Euphemism Alert!! What the hell is "Lack of Situational Awareness"?

An AP story by Becky Bohrer in Thursday's ADN on an internal Alyeska Pipeline report repeatedly featured the term 'situational awareness.' This was not a term I'd heard before.

Merriam Webster's online dictionary defines a euphemism as:

the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant.

So what was the unpleasant or offensive term they were avoiding?  Let's see if we can tell from the context.     

The operator of the 800-mile trans-Alaska pipeline system said Wednesday that an internal company review found that power failure and lack of "situational awareness" contributed to a contained oil spill in May. . .

At least Bohrer had the good sense to put quotes around the term if only this first time.  So, an oil spill was caused by

1. a power outage and 
2. lack of situational awareness. 

Hmmm, it sounds innocuous enough, except that they blame it in part for the spill. And they're using this euphemism because the true words wouldn't sound too good. 

[Michelle] Egan [a spokeswoman for Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.] said that lessons learned, including a need for greater situational awareness, are being put into practice during scheduled maintenance shutdowns of the line this summer.

But how can you have more of it if you don't know what it is?  And shouldn't they be doing this all the time, not just for scheduled maintenance shutdowns?

But she said another big issue was that workers were so focused on restoring power, they "didn't have the situational awareness to anticipate the tank filling and overflowing."

So, they should have anticipated - thought ahead, been prepared, paid attention, planned. I'd guess this can be interpreted as, "while everyone was trying to get the power on, no one was paying attention to what else was happening." Or possibly even, "Everyone was running around like chickens with their heads cut off."

I know that in emergency planning you're supposed to anticipate all the things that can go wrong and at the very least, have a plan for what each member of the response team is going to be responsible for.  Doesn't sound like any of that happened.   


Then there were a couple of uses of the word 'aware' by itself.

The company has taken steps to avoid a repeat in the future, she said, making workers aware of the need to be cognizant of their surroundings -- and possible, or likely, situations that may arise -- and having plans for specific training. The lessons are already being put into practice, she said.

Wikipedia defines cognizant as, (are you ready?) 'aware.'  So basically this says,  "making workers aware of the need to be aware." (To be fair, Merriam-Webster's online dictionary defines it as "knowledgeable of something especially through personal experience; mindful"  BUT they give the synonym as 'aware.')

So, is she saying that Alyeska now has plans for specific training, but didn't in the past?  All these years and they didn't have training for things like this?  Gives you a lot of confidence in the private sector doesn't it?  We really need to shrink government so the private sector can do its thing. (Sorry, couldn't help myself there.)

During the first scheduled maintenance shutdown of the summer season, she said, there was an extra person in the control room whose sole purpose was to monitor the entire system -- staying out of the maintenance work at hand to be aware of what else might be going on.

So, are they saying here that when the spill happened no one was in charge?  No one was keeping track of the bigger picture?


At What Do I Know? we strive to always be situationally aware, though we've never described it as such.  Basically we've talked about paying attention or looking at the bigger picture.   When I was a Boy Scout it was being prepared.

And, of course, I wouldn't be doing my job here if I didn't check out whether others have used this term.  Wikipedia assures us that they have.

Situation awareness, or SA, is the perception of environmental elements within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future. It is also a field of study concerned with perception of the environment critical to decision-makers in complex, dynamic areas from aviation, air traffic control, power plant operations, military command and control, and emergency services such as fire fighting and policing; to more ordinary but nevertheless complex tasks such as driving an automobile or motorcycle.              [I added the emphasis at the end because most people couldn't possibly make it through the whole quote awake.]

One way that consultants make money is by creating new names for old practices.  That way they can call themselves, say, "Situational Awareness" experts and charge a lot of money for something that people should already know and be doing.

After all,  did you have situational awareness training before you got your driver's license? (Yes, go back and look at the end of the last quote if this doesn't make sense.) Actually, if you had decent drivers training  and read the drivers manual, you had the equivalent of what they are calling situational awareness training. (Drivers ed was a required class when I was in high school and there was an additional two week class where we actually drove around on the streets, including on the freeway.)


The Wikipedia definition hasn't been checked for neutrality and some of the comments on the Wikipedia talk site on SA echo my comments about this being old wine in a new bottle:

Situational awareness has been a preoccupation of performance improvement mthodologies [sic] for more than 2000 years (that we know of). It has been viewed as the core and basis of full and effective functioning.

 One of the deepest logical critiques of "SA" is that it is unnecessary. The philosopher Daniel Dennett might call it "folk psychology," meaning that it is a repackaging of existing concepts under a new name, one that just happens to resonate with "the folk" within a given domain (e.g., the military). To Dennett, this is fine, as long as "the folk" clearly understand that a given term is being used as a proxy for a preexisting set of understandings. . .

A second, equally weighty critique states that "SA" can never truly be objectively defined. In the terminology of MacCorquodale and Meehl, it is a hypothetical construct" that is being inappropriately elevated to the status of an "intervening variable". An example of an intervening variable is voltage, which can be directly measured by a voltmeter. No such "SA meter" exists, or is likely to ever exist. Yet, SA is widely touted as being objectively measurable, e.g., by paper-and-pencil testing. Of course, the same argument can be made of other concepts (e.g., IQ). The difference would be the extent of research which has gone into the latter, versus the former.PrairieOjibway (talk) 01:20, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Stratfor.com - what appears to be a consulting firm that specializes in SA for international affairs - discusses SA.  Included is this piece which gives us a clue to what lack of SA might be and why Alyeska might want to find a euphemism:

An important element of this mindset is first coming to the realization that a threat exists. Ignorance or denial of a threat — or completely tuning out to one’s surroundings while in a public place — makes a person’s chances of quickly recognizing the threat and avoiding it slim to none. This is why apathy, denial and complacency are so deadly. [emphasis added]

So, essentially, Alyeska's "lack of situational awareness" means that through apathy, denial, complacency, lack of planning, and lack of leadership they totally screwed up.  It was important enough that they mentioned it in their not-for-public-consumption review of the spill, but they needed a much more genteel way of saying  "we fucked up." 

Note for my readers who expect this blog to use only family friendly language.  Sometimes there is no other word that conveys the meaning intended.  Then, and only then, do I use it.  If anyone has a better term, let me know.