Ep. 32: Authority Zero

"I think the context was kind of like, how do you go about trying to maybe introduce or convince your organization on some of the more contemporary ideas, when your organization is deeply rooted in zero harm and... Well, I think that's mostly it. Or something like that." It's our first *official* episode dedicated to a listener question, and Dave totally nailed the summary with the leadoff quote. So what happens when people in authority are focused on zero? Well, for one, you name the episode after the band Authority Zero. It's not super constructive to come out and say that zero harm is stupid. Feel free to give it a go, but the boys wrestled with where it's okay to agree on the big ideas - like don't kill people at work - and have an adult conversation about differences in how we get there. To our listener's question, though, the boys had a pretty solid discussion on introducing some punk rock in a Backstreet Boy safety world. Making the cost of trying something new low is important. We don't need to burn all the boss's shitty records just to have them listen to something new. Focusing on deep discussions of principles is pretty lazy stuff, and then you get folks worried that we're saying harm is okay. It isn't, but maybe we should be focusing on asking leaders how, if it's zero harm or it's not zero harm, what does that mean for what's actually going to change in my organization? Are there unintended consequences of having aspirations of zero? And if there are (and there are), then what should we do differently to sort that out? Getting to a discussion that's somewhere between shifting an entire worldview and being too far down in the weeds is a tricky balance, but we're trying to get to a middle ground. At least a little bit. The consensus seems to revolve around the idea that we don't have to lure leaders into the van with candy. It might just be that they haven't heard different ideas, and building from what they know to what they need is probably just fine. Maybe it isn't very punk rock, but not thrashing into a leader's office like we're in the mosh pit of contemporary safety is a better move.