Training to Failure




My last several years' on the speaking circuit has focussed on training for non-normal and training to failure - somewhat of a radical approach to getting guides and instructors prepared for crisis situations.

The basis of my approach comes from work by Rasmussen, but can be summarized: 
"...it may be asked whether the study of safety-related success requires some sort of knowledge about the possible ways it could have become a failure. Without having some notion about what can go wrong, it is hard to have a conceptualisation of right” (Haavik, 2016). Understanding boundaries and limits is key, and training should help individuals understand what goes on at those boundaries, so they can recognize (situational awareness) and understand (sensemaking) what is going on and pull back appropriately.

The link below is to an early (2012) version of the presentation taken at the Wilderness Risk Management Conference. 

My propositions and argument have been refined over the years, based on work in my PhD. I've presented this topic in an AEE tutorial, at AORE, WRMC several times, and have been contracted to work with groups such as NOLS and Outward Bound to discuss this approach to training.

The next frontier is creating organizational structures to support individual level crisis preparedness. By this I mean more than having and ERP in a binder - I'm referring to the work done with High Reliability Organizations and with the Reliance Engineering. I'm going to be speaking on these at this year's WRMC in Salt Lake in October.