Negative consequences from tasks

The ontology of Safety-II is consistent with the fact that many socio-technical systems have become so complicated that work situations are always underspecified, hence partially unpredictable. Because most socio-technical systems are intractable, work conditions will nearly always differ from what has been specified or prescribed. This means that little, if anything, can be done unless work - tasks and tools - are adjusted so that they correspond to the situation. Performance variability is not only normal and necessary but also indispensable. The adjustments are made by people individually and collectively, as well as by the organisation itself. Everyone, from bottom to top, must adjust what they do to meet existing conditions (resources and requirements). Because the resources of work (time, information, materials, equipment, the presence and availability of other people) are finite, such adjustments will always be approximate rather than perfect. The approximation means that there is inevitably a small discrepancy between what ideally should have been done, or the perfect adjustment, and what is actually done. Yet the discrepancy is usually so small that it has no negative consequences or can be compensated for by downstream adjustments. This is so regardless of whether the discrepancy is found in one s own work or in the work of others. 

If you want an activator to motivate action, you need to imply consequences. The most powerful activators make the observer aware of consequences available following the performance of a target behavior. Consequences can be positive or negative, intrinsic or extrinsic to the task, and internal or external to the person. The next chapter will explain the preceding sentence that is key to getting tiie most beneficial behavior from an intervention process. 

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