Why Culture is misunderstood? A visual story of Costa Concordia (Learning from Accidents Ep.2)

Background
In 2012 the passenger ship Costa Concordia sank off the coast of Italy, resulting in the death of 32 people.

Amongst other things, the captain was criticised for his casual attitude towards formulating the ship’s voyage plan, sailing 0.5 miles too close to the coast, and ‘disregarding to properly consider the distance from the coast’. The captain was sentenced to 16 years in the prison.

While the rest of the world (including leading experts in the industry) criticised the captain for navigating the safe too close to the islands. even five years after the accident when I met the captain in his hometown he maintained that this was a normal practice in the cruise industry. It was a powerful insight into the culture of the cruise industry.

In this episode, we will discuss why culture is so often misunderstood within the risk and safety industry using this story.

1) what are normal practices and why do we need to understand them?
2) where are we today with our understanding of ‘normal practices’?
3) how a high-risk manoeuvre became a normal practice in the cruise industry?
4) what safety sciences won’t tell us about normal practices?
5) how can we uncover ‘normal practices’ within our organisations?

Each of these questions will be addressed through stories and experiences that we can all relate with.

This is the second in a series of episodes based on my recent book, ‘Are We Learning from Accidents?’.

A previous video in this episode was focused on why people don't speak up.

The next few episodes will focus on:
1) collective sensemaking in a crisis,
2) the power of scapegoating (blame), 3)
3) how do human beings learn, unlearn, relearn and make decisions.

You can read a sample of my book here: https://nippinanand.com/

Read more about our work here: https://novellus.solutions/

and check out our future workshops here: https://novellus.solutions/events/

Time stamps

0:00 Intro
08:58 what are normal practices and why do we need to understand them?
10:23 where are we today with our understanding of ‘normal practices’?
15:52 the science behind unlearning and learning
31:45 how a high-risk manoeuvre became a normal practice in the cruise industry?
51:38 what safety sciences won’t tell us about normal practices?
1:11:33 how can we uncover ‘normal practices’ within our organisations?