Paul Stretton
Paul Stretton
Director
Quantum Safety
It’s the ecology, stupid. How can we really understand why it made sense at the time?
Incident investigation will derive better opportunities to learn, and reduce blame, by embracing local rationality. The guidance in safety literature to how best adopt this position is limited. This talk will share how decision making in other complex dynamic environments is understood and how this can be applied within safety science.
The central concept of extracting understanding and learning from decision making is the importance of context. Too often analysis is prejudiced by hindsight which is why the principle of local rationality is so important to incorporate within incident investigations. In other settings that operate within highly complex dynamics, the decisions are understood through Ecological Dynamics.
Ecological Dynamics differs from the standardized notion of understanding systems of direct effects – the probability that an intervention will itself produce a certain outcome. Instead, it enables indirect effects which are context dependent to be more fully considered. It therefore enables us to recognize that the system in question is not in equilibrium providing higher fidelity real world learning. This talk is based on a paper already published in peer reviewed journals in 2023.
Paul Stretton has over 15 years of experience working in safety critical industries, including rail, civil engineering and healthcare. Most of this has been involved with blue chip projects and large organisations improving the culture and processes that influence risk management.
Paul is recognised as a leading systems thinker and safety scientist. He focusses on safety improvement as an academic, trainer, consultant and author. His approach challenges existing models for safety performance and embraces an understanding of complex systems.
The published works, in both international peer reviewed journals and book “Quantum Safety” have influenced approaches to risk management in the modern workplace globally. Over a short duration of time, these ideas have been successfully implemented in healthcare, rail, construction, energy and manufacturing businesses.