Why a Safety Jester?

Perspectives on reality

Perspective is crucial. Every individual looks differently to the same situation. How we observe a challenge or a reality drives how we experience a situation or define the solution.

Truly experienced realities do not reach boardrooms automatically. And vice versa: intended realities of the boardroom do not reach the workfloor automatically. We always end up in discussions about ’the truth’. There is no single truth for anything. What we have is various realities from various perspectives.

You may recognize some of these common pains and inconveniences in your own organization:

• Projects that do not meet deadlines and budgets
• Actions agreed upon that are not followed
• No clear definition of ‘done’ or ‘good’
• Disappointment for not meeting expectations or living up to promises
• Recurrence of unwanted events or incidents 
• Diminishing involvement, increasing absence rates
• All KPI sheets show green, but smell red – and no one addresses the doubt felt
• Culture of silence – No input received when asking for suggestions
• Blame Gen-Z mentality and longing for the past when all was fine and normal
• A strong feeling that we demonstrate safety rather than doing it, we practice optical compliance rather than genuinely comply and we practice kayfabe.

Decisions are based on what we know, not on what we don’t know.

Bottomline: you know there is a lot going on in your organization, but you can’t tell exactly what and why. You would like to understand better and improve, but can’t find the right path forward. That’s where the Jester comes into play.

What about problems that people feel, but can not put into words? The Safety Jester helps to give words to gut feelings, weak signals and early warnings.

Candor and honest reflection

The Safety Jester is the independent, unprejudiced entity to bring that raw (anonymized) information to the Boardroom.

At the same time the Safety Jester reflects with employees at all levels about their realities and their stakes and roles in dealing with their realities. It is a two-direction approach that brings more candor, more honest and open dialogues.

Learning is impossible when the price of honesty is high.

The Safety Jester is a change agent

By challenging the realities from various perspectives, the Safety Jester helps in breaking organisational myopa, wilful blindness, shallowness in discussions. The Jester sees through demonstrated safety, optic compliance and kayfabe and dares addressing it, which ignites discussions for change.

‘The most common source of mistakes in management decisions is the emphasis on finding the right answer rather than asking the right question’— Peter Drucker

We cannot solve problems with the same thinking we used to create them.