Page 14 - Occupational Health & Safety, June 2018

RISK MANAGEMENT
and conduct your incident investigation process along the way. We will dive right into how and why we, as humans, make decisions and how to leverage this phenomenon to open our apertures so we can have a wider, deeper perspective of the business world around us. We will provide a road toward excellence, a map if you will, to help you start the process of thinking differently.
Our goal is to offer you the opportunity to think differently about how to not only identify, but to also create amazing opportu- nities for yourself and your employer.
What we are about to discover is how you can prevent opportu- nity blindness through the power of knowledge and strategy.
Opportunity Hidden In Plain Sight Through
the Influence of Assumptions
One of my favorite quotes on this topic is the one from Thomas Jef- ferson, who reportedly proclaimed that, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” This is a powerful statement because most people do look for the easy way to reach their aspirations when in fact there rarely is an easy way. Some spend their days gaming the system all the mean- while using the same energy required as it takes to focus on actually achieving greatness, something special.
Let’s take a different spin on this quote and say that opportunity is missed by most people because it is hiding in plain sight. Oppor- tunity is missed because we dismiss it as irrelevant by the way we think and by how we choose to see the world around us. I see this phenomenon materialize every hour of every working day.
Consider statistics for a moment. Visualize that I have a quarter in my hands. If I were to flip this coin, what are the odds of getting heads or tails? I have been in a room full of over three hundred attendees where I flipped this same coin and most if not all agreed that if we simply apply the statistical formula, the probability of heads or tails equals the number of successful outcomes divided by the number of possible outcomes. Most people agreed the odds of one or the other materializing is fifty-fifty. About half the room raised their hands for heads and the rest raised their hands for tails. Very few were not certain and abstained from the vote.
So let’s try this virtually. I am going to flip the coin now. When I do, say heads or tails out load. Ready? Here goes. The coin is flipped, caught, and is sandwiched between my hands.
Alright, what did you choose? Heads or tails?
Taking one hand away, the coin turned up heads so the likeli- hood is high that some of you predicted correctly.
I will flip the coin in the air again. As before, say heads or tails. Ready? Here goes. The coin is flipped, caught, and is sandwiched between my hands.
All right now, what was your selection this time? Was there a change from your first choice, or did you stick with it? The coin turned up heads, so some of you correctly predicted this outcome once again. Some of you likely selected the wrong one, but that is okay; it is statistics, right? Fifty-fifty?
One last flip. Say it out loud, heads or tails? Here goes. All right. Did you stick with selecting the outcome of the first and second flip, or did you change based on the seemingly lower odds of com- ing up heads a third time?
Removing one hand, I see that it turned up heads again. As a matter of fact, the coin will turn up heads every time because the
number of successful outcomes equals the number of possible out- comes on a two headed quarter. The probability is equal to one and not fifty-fifty.
So what happened in that room of three hundred? What hap- pened just now? Why did some of you undoubtedly select tails as a possible outcome? The reason is in the heart of the discussion in this article. An assumption, an incorrect one, led to an impossibil- ity. It led to blindness, therefore, there is minimal to zero chance for an accurate prediction and sustainable success.
In this case, if we flip this coin enough, we can figure out that something is eventually wrong. The problem with this approach is that often, we only have one chance at the apple. Getting it wrong once can have serious consequences.
I set this up to lead you down a path by saying that I have a coin. Your focus on the number of possible outcomes through the basic assumption that I flipped a two-headed coin, likely led you towards blindness. Magicians use this technique all of the time. They prey on our incorrect assumptions and on the fact that we limit the number of possible outcomes to pull a rabbit out of thin air.
We humans are great at connecting dots when information is missing. The downfall of that is it leads to inaccurate assump- tions, which lead to consequential actions, which lead us toward unplanned, unanticipated, and often unwanted results.
I recently viewed a photograph of a work site somewhere in the Arctic with the caption, “What do you see?” I took a few moments to think about what was in the image. The conditions looked harsh, very cold, and there was deep snow everywhere. I saw a worker leaving a snow-engulfed facility, large communications equipment, facility exhaust vents barely piercing through the snow, and other facility0related apparatus. There was not much else to see other than the whiteness of the snow introducing the blueness of the sky, or was there?
Two workers leave the facility as they always do. No worries. Nothing has ever happened. One worker decides to rush ahead, to turn around and take a picture of the second worker leaving the fa- cility. It was a beautiful sight. Shortly after returning to their home base, the colleagues decided to view their prized photograph and, lo and behold, there it is. They saw it! Three black dots, one notice- ably larger, centered and slightly lower than the other two among the mounds of snow, equipment, and vastness of the sky. These dots identified the unmistakable stare of a very large polar bear on the left side of the image as it stood glancing at them next to an antenna tower. This polar bear was positioned approximately 100 feet from the second worker.
Let’s analyze this scenario for a moment. How is it that the pho- tographer and the other employee did not see or expect to see the polar bear? After all, it is the Arctic! The workers stated that, while they knew polar bears were around, they have never seen one so close to the facility in the many years of working there. Never seen one so close! Nothing has ever happened so the risk was not miti- gated! Does this sound familiar? These workers made an incorrect assumption; one that could have costed their lives; one that limited the possible outcomes which, by design, restricted their ability to see the danger, and hence they did not. They were blinded to the point of placing themselves in harm’s way simply by placing the “nothing has ever happened” filter in place of actuality. Heads or tails, anyone?
14 Occupational Health & Safety | JUNE 2018
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