Ideas First.
Tools Second.
Safety Third.

I’m not the first one to say those things.

Mike Rowe, for example did a rant on Safety Third – even more eloquent than I could ever put it. And I think I’d first heard Simone Giertz, Queen of Shitty Robots, say “Ideas first. Tools later.”

But I’m gonna put them all together with a little tweak.

If safety were really the primary goal of any individual/group/organization then the very process of creativity and the risk sometimes associated with it would be stifled and only function within the bounds of the safety box they’ve built around themselves.

If tools were the primary goal, then at best, it would result in little more than consumerism – at worst, it leads to people seeing every problem within the confines of that tool’s capabilities.

Ideas, though – ideas must always come first. Once we have an idea, then we can acquire, learn, or even create the tools to bring that idea to life.

So, I think I’ll put that on the wall in my shop and at the bottom of my company signature block.