Trapping Safety into Rules: How Desirable or Avoidable is Proceduralization?

If you want to discover how over "proceduralization" can be detrimental to your organization when it comes to system safety, this book is for you. it is an enlightening journey, a very well-structured collection of recent academic articles written by top researchers. Accessible, it gives plenty of examples illustrating some limits to the omnipresent SOPs and procedures that prevent organizations from keeping the necessary awareness and flexibility to cope with unexpected and adverse situations. A major difference between mere, obstinate compliance to rules and a more dynamic risk management is revealed; this difference is critical food for thoughts for anyone willing to achieve higher reliability and safer operations.Last week I interviewed a candidate to lead our Risk & Control activity. After I described our needs and what we would like to achieve through our system safety approach, the stunned candidate said; " Oh, so you mean sir, that it's not only compliance? It means I should also participate to the risk management?" I hesitated between laughing and crying. No need to say that I am due for another round of interviews.

Really a fascinating book. I have not completed it, but every page I open at random has at least one nugget. The main application is safety in complex systems, with various chapters, each written by a different author, discussing different industries and safety issues.The basic argument seems to be that procedures can either help or impede safety, depending on characteristics of the situation, and on how far they are taken. One example of excess is trying to force safety cultures into a rigid procedure, which would be laughable if it weren't being pushed by regulations and voluntary standards in some industries. Another frequent problem is that "following the procedure" drives out reacting to real situations, which are highly variable.This is certainly an important set of issues, and is much broader than safety systems. Another example of excessive procedure is ISO 9000, a "quality standard," where "passing the inspection" is a matter of checking off the right boxes, and often substitutes for genuine work on improving quality.One quibble: "Procedural-ization" is a terrible word. Why not just "Procedur-ization, which is already a jaw twister?" Both are equally clear, and perhaps the longer one is more confusing. Procedure is a noun, Procedural is an adjective; is there some obscure grammatical rule at work here? Finally, this publisher charges a hefty price. I hope the individual chapters will gradually appear in more accessible places.