Doing the right things wronger and moving on from first stories to second stories in investigations

Just recorded a pod exploring the “alluring first stories”.

That is, explaining incidents and performance focused on the actions and behaviour of people, rather than contextualising within the environment they operate (second stories).

I worked in this beautiful quote from Russel Ackoff (who was quoting Peter Drucker), see image 1, in describing how we get better at fixing the wrong issues (human error; we become wronger).

Instead, we’re better off being wronger on the ‘right’ issues. Since if you correct it, you get better at the right issues (better improving the work systems and environments).

Of course, it’s not one or the other, it’s about our relative focus, resources and logics.