Tag: psychological unsafety

What is Object123?

by Rethink Perfect - Desmond Sherlock, posted in Uncategorized
This is power abuse although many offenders would disagree.

Object123 is a simple Social Just Culture tool that we have developed to help stop power abuse in the workplace. We see this as a very important part of workplace health and safety, that is, a Psychological Safety using a Just Culture process. And as Just Culture encourages teams to own up to mistakes by not blaming or punishing them, a Social Just Culture encourages teams to expose and confront misbehavior, in real-time rather than repress it and backbite the offender.

Organization members are encouraged to openly disagree and simultaneously OBJECT to, and acknowledge any poor behavior during the three phase process. Thereby, nipping at the bud, any disputes before they become heated conflicts and saving countless lost hours of gossiping, backbiting, strained office politics and abuses of power.


disagreeing Vs objecting

Firstly it consists of us agreeing to observe and separate our disagreements into two parts.
1. Our content of the disagreement
2. Our behavior while delivering the content
We disagree with the content as per usual but OBJECT to our behavior, in real-time. during our discussion.

During a disagreement we disagree with the content
but object to the behavior or delivery of the content


three phases of objection

Object123 consists of three phases of objection, small, medium and large. Each phase requires an acknowledgement from the offender or they can try justify their offensive behavior. The three phases are:
1. Caution – Receive a simple acknowledgement or escalate to…
2. Objection – Receive a simple apology or escalate to…
3. Stop – Receive an acceptable apology or escalate to…

The 3 phases of Objection

final democratic process

It also includes a final democratic process to ultimately eliminate any unresolved disputes, where the offender and offended attends the Friday afternoon weekly meeting and their case is adjudicated by a team of their peers (not HR or management). Without an acceptable explanation or acceptable apology the offender will most likely be let go, regardless if they are the manager or even the CEO. We want to shift power from the top and give everyone, from the janitor to the CEO, access to social justice.

A team of our peers decide the outcome of our unresolved dispute
Social Justice the Object123 Way

One Simple Way to Remove Psychological Unsafety in the Workplace!

by Rethink Perfect - Desmond Sherlock, posted in Uncategorized

Type “psychological safety” into Google and you will see a bunch of articles on “so many ways to add or create psychological safety in the workplace”. Since the New York Times article in 2016 about Google’s research into “What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team” the buzz phrase has been psychological safety. The number of books written on the subject is exhaustive and exhausting.

Psychological Safety Books is Exhaustive and Exhausting

But what if we chose a new tact and instead of trying to add or create psychological safety we set about simply removing psychological unsafety. You see no one exactly knows what psychological safety looks like, although many have theories, no one exactly knows how to get it as a simple step by step formula otherwise there would only be one book and one way to do it and everyone would be doing it that way.

But dare I say that we have a much better clue for what psychological unsafety looks like and especially feels like. My definition is walking on eggshells. A common idiom we use daily to explain how it feels to be in an organisation that feels psychologically unsafe. Now imagine if we knew what caused this feeling and went about removing it? Hey presto! Problem solved. This presentation is my very simple theoretical solution for removing psychological unsafety and ultimately leaving us with psychological safety, as we learn to utilise the Object123 tools.