Embracing Differences

It is often said that safety people require a predisposition of care and empathy towards the others. Rosa Carrillo’s well-researched book ‘OHS Voices from The Resistance’ brings a paradox to surface. What if care and empathy make (safety) people vulnerable and fragile in the face of growing aggression and brutalism in the workplaces?   The book is packed with stories of people working in the safet...

Nippin Anand and Pedro Ferreira follow-up on their conversation in Croatia A conversation about what it takes to bring cultural sensitivity into organisations. Nippin and Pedro discuss several examples of how fostering conversations that are not power dominated and personal agendas are not so much at play, can bring about a much better understanding of different perspectives. The understanding and...

How do you understand culture, cultural sensitivity and risk intelligence? How can being culturally sensitive make us risk intelligent? Nippin Anand and Pedro Ferreira offer some thoughts. And guess where they are – in the cultural capital of Europe i.e. Rijeka, Croatia

This podcast is dedicated to people who put on a performance (a show) every day when they come to work. performance means many things, although in the risk and safety world we have become excessively focused on work and the narrative goes something like this that in order for the worker to perform well, she needs the right support from the company. Support in the form of the right processes, right...

Our society has become so obsessed with measurement that even leisure, reading, wellbeing and healthy living have become a topic for efficiency. Many of us live and die without experiencing a life outside of efficiency and measurement. Take for instance the case of the father of scientific management Frederick Taylor. Even on his deathbed, Taylor was seen winding a stopwatch. What a paradox that w...

Greg Smith and I recently did a podcast where I asked Greg about how far the industry has onboarded his wisdom about paper safety. The discussion ended in a very interesting place where we both felt the need to articulate a very basic question – what is safety?    It sounds like a simple question but there are so many dimensions to the idea of safety that we never come to a shared understanding an...

What is semiotics? The world is a semiosphere meaning the visual world around us have a symbolic and mythical meaning. In Social Psychology of Risk (SPoR), we often say that when it comes to making meaning of the outside world, ‘everything is significant’ or ‘nothing never happens.’ To a semiotically sensitive person i.e., to someone who becomes aware of the limits of their senses, there is so muc...

For decades, western societies have become increasingly committed to demonstrating in the most tangible way possible (i.e. through procedures) that risks are mitigated to all possible extent. Quantification and documentation have gradually come to dominate every aspect of risk, and disconnection with the reality of work has lead many to question the purpose of what we have created around work and...

In this podcast, Rob Long and Nippin Anand discuss the uniqueness (not superiority) of Social Psychology of Risk. How SPoR methodology, methods and tools can help us become good listeners and become deliberate about our culture and culture change.   

Another car cast where Dr Rob Long, Dr Nippin Anand and Dr Pedro Ferreira explore briefly the evolutionary perspective about culture. Much of what we hear about culture and more specifically safety culture, is grounded in social science. Here is a different view on (safety)culture. Not better or worse, simply some alternative views and complimentary thoughts  

Continuing their car casts on the roads in Chennai (India), Dr Rob Long, Dr Pedro Ferreira and Dr Nippin Anand ask a basic question – what does it mean to be an educated person? What is a human person? What is personhood and why personhood matters when it comes to understanding culture?

Dr Rob Long, Dr Nippin Anand and Dr Pedro Ferreira are on a car journey on the roads in Chennai, India exploring the topic of learning. So not the usual podcast but a carcast! The discussion begins with a brief introduction to what learning is not. Drawing up examples of driving and the road journey in India we then discuss how human beings learn. We discuss what is embodiment and why embodied lea...

In this podcast Dr Nippin Anand and Dr Rob Long explore the meaning of ‘safety culture’. We explore the symbolism, rituals and myths of safety and question the ‘silences’ (i.e., what is not spoken) in the discourse of safety. We discuss religion and taboos and why focusing on taboos is essential to understanding safety culture.

The risk and safety industry predominantly approaches human being as a rational being and decision making as a rational, calculative, brain-centric exercise. In this podcast, Dr Rob Long and Dr Nippin Anand discuss the need for transdisciplinary thinking to understand how we as human beings make decisions. Do you want to learn more about Social Psychology of Risk?

In this podcast, Dr Rob Long and Dr Pedro Ferreira discuss the ritual of ‘stop the job’. ‘Stop the job’ is a tool to empower people at work to stop the continuity of an operation if they feel it is not safe to continue any longer. How does the idea of empowering someone and trusting their intuition and decision work in practice?

Have you ever wondered what is faith in true sense? Why do we hesitate so much to use the word faith? In this podcast Dr Rob Long and Dr Pedro Ferreira explore what is faith and why faith is essential to learning and living

A podcast on understanding culture, safety culture and how we as human beings learn with DrRob Long. In this podcast, Dr Rob Long and I explore why doubt is essential to learning? Have you ever paid close attention to how we speak? What is the language of risk and safety? In this podcast, we discuss why the language of doubt and uncertainty is essential to learning.

An Indian couple moves to Norway and within a few months, the Norwegian authorities take custody of their two children. This is a real-life story recently turned into a Bollywood movie and for us an opportunity to understand the power of culture and cultural differences. This podcast (and the YouTube video) is an attempt to map the story using the iCue method along with Dr Rob Long. The central qu...

A podcast with my new friend Craig Ashhurst where we discuss a number of things including wicked problems, why there is no such thing like normal, the importance of transdisciplinary thinking in risk management, why we should take our dreams seriously but most importantly, despite such diverse backgrounds how Craig and I ended up working, living and being something so similar.

This podcast is a discussion with Human Factors expert Suzanne Jackson about the practical application of Social Psychology of Risk. We discuss many real-life examples and we question the implications of the narrative about improving safety, efficiency and reliability in workplaces.

What is learning and what is the relationship between listening and learning? In a podcast with Nick Little, the headteacher of the International School of Aberdeen, we discuss learning and ‘paradigm change using the iCue framework. The iCue method is a framework for extracting intelligent cues(iCue) in a conversation with the view to listen, understand and improve the quality of decisions. After...

What happens when change happens? Where do you look for the most reliable indications of change? How do you know you are moving in the right direction with your change management? Listen to the story of one organisation that has taken the first step in faith and embraced a new way of doing risk and safety. I hope you enjoy the authenticity of this conversation as much as I enjoyed creating this po...

In this podcast, we use the framework of rituals to tell a real life story. The central message of this podcast is to recognize the role of ritual in risk and safety management. The framework of rituals can help us become visually and verbally sensitive and improve our listening and observation skills.

When a teacher sends you a message that your 7 year old boy needs to stop making silly noises in the classroom and become academically focused, how are you supposed to react? Should we as parents become over-concerned about our child’s behaviour, should we disregard this as a disproportionate response from a frustrated teacher or should we slow down, reflect, and question the hidden meaning and po...

To be alive is to be learning. Listen to this personal journey of a scaffolder, an electrician, a father, and a family man and find out what it means when people experience the joy of learning and a transformation within. Culture, systems, and process improvement follow and flow from the individual.