> By “normalization” Vaughan meant that decision making processes and action choices that deviated from formal established rules were reinterpreted by work groups in a manner that allowed for those choices and actions to sit comfortably within the bounds of established performance norms. That is, “they redefined evidence that deviated from an acceptable standard so that it became the standard,” she wrote.
Isn't this fairly common? Often, a lot of top-down rules are more honored in the breach than the observance. In some countries, unions will actually strike by telling their workers to follow the rules. This was also advice given to resistance fighters.
Yup. If nobody's following your rules its because your rules suck bad enough that the risk of not following is lesser than the problems caused by following them. People are not idiots. They'll jump through process hoops in order to satisfy management's requirements so long as there's some shred of reasonableness to it. If the hoops are easy they'll jump through them just to say they did. If he hoops are obviously beneficial they'll jump through them even if they're hard.
It's the "obviously" bit that's tricky there. Sometimes you have a 5,000 item checklist because 5,000 different things went wrong - but nobody has documented exactly what each item on the checklist is important for.
If you are going to make people put up with a bunch of obtuse process BS you need to sell them on it. If the reason is obvious you don't have much work to do. If the process is easy and not "a bunch of obtuse process BS" they'll do it even if they aren't sold on it.
This is part of the core insight of 'Safety-II', a safety philosophy which aims to not just focus on the cases where everything has gone wrong and eliminate those, but also look at what people in the system do to keep things going right (and document and codify this so that it keeps going right, instead of suddenly stopping because either the person who did it moves on or some middle manager starts demanding the faulty rules get reinstated).
Common, and it has both upsides and downsides. Some deviations are positive innovations. The challenge is to recognise and take responsibility for downward drift without squashing innovation.
Isn't this fairly common? Often, a lot of top-down rules are more honored in the breach than the observance. In some countries, unions will actually strike by telling their workers to follow the rules. This was also advice given to resistance fighters.