Ian Nimmo on Organizational Failures

April 23, 2008
Well, darn. I have to go re-write my speech I'm supposed to give tomorrow. Ian Nimmo is giving my speech right now. Somehow, we are thinking so much alike that he's hitting all the themes I was going to talk about. Nimmo pointed out that 100 years ago, life WAS simpler. 50 years ago, we raised our young people to be independent, allow failure, and exposed them to real dangers...and we created a generation of incredibly self-reliant and creative people. At the same time, we have created automa...
Well, darn. I have to go re-write my speech I'm supposed to give tomorrow. Ian Nimmo is giving my speech right now. Somehow, we are thinking so much alike that he's hitting all the themes I was going to talk about. Nimmo pointed out that 100 years ago, life WAS simpler. 50 years ago, we raised our young people to be independent, allow failure, and exposed them to real dangers...and we created a generation of incredibly self-reliant and creative people. At the same time, we have created automation systems that mean that the very way operators work is considerably different from the way they worked 50 years ago. We've created a whole new category of potential accidents: the Organizational Failure. Further, we measure safety by occupational safety metrics. "How would you feel if the major airlines measured their operational safety by looking at the number of routine injuries occuring to its staff?"

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