Putting your knowledge to work

How does the successful safety leader put this knowledge to work During important decisions, successful decision makers use their working knowledge of cognitive bias to self-monitor and to enlist others in the effort to monitor for cognitive bias. For the treatment team member and safety leader whose choices affect the success with which exposure to hazards is controlled, this exercise can be critically important. 

Strong, limiting frames What history does it bring  

Most important, the successful leader understands that the culture influences the extent to which errors of cognitive bias are allowed to flourish. A culture in which open communication is encouraged and mistakes are openly shared and dissected is the best protection against the potentially detrimental effects of cognitive bias. 

Are there traditions and systems for the detection and blame-free exploration of biases and errors, and for sharing lessons learned These cultural attributes and practices are fostered by a strong transformational leadership style (see chapters 4 and 5) and reflected in high scores on the OCDI s four organizational dimensions (procedural justice, perceived organizational support, leader-member exchange, leadership credibility). 

Each bias by itself can distort decisions. Even more dangerously, more than one bias may be involved in a single decision and serve to intensify the distortion—e.g., a hastily made decision in response to emergency room overflow that then becomes accepted and difficult to change because of the status quo bias. Or perhaps a head nurse makes a poor decision about nurse overtime in response to the emotional demands of a specific situation, but then continues to implement and defend the decision because of the sunk cost bias—even though the scheduling decision has become manifestly inappropriate. 

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