Ep207: On the Hook & the Cost of Free, with Andrew Barrett

Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep207

Today, you can access the entire collection of information used to create university-level health and safety programs, for free.  Today, you could sign-up for an MBA, and in a year from now have an MBA, for free.  If you haven't done either of these things, and you probably haven't, there's a reason.  For the people who have taken that first step, almost all of them drop out and walk away.  This is a story about the rationality of never starting and of giving up, and how we can create the conditions for you and those around us to actually get better. 

Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap. 

Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Welcome to you, you're in the right place.  If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.

I worked in an organization in which it was normal for people to talk about responsibility saying things like 'ok Jill, you're on the hook for that action'.  When discussing significant projects, or high workload, or risky things to have your name one, people might kindly ask 'do you want to be on the hook for that?'

At the time I thought it was a strange phrase.  It conjured up images of 'catching' slippery sea creatures and dragging them to their demise, or in darker moments the more dread filled meat hook so favoured by horror writers and medieval dungeon keepers. 

It tuns out the idiom 'on the hook' does come from fishing.  A fish on the hook has been caught, it no other options, what happens next is decided.  On the flip side, a fish not yet on the hook is free, and one which was on the hook but is no longer, has 'slipped' off the hook. 

This metaphor for gives us a long runway into a discussion about responsibility and accountability more generally, which I will explore in an episode soon, but for now we need to talk about putting ourselves on the hook, taking responsibility for the things we control.