or: What is safety – really?
The intuitive answer is often: “When nothing happens.”
No accidents, no damage, no incidents, or even no errors – then everything is fine, isn’t it? This perspective dominates many organisations and, conveniently, is also easy to measure.
Yet this logic does not do justice to the complexity of reality. In system safety and human factors research, we do not regard safety as the absence of something negative, but as the presence of capabilities and conditions for dealing with complexity and uncertainty.
Safety is an emergent phenomenon: it arises in socio-technical systems through the interplay of people, technology, organisation, processes and context. It is not simply present or absent – it is constantly being created. This view – also known as Safety-II – focuses on the question of how, every day, things go well in most cases despite time pressure, information gaps, conflicting goals and disruptions.
From error prevention to resilience
Traditional safety systems concentrate on error prevention. But in complex working environments – working environments in which YOU work too – not every error can be prevented and not every deviation is dangerous, whereas every act of rule compliance may well be. What matters, therefore, is how teams respond to unexpected situations, and how they recognise, communicate and manage risks before things become critical.
In system safety, we speak here of resilience – the ability of a system to maintain its core functions despite surprises, disruptions or changes. Resilient systems need not only good technology and clear processes but, above all, well-trained, reflective and creative people with the competence to act and communicate.
Safety emerges through interaction
Safety cannot simply be “introduced” or “enforced”. It grows where people are allowed to take responsibility, where they can talk openly about uncertainties, and where teamwork succeeds – above all across hierarchies.
A checklist item alone does not prevent an error or a miscommunication. But the question “How do we work together on safety?” can strengthen teams and lead to a change of perspective: away from a rigid comparison of target and actual – towards a curious analysis of what works in practice.
Not: “Who failed?” – but: “How do we manage to make things go well (most of the time)?”
The Black Elephant approach:
In our trainings – whether in the Airbus A320 flight simulator or on site at your organisation – we work on precisely this mindset: systemic, interactive, practical.
We support leaders and teams in focusing not only on avoiding errors, but on building the competencies that make safety possible.
Because safety is not a state – it is a process.
And this process always begins with the people in the system.
Would you like to learn more about resilience, Safety-II or human factors?
Get in touch – together we will redefine safety.