Gerald said
> A similar situation exists in the safety arena where >90% of
> occupational injuries and incidents are the result of the inappropriate
> behaviors of people. Generally, people know what they should be doing,
> but they go on auto-pilot or they forget or they feel invincible or they
> get in a hurry or 1001 other quite reasonable excuses come into play.
The other evening I was approaching a street near campus, saw a green
light, and began to walk. When I was in the middle of the street, a car
whizzed by in front of me, and I thought, hmm, they must have mistakenly
run a red light. Then a car whizzed by behind me, and I soon realized that
the green light I had seen was their's.
These kind of noteable errors don't equate to "stupid" (in my opinion).
They may be the other side of an incomplete positive attribute (mind
occupied with another thought). After having viewed the 16 or so Deming
tapes produced in the early 80's by MIT, errors and incompleteness in the
workplace have become commonplace (more likely) in my outlook (common,
though his observation is profound inasmuch as the knowledge doesn't seem
to be common). That may not have been Dr. Deming's main point; however,
the number of times he seemingly concluded with "how could they know"
finally gave me reason to see that the means of knowing was not something
commonly provided in organizations - even for the management and the main
boss.
Improving my performance in determining what green light is mine probably
doesn't follow from the restatement of the problem :) Maybe the answer
involves "being present". While crossing the street, pay attention to that
process.
Have a nice day
John Paul Fullerton
jpf@myriad.net
--"John Paul Fullerton" <jpf@myriad.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>