Description
2025 ASEM 620 Capstone Project
Publication Date
Summer 2025
Publisher
University of Alabama at Birmingham
City
Birmingham, AL
Keywords
safety engineering, complexity, resilience, learning, circles, humanizing, dialogue, safety, relationships
Disciplines
Engineering
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Farr, Trevor, "Building Social Butterflies and Learning Circles: The Key to Organizational Safety Potential" (2025). ASEM Capstones. 10.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/asem/10
Comments
Organizational existence hinges on constant uncertainty and imperfection. Safety failures and mishaps are inevitable due to the continued complexity of adaptive systems that fester within organizations. Traditionally, a microscopic and mechanistic approach to undesirable outcomes and consequences has dominated problem-solving and learning in organizations. This is why it is crucial that problem solving within organizations involve the workers at the sharp end and integrate a blended strategy of sensemaking about failures, mishaps and what goes well with normal work. Far more successful work is achieved every day and deserves more attention, but an approach to tap into this knowledge is needed. A Learning Circle is a strategic tool to bring the workers doing the normal work into the spotlight to help reveal what goes well and what does not go well. These learning circles unleash overwhelming potential by precipitating a recipe of ingredients essential for relational capacity. The following research will reveal the importance of a humanistic approach to creating safety potential to maneuver through the emerging dynamics of socio-technological business today.