Bren­don James

B.A. Geo., MBA Cul­ture,

MSc Process Safe­ty,

MBA Sus­tain­able En­er­gy

Da­ta Sci­en­tist and Sus­tain­able

En­er­gy Pro­fes­sion­al

bren­don.james@out­look.com

We do not fail be­cause we lack in­for­ma­tion. We fail be­cause we do not act on what we know—es­pe­cial­ly when act­ing is un­com­fort­able.

Hu­mans tend to avoid con­flict, and we work with­in sys­tems where those bring­ing bad news are pun­ished and those chal­leng­ing the sta­tus quo are la­belled dis­agree­able. This is part of our chal­lenge as lead­ers: to shift the dis­cus­sion from, “go along to get along,” to, “how can we make this bet­ter?” Con­struc­tive dis­agree­ment, ground­ed in facts and free from per­son­al­i­ty, must be­come the norm.

Achiev­ing this re­quires de­lib­er­ate fo­cus on psy­choso­cial safe­ty: en­vi­ron­ments where in­di­vid­u­als feel se­cure speak­ing, ques­tion­ing and con­tribut­ing to de­ci­sion-mak­ing with­out fear, where think­ing is shared and trust is high.

This is eas­i­er said than done. How­ev­er, ne­glect­ing lead­er­ship in this area can have dev­as­tat­ing im­pacts. A wide­ly ex­am­ined ex­am­ple is the Boe­ing 737 Max cri­sis.

Two trag­ic ac­ci­dents—Li­on Air Flight 610 in In­done­sia (2018) and Ethiopi­an Air­lines Flight 302 (2019)—claimed 346 lives. In­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that a flight con­trol sys­tem known as MCAS played a crit­i­cal role. More im­por­tant­ly, in­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions showed that con­cerns about the sys­tem had been raised dur­ing de­vel­op­ment. The in­for­ma­tion ex­ist­ed but did not mean­ing­ful­ly in­flu­ence de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

Dur­ing US Sen­ate hear­ings, Boe­ing’s lead­er­ship was ques­tioned; why weren’t these con­cerns es­ca­lat­ed? What emerged was not sim­ply a tech­ni­cal fail­ure, but a deep or­gan­i­sa­tion­al is­sue, one where sig­nals were present but not ur­gent­ly act­ed up­on. This was not just an en­gi­neer­ing prob­lem, but a de­ci­sion-mak­ing prob­lem with­in a com­plex sys­tem. That is where the re­al risk re­sides.

Clos­er to home, on Au­gust 2nd, 2010, Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­pe­ri­enced one of its most sig­nif­i­cant flood­ing events in re­cent his­to­ry. Many com­mu­ni­ties were over­whelmed as wa­ter lev­els rose rapid­ly, im­pact­ing homes, in­fra­struc­ture and liveli­hoods. Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery was shut down be­cause cer­tain ar­eas were un­der 14 feet of wa­ter. The rain­fall was in­tense, but the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty was known.

Flood-prone ar­eas had been iden­ti­fied. Drainage chal­lenges had been dis­cussed. Sig­nals ex­ist­ed across re­ports, ob­ser­va­tions and lived ex­pe­ri­ence, yet, like many com­plex events, the is­sue was not the ab­sence of in­for­ma­tion. It was in­te­grat­ing those sig­nals in­to de­ci­sions, plan­ning and ac­tion. In com­plex sys­tems, risk rarely ap­pears sud­den­ly.

It ac­cu­mu­lates, build­ing through small, of­ten over­looked sig­nals—un­chal­lenged as­sump­tions, con­ver­sa­tions not ful­ly ex­plored and through un­com­fort­able de­ci­sions de­layed. The time­ly theme for World Day for Safe­ty and Health at Work em­pha­sis­es the im­por­tance of healthy psy­choso­cial work­ing en­vi­ron­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly as dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion re­shapes work­places.

To­day, or­gan­i­sa­tions op­er­ate in en­vi­ron­ments de­fined by da­ta, speed and com­plex­i­ty. We have more in­for­ma­tion than ever be­fore—re­al-time dash­boards, pre­dic­tive an­a­lyt­ics and dig­i­tal mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems. Yet, the pres­ence of in­for­ma­tion does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly trans­late in­to bet­ter de­ci­sions.

Some­times, in fact, it cre­ates the il­lu­sion of con­trol when the re­al ques­tion is not whether da­ta ex­ists, but whether peo­ple feel em­pow­ered to act on what the da­ta is telling them. Psy­choso­cial safe­ty plays a crit­i­cal role here. When in­di­vid­u­als hes­i­tate to speak, con­cerns are fil­tered to align with ex­pec­ta­tions, or dif­fi­cult truths are soft­ened to main­tain har­mo­ny, or­gan­i­sa­tions can­not re­spond ef­fec­tive­ly to risk.

Si­lence, in this con­text, is not pas­sive. It is ac­tive, sup­press­ing ear­ly warn­ing sig­nals, re­in­forc­ing flawed as­sump­tions, and, over time, al­low­ing risk to ma­ture in­to fail­ure. Ac­tive si­lence be­comes even more crit­i­cal when con­sid­er­ing emerg­ing chal­lenges like cli­mate change and the en­er­gy tran­si­tion. We are not short of da­ta. Cli­mate pro­jec­tions, flood mod­els and in­fra­struc­ture as­sess­ments are in­creas­ing­ly avail­able. We un­der­stand broad­ly the risks we face from ex­treme weath­er events to sys­tem stress­es across util­i­ties and sup­ply chains.

Yet, in many de­ci­sion-mak­ing en­vi­ron­ments, these risks re­main ac­knowl­edged but not ful­ly act­ed up­on.

Why?

Be­cause act­ing on them re­quires dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions. It re­quires chal­leng­ing po­lit­i­cal pri­or­i­ties, re­think­ing in­vest­ments, and mak­ing de­ci­sions es­sen­tial for long-term re­silience rather than im­me­di­ate ben­e­fits.

And again, we re­turn to the same point: Do peo­ple feel safe enough to speak? Do sys­tems al­low those sig­nals to shape de­ci­sions?

If we are se­ri­ous about build­ing safer work­places and so­ci­eties, we must go be­yond com­pli­ance and pro­ce­dures, in­stead fo­cus­ing on de­ci­sion in­tegri­ty, build­ing en­vi­ron­ments where:

Con­cerns are raised ear­ly with­out con­se­quences

Da­ta re­veals pat­terns in­stead of just re­port­ing out­comes Lead­ers in­vite chal­lenge and dis­sent De­ci­sions are ex­am­ined for both re­sults and how they were made

Lead­er­ship, there­fore, is not about hav­ing all the an­swers, but about cre­at­ing con­di­tions where the right ques­tions can be asked—and heard. The flood on Au­gust 2nd was not just a nat­ur­al event. The Boe­ing 737 Max cri­sis was not just a tech­ni­cal fail­ure. Both serve as re­minders of some­thing deep­er.

In com­plex sys­tems, the most dan­ger­ous fail­ures are not tech­ni­cal—they are de­ci­sions.

And the dif­fer­ence be­tween re­silience and cat­a­stro­phe of­ten comes down to a sin­gle mo­ment: whether some­one was will­ing to speak—and whether the sys­tem was ready to lis­ten be­fore si­lence be­came the risk.

The fore­go­ing is a week­ly col­umn by Earth­Medic and Earth­Nurse NGO to help read­ers un­der­stand and ad­dress the cli­mate and health cri­sis.