The Weekly Reflektion 49/2025
Learning and continuous improvement are part of the foundation of the petroleum industry in Norway. Continuous improvement means that you are better today than you were yesterday and will be better tomorrow than you are today. How you measure your performance is of course an important factor in how you assess whether you are actually making progress. If your indicators do not really reflect your performance, then you may think you are getting better. Unfortunately, many companies find this out when they have an incident or serious accident.
What does winning mean to you?
Frank Dick, OBE, no relation to Graeme, was the British Athletics Federation’s Director of Coaching from 1979 to 1994. In this capacity Frank led the British Athletics Team through a “golden era”, nurturing Olympic champions such as Sebastian Coe and personally coaching decathlon twice Olympic champion and world record holder, Daley Thompson.
Frank has several anecdotes from his many years coaching and here is one that is particularly endearing and appropriate for the theme in this Reflektion.
Many years ago, in Glasgow, Frank was coaching a group of athletes when a voice behind him called out. ‘Mr. Dick, Mr. Dick, Mr. Dick, will you coach me?’ He turned around and saw a young girl about nine or ten years old with an expectant look on her face. ‘I am sorry, but I am coaching these others at the moment.’ The girl was not disappointed and sat down by the track side and said, ‘That’s alright, I can wait until you are finished’. Frank got a feeling that this girl was not going to give in and agreed to be her coach. When they got started, Frank asked the girl what event she was training for. ‘The hundred meter sprint’, she said.
After a few weeks the girl participated in her first race. She was 8thof eight in a time of 18 seconds. After the race she came over to Frank and said despondently, ‘Mr. Dick, I was last’. ‘No, you weren’t’, said Frank, ‘you were 18 seconds, you now have a personal best time, your very own personal best time, and by the way I had you down for 19 seconds’. Frank told her, ‘In your next race, you will win if you achieve a better time than 18 seconds, irrespective of who finishes in front of you’. In her next race the girl did not win but she managed 17 seconds. Frank also told her that if you are first in the next race then you will not have won if your time is more than 17 seconds. With discipline and effort, the girl’s 100-meter time gradually reduced.
You may be expecting an ending where the girl trains hard, shows exceptional talent and wins a gold medal at the Olympics. Please don’t be disappointed to hear that the girl enjoyed running for a few years, she did get better, but then she moved onto something else. Continuous improvement does not always mean that we become world champions.
The fact that you get through another day without a Major Accident is a slender reed on which to assess your performance. Unlike a race, where time gives an unambiguous indication of whether you are getting better, Major Accident prevention does not have a set of unambiguous indicators. We are sadly reminded of the Texas City disaster in March 2005 and BP’s use of LTI frequency as an indication of safety performance. There was little doubt that the statistics indicated improved performance, the fatalities on that day however indicated something else.