts, numbers, objectivity, concreteness and accountability, are in fact saturated with subjectivity, abstraction, guesses, making do, invention and arbitrariness, just like the rest of us” Karl E. Weick (1969, p.5) One of the things that stands […]

Culture of Care (and sackings…)

Culture of Care (and sackings…) I caught up with a good friend Martin over the weekend and he was telling me about his work situation. Martin works in heavy industry as a contractor, he has done most of his life and he’s now in his mid 40’s. Martin is currently contracting at a mine that […]

We need to make sure this can never happen again

Have you ever been involved in an incident investigation that was really just a checklist of organisational processes? Have there been times when you might have missed something because you became too focused on one aspect and weren’t open to exploring? I’ve been in these situations. I’ve written reports that were focused on checking off […]

Am I stupid? I didn’t think of that…

I live in the Hunter Valley in NSW, which is on the east coast of Australia. This week we have been hit by what our local media are describing as a ‘super storm’. In the particular area where I live, we received over 400 millimeters (0.12 gallons, US) of rain in two days. The scenes […]

Social Psychology Applied to the Discernment of Risk

During April 2015, good mates and study buddies (and authors on the Safetyrisk.net blog) Gab Carlton, Max Geyer, Rob Sams and James Ellis attended the Society of Australasian Social Psychologist (SASP) Conference held in Newcastle. While Rob Sams has provided his reflections on this conference, hearing from academics presenting their research, the guys also participated […]