Articles on safety leadership, human performance, and what it takes to create cultures where people can speak, learn, and stay safe. Written from 27 years in the work.
The gap between what the procedure says and what actually happens in the field is where most safety problems live. It is not a gap caused by bad intentions. It is caused by the difference between work as imagined and work as it actually happens. Closing it is a leadership challenge, not a compliance one.
Most leaders know when something is wrong before an incident happens. The question is why they do not speak, and what that silence costs.
Safety professionals often know exactly what needs to change. The challenge is making that case in a way that moves people who are not already convinced.
When something goes wrong, the investigation often starts and ends with the immediate cause. The systemic conditions that made the incident possible remain untouched. That is not learning. That is record-keeping.
She knew exactly what needed to change. She had the data, the analysis, and the recommendation. What she did not have was a way to make the people with the authority to act on it actually listen.
When investigations conclude with "human error," they have identified a symptom, not a cause. The more useful question is: what made that error predictable? And what would have caught it before it mattered?
Most safety culture initiatives fail not because the ideas are wrong but because the implementation asks people to change their behaviour without changing the conditions that drive it.
When Marieke publishes a new article or announces an open cohort, subscribers hear first. No newsletters that recycle other people's content. Only ideas she has actually thought through.
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