Help Design the Future of Safety Management, Safety-II in Practice Workshop, St. Petersburg, FL February 25-27

Safety is still a relatively new domain, especially when compared to quality, and there is still a tremendous opportunity for growth. The actions we have available today are different from even five years ago. The rapid rate of maturing encompasses so many functional areas, possibly more than any other discipline. We have even reached a point where I find it difficult for anyone to grasp everything in this domain and specialization is now required. The "do-it-all" safety professional may be dying off.

Unfortunately even with all of this growth and specialization, we still aren't where we need to be. Incidents and other losses are all around us. I know this is hard to believe but I speculate we have done the easy stuff. Further performance gains are going to require some significant changes down to our basic interpretations we have used up till now. It's pretty obvious that many of us are still practicing an older version of safety. All you have to do is read some of the social media posts and it becomes quite easy to see this. That scares me. OK, it doesn't scare me but it does disappoint me that some are still practicing safety from 20 or 30 years ago. There is so much out there to help make your organizations successful; however, if you are still defining success and failure based on incident rates, this may be your opportunity to advance to new levels. You may be caught up in your own conversations and maybe its time for some new thinking.

Most of the change in the last five years has come from Safety-II and Safety-Differently. Safety-II in itself is not a savior; neither is Safety Differently. Both are tools for opening our minds to develop new concepts and learning that could possibly identify and address all of our organizational weaknesses and strengths. I personally have been able to develop numerous new processes and distinctions that were derived from this thinking. This includes a new task causation model, new methods for investigation of tasks regardless of outcomes, new methods for measurements that may better reflect an organization's health and growth, among numerous others that I still have in development. I am far from finished.

We have a very dedicated group that put this workshop together including Dr. Erik Hollnagel, Ron Gantt, Dr, Terry Fairbanks, David Provan, Beth Lay, and myself. There are many others out there as well building this advanced approach and definition of safety. We all have a common goal of advancing Safety-II, Safety Differently, New View Human Performance, and Resilience thanks to those who first brought forth these concepts.

The outcome of this meeting will be adding to the information we need for developing the next stage or age of safety. Our focus for this workshop is especially with application and not just theory. I believe we are at a point where we need more focus on application where there is value and action for you today.

If you are like-minded and you see the issues with the current methods of safety management, you need to be here. If you feel that your organization only learns from failures, then you need to be here. This is a workshop where your input is needed, better yet required. Only as a group will we be able to move closer to a more valued approach to safety management.

Our workshop in St. Petersburg is just the beginning. Please take a look and don't be afraid to submit an abstract if you have something to share, especially if is something that can help others in their pursuit of operational excellence. Link to workshop: https://www.safety-ii.com

Many Thanks, Tom