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In January 2005 a consulting firm released a report on the Texas City Refinery. They found numerous safety concerns which are perhaps best summed up as follows, "We have never seen a site where the notion 'I could die today' was so real. At 1320 Wednesday 23 March 2005 a cloud and pool of hot raffinate ignited on the site killing fifteen souls and seriously injuring another 180. Ultimately, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration found 300 safety violations and scores of incidents, or safety report 'fails' at the plant dating as far back as 1991. Why were these reports not heeded? And if they were, why were they not acted upon? To address the impact mindfulness can have we will leave for another day the debate about corporations placing a monetary rather than human value on safety spending and countless scientific studies that show greater efficiency, safety, and productivity with a six-hour working day. Mindfulness teaches us to practice ‘acceptance’ when we are distracted in our practice. Calmworks® very specifically frames 'acceptance' as a method of opening the focussed and stressless forensic examination of challenges. Regular mindfulness practice gives us the confidence and strength to 'approach' and ‘welcome’ the difficult and the uncomfortable. Progressive CEOs use 'Creative Conflict' sessions to shortcut this process. Employees, supervisors, and managers are ‘instructed’ to ignore their hierarchical systems, pool their concerns, and visit the lightest dictionary definition of ‘conflict’, so they can inhabit being ‘in opposition to each other’ without judgement, emotion, or consequence. This method extracts truths that would otherwise be hidden by a manager's inattention, intransigence, or indifference and an employee's hesitancy, pusillanimity, or fear. Mindfulness in business is never about accepting perceived or real failures, it is about attacking them head on with powerful observational strength, belief and tenacity. In this way we welcome being wrong, we are grateful if we're right and we rejoice when lives are nurtured, preserved, and saved.
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