It’s Up to Management to Create Safety

I’ve recently discovered a fascination with Formula 1 racing. This probably has a lot to do with the Netflix documentary series and the way I binged the entire season in under a week. I was so stoked that, in a bid to watch even more Formula 1-related content, I rented a documentary from my local library called 1, which explores the history of safety in the sport. Suffice it to say, Formula 1 has had a dangerous, tragic history, with more than fifty drivers, and even some bystanders, perishing in the last 67 years.

One of the major barriers to change was that everyone accepted fatalities as an inevitable byproduct of racing, so changes were slow. Jackie Stewart, three-time World Champion, observed that given the choice between two cars, a safe car or a car that’s 2 seconds per lap faster, the drivers will always choose the faster car. He argued that because of this fact, it has to be the management that sets the standards for safety – it absolutely cannot be the drivers.

Just as in Formula 1, most companies today are choosing speed above all else. In today’s fast-paced, delivery-centric workplaces, I continually see drivers choosing faster cars over safety. In the software industry, this can be:

• taking shortcuts (technical debt) to go faster and meet deadlines (choosing unsafe code)
• skipping unit testing, refactoring, and other best practices (choosing unsafe code)
• avoiding difficult conversations because we don’t have time to deal with them (choosing an unsafe psychological environment)
• not addressing known problems with the system (choosing unsafe processes)
• accepting high attrition in their companies as the nature of the industry

It’s up to management to create a safe environment by requiring activities that promote safety. Management must stop accepting shortcuts as a byproduct of the industry. They must set rigorous standards and mentor and train the people in their companies on how to adhere to these practices.

There were a few major turning points in Formula 1 related to safety – in 1976 when Niki Lauda famously pulled out of the race, losing his world title, at the Japanese Grand Prix in extremely treacherous fog (to this day, he’s called selfish by the management at Ferrari), and when two drivers, Roland Ratzenburger and the three-time world champion Ayrton Senna both crashed fatally in separate incidents at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, watched by horrified millions on live TV. But the reality is that it was the little changes in attitudes over decades that have created conditions in which driver fatalities are now very rare for such an extreme sport – the belief that safety and speed could coexist.

Unfortunately, like Formula 1, choosing safety may lead to some slowdowns –  in the short term. Making safety a priority in your organization will inevitably lead to speed in the long term, with a lot less carnage in the meantime. And like Formula 1, it’s the role of management/executives/owners to set those standards of safety and to exemplify them, because, confronted with deadlines, the people doing the work will always choose speed.