Lolly Jar

Lolly Jar

One of my favourite conversations during risk management training has nothing to do with legislation, risk matrices or critical controls.

Instead, I ask participants to imagine a young child standing in a lolly shop.

The parent says quietly,

"Don't put your hand in the lolly jar."

I then ask a simple question.

What's happening inside that child's mind?

Most people immediately begin discussing risk.

Some talk about temptation. Others mention consequences. A few suggest the child is weighing up the likelihood of being caught against the reward of taking a lolly.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps something much more interesting is happening.

The child almost certainly isn't consciously calculating probability, analysing consequences or completing a mental risk matrix. Behavioural research suggests much of our everyday decision-making occurs automatically, drawing on previous experience, emotion, environmental cues and mental shortcuts that operate below conscious awareness.

Yet, regardless of whether the child reaches into the jar or not, one thing is clear.

They are making a decision under uncertainty.

In other words, they are managing risk.

Long before we attend our first workplace induction, complete a JSEA or learn how to use a risk matrix, we've already spent years making thousands of risk-versus-reward decisions every single day.

Crossing a road.

Climbing a tree.

Riding a bicycle.

Speaking up in class.

Trying something new.

The question, therefore, isn't whether people understand risk.

The question is whether we understand how people make decisions about risk.

Behavioural psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky spent decades studying judgement and decision-making under uncertainty. Their research demonstrated that people frequently rely on rapid, intuitive thinking, drawing upon experience, pattern recognition and mental shortcuts, known as heuristics, to navigate everyday life. Kahneman later described this through his widely recognised System 1 and System 2 framework. While contemporary cognitive science generally treats these as conceptual models rather than distinct neurological systems, the underlying principle remains influential across psychology, medicine, aviation and human factors.

We are remarkably good at making quick decisions.

Most of the time.

The challenge is that those same mental shortcuts are also influenced by familiarity, confidence, previous success, fatigue, workload, social norms and organisational culture. They help us function efficiently, but they can also lead us to underestimate changing conditions or assume today's task is no different from yesterday's.

Children provide an interesting illustration of this process.

Developmental neuroscience tells us that the parts of the brain responsible for executive function (planning, impulse control, anticipating future consequences and delaying gratification) continue developing well into early adulthood. Children therefore experience risk differently, often placing greater value on immediate reward than longer-term consequence.

Adults possess far more developed executive function.

Yet we continue making many decisions in much the same way.

"I've done this job hundreds of times."

"It'll only take a minute."

"Nothing happened yesterday."

"The shortcut will be fine."

Those decisions are rarely irrational.

From the perspective of the individual at that moment, they often make perfect sense.

This aligns closely with Sidney Dekker's concept of local rationality, which argues that people generally make decisions that appear reasonable given the information, experience, objectives and pressures they face at the time. James Reason similarly reminded us that incidents rarely arise from poor decisions alone. More often, they emerge from the interaction between people, organisational systems and latent conditions that have developed over time.

Perhaps this is where workplace risk management sometimes misses the opportunity.

We invest considerable effort teaching people how to complete JSEAs, SWMS, Take 5s and risk matrices. These are valuable tools, but perhaps their greatest value is not that they teach people about risk.

People already understand risk.

They have been making risk-versus-reward decisions since they first stood in front of a lolly jar.

The real value of these tools is that they interrupt automatic thinking. They create a deliberate pause, encouraging people to challenge assumptions, consider changing conditions and ask questions they may not have asked otherwise.

Has anything changed?

What assumptions am I making?

Are yesterday's controls still appropriate today?

Viewed this way, a quality risk assessment becomes far more than a compliance document.

It becomes a behavioural intervention.

It encourages people to move beyond intuition and deliberately reflect before committing themselves or others to unnecessary risk.

That observation also carries an important message for leaders.

If people naturally make decisions based on experience, environmental cues and perceived reward, then leadership becomes far more than enforcing procedures. Leaders influence the conditions in which decisions are made. They shape culture, establish expectations, provide coaching, develop competence and create environments where questioning assumptions is encouraged rather than discouraged.

For organisations, the lesson extends even further.

Training, supervision, work design, resource allocation, critical controls and organisational culture are not separate from decision-making.

They are the environment within which decision-making occurs.

Perhaps that is where effective risk management begins.

Not by teaching people what risk is.

But by understanding how people make decisions, recognising the factors that influence those decisions and deliberately creating systems that make good decisions easier to make.

After all, we've all been managing risk since we were children.

The lolly jar simply reminds us that understanding risk has never really been the problem.

Understanding people might be.

References

• Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow.

• Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124–1131.

• Kahneman, D., & Klein, G. (2009). Conditions for Intuitive Expertise: A Failure to Disagree. American Psychologist, 64(6), 515–526.

• Reason, J. (1997). Managing the Risks of Organisational Accidents.

• Dekker, S. (2014). The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error.

• Hollnagel, E. (2014). Safety-I and Safety-II.

• Diamond, A. (2013). Executive Functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135–168.