Blame, minimizing

A company s culture can make or break even a well-designed data collection system. Essential requirements are minimal use of blame, freedom from fear of reprisals, and feedback which indicates that the information being generated is being used to make changes that will be beneficial to everybody. All three factors are vital for the success of a data collection system and are all, to a certain extent, under the control of management. To illustrate the effect of the absence of such factors, here is an extract from the report into the Challenger space shuttle disaster ... 

Children with internalizing disorders such as depression and anxiety are often the best informants about their affective states. However, if children experience depressed or anxious mood as their normal state, no baseline frame of reference is available for comparison. Children and adolescents with externalizing disorders such as ADHD and conduct disorder are often poor informants and may be minimally cooperative with the interview. Since they often deny the existence of a problem and blame others, reports from other informants (parent, school) are essential. 

It is not surprising that many children are noncompliant with Barkley. Although not a medical doctor, he has been a leader among those who minimize adverse drug effects while exaggerating their benefits. He not only pushes medication he exclusively blames the children for conflicts they are having with family and school. As he put it, There is, in... 

It is easy to blame accidents on human error, but good design can often minimize this.161 Avoid poor lighting or contrast. Provide a checklist so that the operator will find it easy to recall all of the necessary information. Most valves have right-handed threads. Do not mix in any that have left-handed threads. Mount them so that they are easy to access, and the labels are easy to see. 

One goal of CAST is to get away from assigning blame and instead to shift the focus to why the accident occurred and how to prevent similar losses in the future. To accomplish this goal, it is necessary to minimize hindsight bias and instead to determine why people behaved the way they did, given the information they had at the time. 

Minimizing individual blame or retribution for involvement in a medical or care error... 

At the shop-floor level, people are dehberatefy separated from the other four elements in order to recognize hnman hmitations and how the effects of them can be minimized. Culpability or blame as guiding concepts are deliberately avoided. 

Systems No-Fault Risk Unacceptable Long-term view felues. Prevention / People Blame Accept Risk Short-term view Priorities. Minimize costs ... 

Managers must instead create a work environment that encourages personal responsibility and minimizes blame. In environments that rely on punishment, damaged relationships are often a barrier to creating an effective partnership in which management and employees actively share responsibility for safety. 

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