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Here is a thought provoking piece at wired.com on a radical approach to road safety. The article is about Hans Monderman, a traffic engineer who hates road signs. He has implemented road schemes in Holland that completely do away with road signs and markings. The use of these is for Monderman an admission of failure on the part of the road architect.

In place of signs, Monderman's strategy is to actually increase risk such that the responsibility is clearly on each road user.

The article is well worth a read, but it has set me thinking about the explosion of social regulation in Europe. The concern that we learn from accidents is perfectly commendable, but to encode such learning in regulations may in fact lead to us becoming more vulnerable to human error. The great danger of rules is that they relieve us of thinking. If everything were to remain the same from one day to the next then presumably we could one day attain a perfectly comprehensive set of rules for living. Not that it needs saying, but life isn't like that. This is a problem faced by legislators, which is why in many politcial systems there is a separation between law makers and those that interpret and apply the law.

For any organisation, being an organism of human interrelationships, there is a balance to be found between regulation and personal responsibility. The correct alignment of this balance is crucial to the ability of the organisation both to perform optimally today in the context of what is known and to respond adequately tomorrow in the context of that which is not yet known.

Yesterday I had the privilege of hearing Tony Benn being interviewed at the South Bank Royal Festival Hall about his new book "Dare to be a Daniel". Embedded in Benn's political approach is his awareness of the Old Testament biblical tension between kings and prophets. Benn himself stands quite consciously on the side of the prophets, who are often a thorn in the side of incumbent rulers. Whilst it is frequently necessary for prophets, whether they be journalists, opposition politicians, or members of the public, to expose the failings of "kings", I am not sure that I would want to be ruled by a "prophet". Part of the success and vibrancy of Western liberal democracies is this very tension between rulers and those that hold them to account, a tension that prevents the excessive roll-out of state rule and structure. Too much structure and regulation threatens life even when intended to preserve it. Too little leads to unproductive anarchy. The balance is where we find healthy social organisms.

I am left wondering how Monderman's approach would work in another cultural context. The extent to which complex individual interactions can provide the level of regulation desired by a particular society must depend heavily upon their cultural and ethical values. As an example, if London were to win the Olympic bid for 2012, it would be judged a scandal if the number of workmen losing their lives during building work were to equal the number of Albanian workers that died in Athens. Would such a British response reflect our stricter regulations or would it reflect our culture? In fact the two are closely interconnected. The challenge we are left with is how to nurture those values that facilitate the kind of environment and behaviour patterns that we desire. Laws no doubt influence social values, but only to a limited extent. Law enforcers know very well that ultimately rule is by consent. My own conclusion is that values are primary, laws are secondary. In which case, the success of Monderman's experiments depend upon values already in place.

My question about cultural context is not to point out differences between cultures, but rather to remind that culture is highly determinative of social behaviour. If our goal is to bring into being a certain kind of organisation, or a certain kind of organisational behaviour, whether it be political, social or business, we also need to be intentional about the culture and values that are the bedrock for that way of being. Once we have a clearer awareness of our culture and values we are in a better position to manage the balance between structure and freedom necessary for a healthy and growing social organism.