Risk, Tolerance, and Who Gets to Decide
How culture shapes decision-making and situational awareness, and aligning administrators’ intent and staff interpretations.
The first time I crossed a street in Vietnam, I hesitated at the curb. I watched as a seemingly endless flow of motorbikes zipped past. I had seen countless people cross the street at any time and place they pleased, but my intuition screamed deep uncertainty and anxiety at my own fate in doing the same.
I looked nervously over my shoulder to see if anyone was watching, and met eyes with a local man. He was walking toward me, and without changing his pace, he smiled, shrugged, and confidently left the curb into the organized chaos…without even looking to see what was coming his way upstream.
I quickly leaped off the curb behind him and stuck close as if we were doing a partner river crossing, where the lead person breaks the current for the person behind.
To my relief, the scooters weaved around us. About 20 seconds later, we were on the side. I barely caught his glimpse enough to give him a slight head nod as if to say, “Thank, JEDI master, for showing me the way,” and we silently parted ways.
Living and working in Asia, I often think about this experience. It wasn’t just about crossing the street; it was a lesson in how different cultures navigate uncertainty. The same factors that influence whether a group of people wait at the red light to use the crosswalk or whether they rely on their judgment and intuition and choose when and where to cross, apply to how people make decisions and manage risk.
Risk management, by definition, is about managing uncertainty.
Although all outdoor organizations use policies and rules, many rely more heavily on pre-determined decision-making criteria while others prefer to rely on their staff’s judgment.
This hasn’t always been the case. Previous generations of outdoor program risk managers preferred staff judgment over policy and procedure, and they tended to view policies as barriers to good decision-making. Today, however, many risk managers rely more on written rules and decision-making criteria to help keep staff decisions and actions contained within the larger organizational umbrella and risk tolerance.
This shift can even be seen at the Wilderness Risk Management Conference, where decision-making was established as a core track twenty years ago. However, in the past decade, the number of sessions and proposals on this topic has declined.
This post examines uncertainty avoidance and its effect on decision-making and situational awareness. Uncertainty avoidance is an important dimension of national culture for risk managers to understand (Noort et al., 2016). It helps explain how different groups of people identify, interpret, and respond to risk. Understanding uncertainty avoidance can help narrow the gap between policy designers’ intent and staff's application of a policy in the field.
What Is Uncertainty Avoidance (UA)?
Uncertainty avoidance (UA) refers to the extent to which individuals, organizations, and cultures prefer structure, rules, and predictability in managing uncertainty (Hofstede et al., 2010). Uncertainty avoidance is a spectrum, and each end is characterized by:
High UA: A preference for rules and structured decision-making, and reliance on defined processes that seek to minimize ambiguity.
Low UA: A preference for flexibility, adaptability, and reliance on judgment over rigid policies; comfort with ambiguity.
When I built an outdoor education program in South Korea, I saw firsthand how UA preferences can clash. For example, both the parent body and the government agencies we partnered with expected detailed itineraries for our backcountry programs, even down to the hour. Of course, we couldn’t guarantee where a student would be, although we could make projections. Our program, born from a U.S. paradigm of adventure and wilderness, allowed staff to adjust itineraries based on weather, group dynamics, and learning opportunities (like a student navigator getting turned around). As a result, we spent more resources on educating parents and local government officials about our program (like inviting officials to visit our backcountry programs), and we adjusted our own expectations and plans to make our programs more predictable.
Uncertainty Avoidance Creates Context for Staff and Teams’ Situational Awareness
UA is characterized by how strictly or loosely protocols are adhered to. An activity leader who strictly follows policy and procedure is typically seen as a desirable trait. However, this can also constrain their situational awareness (Helmreich & Merrit, 2017; Hodgson et al., 2013).
Situational awareness is a key non-technical skill for outdoor workers (Irwin et al., 2023). It refers to maintaining an accurate understanding of a dynamic environment and adjusting decision-making accordingly (Endsley, 1995).
An activity leader who too rigidly follows SOP or curriculum guidelines—such as encouraging group collaboration or prioritizing student-led decisions—might overlook signs of shifting environmental conditions and slow group progress. As a result, they may be slow to recognize and mentally reframe the situation, and critical safety decisions might be delayed–such as a group leader, hyper-focused on delivering group cohesion outcomes, and subsequently decides to evacuate a swelling gorge too late (e.g., Brookes et al., 2009).
According to researchers, inexperienced people also have high uncertainty avoidance traits (Aldjic & Farrell, 2022). Newer or younger staff prefer clear rules and guidance to navigate risk and uncertainty, whereas more experienced staff are comfortable using judgment.
I saw this a lot as the National Risk Management Director for a major U.S. organization. During incident reviews, I often saw incidents involving less experienced staff who had made delayed or absent decisions that were affected by slow situational awareness.
In comparison, low UA can impact a team's or organization's ability to maintain situational awareness, leading decision-makers to overlook important clues about changing circumstances on the ground. For instance, low UA can be characterized by individuals at all levels who feel empowered to make decisions and act on their immediate observations. While this decentralized approach can foster situational awareness throughout an organization, it also makes the team more susceptible to drift and migration of work practices (Noort et al., 2016; see my blog on the Systems Thinking Approach to Accident Causation). As work practices migrate, especially around reporting and other feedback loops, decision-makers might miss clues about the changing circumstances and realities at the ground level.
Practical Solutions to Optimize Situational Awareness
Obviously, organizations shouldn’t choose to be at either extreme end of the spectrum. The challenge is deciding where on the spectrum is optimal and purposefully applying each to the right degree.
The following strategies can help organizations align their policies, training, and decision-making culture with their risk management goals:
Consider your staff characteristics and how they’ve changed in the past five years. Many organizations experienced high turnover since COVID, and staff are younger or less experienced. Adjust your risk management plans accordingly.
Consider policies about how staff judgment should be used. Some organizations primarily hire and retain highly experienced staff and trust their judgment, allowing them to override policies if their decision provides a safer alternative. Others hire mostly novice staff and instead provide structured guidelines for escalating decisions when policies are unclear.
Establish a clear policy framework and adopt definitions to minimize the need for interpretation. For example, a policy is a mandated directive that must be followed, a procedure is a preferred course of action, and a guideline is a suggestion. This type of structure shows where staff can and should use their judgment and when they need to act within the bounds of their organization’s risk tolerance.
Proactively build individual and team situational awareness. Regularly practice scenario-based exercises and incorporate “what-if” table-top discussions into your regular meetings and safety briefings. Establish these practices as part of the organization’s culture. Practice using and interpreting your policy framework together, before staff have to do it in the field, away from your direct supervision.
Consider the cultural context in which the program operates. Adjust programming goals and methods to suit your unique context and make the program more culturally relevant by adjusting goals, methods, and expectations,– like we did in Korea.
Organizations should identify the optimal position on the UA spectrum that supports their risk management goals and context. From there, they should refine their policy framework, staff training, and programming systems to align with that placement. Recognizing UA and its influence helps establish organizational risk tolerance, and the degree to which staff judgment is an enhancer–whether at a crosswalk or traveling in the mountains.
Dive In
This series is intended to make cultural influences on risk management more tangible and actionable. To stay updated, subscribe to my newsletter for new posts. I send a short and sweet monthly newsletter to announce new posts and share other insights and musings on culture, climate resiliency, and safety science.
If you're looking for more hands-on support, I help organizations apply these insights in their unique contexts through staff training, coaching, and program review and improvement work. Reach out to chat about how we can work together.
References
Aldjic, K., & Farrell, W. (2022). Work and Espoused National Cultural Values of Generation Z in Austria. European Journal of Management Issues, 30(2), 100–115. https://doi.org/10.15421/192210
Brookes, A., Smith M., & Corkill B. (2009). Report to the trustees of the Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Pursuit Centre of New Zealand, Mangatepopo Gorge Incident, 15 April 2008 (Rep.). OPC Trust.
Endsley, M. R. (1995). Toward a theory of situation awareness in dynamic systems. Human factors, 37(1), 32-64.
Noort, M. C., Reader, T. W., Shorrock, S., & Kirwan, B. (2016). The relationship between national culture and safety culture: Implications for international safety culture assessments. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 89(3), 515–538. https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12139
Hodgson, A., Siemieniuch, C. E., & Hubbard, E.-M. (2013). Culture and the Safety of Complex Automated Sociotechnical Systems. IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems, 43(6), 608–619. https://doi.org/10.1109/THMS.2013.2285048
Helmreich, R. L., & Merritt, A. C. (2017). Culture at work in aviation and medicine: National, organizational and professional influences. Routledge.
Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G.J., Minkov, M., 2010. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, Revised and Expanded, 3rd Ed. McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.
Irwin, A., Tone, I.-R., Sobocinska, P., Liggins, J., & Johansson, S. (2023). Thinking five or six actions ahead: Investigating the non-technical skills used within UK forestry chainsaw operations. Safety Science, 163, 106112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2023.106112
