Guided Adaptability

Guided Adaptability is term coined by David Provan in 2021. Guided Adaptability is about contributing to (or creating) the ability of employees to perceive and respond to changes in context and risks, and to facilitate taking the right actions — either to prevent things from going wrong or to ensure that goals are achieved. Guided Adaptability has an essential proactive role in ensuring organizational resilience.

Craftsmanship is not about making no mistakes, but about the ability to recognize and correct them. Guided Adaptability facilitates and strengthens this ability.

1. Facilitating the bridging of the gap between Work As Imagined and Work As Done

This means ensures that the gap between Work As Imagined and Work As Done is as small as possible, and that the gap between Work As Done and the failure threshold is known and as wide as possible.This starts with understanding Work As Done: knowing how work is actually carried out. From there, you help bridge Work As Done to Work As Imagined—by ensuring that risk analyses, procedures, etc., are realistic, current, understood, and supported. Therefore you are closely involved in operations, present daily on the work floor, and in frequent contact with employees. A key part of this is understanding how unexpected events are handled in practice. Here, the Why (the Intent), and risk management from the employees’ perspective, take priority.

2. Supporting practical work methods and balancing workability with work demands

The safety manager has an advisory role. They support the organization in finding and maintaining the balance between work demands and the workability of chosen or required methods. These must be not only safe, but also pleasant, effective, healthy, and efficient. Focus on three core questions:

1. Is the method acceptable for The Intent, legal, contractual, or other norms? → Know what those norms require. (Cohesion)
2. Is the method a good way of working? A best practice? → Know the field and the state of the art. Understand what ‘good’ and ‘success’ look like. (Normative)
3. Can I explain it? Do I truly understand it? → Conviction is key to advising and building support. (Cognitive)

If you can’t confidently answer one of these: dig deeper—ask, test, brainstorm, get informed. Start on the work floor. Know how work really happens, the rules, and The Why. Know and explain what good practices are. Keep developing yourself—this increases your value and boosts resilience and role effectiveness.

“The role of the safety professional is probably more of a change agent” — David Provan

3. Initiating proactive actions to eliminate conflicting goals

Take the lead in balancing conflicting goals—like production, cost control, and safety measures. Coach both employees and management to identify, address, and resolve issues, concerns, and risks, and help channel conflicting goals into actions to eliminate them.

The safety manager is available for both employees and management, conducts research, brings people together, and facilitates dialogue on these conflicts. Ideally, management and staff create the solutions themselves. Focus on monitoring and supporting those solutions—not pushing their own. It’s not a forced procedure, but a shared agreement, which improves adherence.

Important note: Do not rely too heavily on laws or moral arguments, but guard the balance between the real value for the organization (based on The Why) and the economic side (cost-benefit). There must be a balance between ‘work for safety’, compliance and administration, and real interaction with employees—the social side of the work. Only then can safety truly improve in practice.

4. Facilitating information flow, alignment, and expectations

Facilitate information processes in the organization, including distributing data across all levels. Information is the currency of success. Ensure the right people are informed on time and promotes two-way communication between management and the work floor. They safeguard communication between departments—especially when teams operate in silos—and intervene where needed. Every level depends on each other: safety managers, management, and front-line workers.

Promote open and honest communication. Poor communication is always a factor in bad outcomes. This may be the hardest part of the role. Key values:
– Be honest and transparent
– No data manipulation
– Uphold ethics and respectful behavior
– Balance functional trust and functional mistrust

Doing this increases your value to the organization and contributes to resilience and effectiveness.

Does the role of the safety manager exist in your organization because we want to avoid things going wrong? Or because we want to make sure things go right?

5. Spotting, monitoring and addressing future scenarios and risks

This is the antenna function. Through your other tasks, you gain a clear view of internal and external developments—strategic decisions, upcoming changes, management’s vision and priorities, and internal insights. Translate possible future developments into actions for future risk control. Key activities: spot, monitor, address. This makes you a vital source for management in ensuring safety, resilience, and preventing future trouble.

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6. Be an advisor and a sparring partner

Advise on trade-offs and alternatives to get work done. Ask questions to clarify operations or identify conflicting goals and means. This supports openness and helps make concerns about feasibility and safety discussable. Also help enable the authority to stop work if it’s unsafe or feels unsafe—creating space to act when there’s doubt, danger, or lack of trust.

Speaks with both the work floor and management, and listens to understand, not to respond. Do understand where concerns come from. Encourage dialogue on what’s needed to get work done safely and successfully, and act as intermediary, diplomat, and sparring partner between teams and leadership. The goal: making the organization more risk-competent.

7. Monitoring and guiding learning processes

Monitor and support learning processes in the organization. Focus is on well-functioning processes for evaluation, reflection, follow-up of actions, and assessing the effectiveness of measures taken. Understand how learning works and help the organization engage in active learning, based on five key features of Active Learning and Learning Teams:

1. We learn more by doing than by listening.
2. We focus on skill development rather than just passing on information.
3. We spend time analyzing, presenting, reflecting, and evaluating learning goals and outcomes.
4. We learn through participating in real tasks (planning, organizing, writing).
5. We learn by challenging our own interests, values, and attitudes.

Doing this strengthens resilience and improves what many call a safety culture.