Re: Need name of woman who assessed NASA safety culture

From: Derek Lyons (fairwater_at_gmail.com)
Date: 12/20/04 

Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 21:40:21 GMT

Craig Fink <craig@WeBeGood.net> wrote:

>People are disempowered from speaking up, by the very norms of the
>organization. Things like language, though. For example, the term I've
>read in the paper, "That's in family." That's a real friendly way of
>talking about something that's not really supposed to be happening in the
>first place. In nuclear submarines, they don't talk about it as "in
>family"; they talk about it as a degradation of specification
>requirements, which has a negative feeling to it.

The funny part is... She's wrong.

We say (formally) "in spec" and "out of spec". "In spec" is used both
to imply that the condition meets the specification, and to convey
that a condition is as expected (tank levels for example) as opposed
to being unusual. (I.E. "in family".) Informally (the usual case) we
simply said "that's good" or "needs fixing/looking into".

D. 

-- 
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

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