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Steve Scott: Hey, let's talk some hop. And remember, this is not just another damn safety podcast. Hi, and welcome to the show. I'm Steve Scott. This is another episode of Not Just Another Damn Safety Podcast. Now, I hope by now, if you've listened to any of my stuff, the earlier episodes of this podcast, or some of my videos, or if you've heard me speak, that you have got the message that my belief about human and organizational performance is that it is not a safety initiative. It's simply a set of beliefs. And if these beliefs become my beliefs, then my actions should demonstrate them, should be a reflection of them. And if if my actions, if I begin to act differently based on this set of beliefs that I've adopted, then that has not only an upside for safety, but also for everything else we do. It's really good for every aspect of our business. And I always try to make the point that, you know, we we we really need to pitch this as a as something that's good for business. Maybe we choose to initially practice it in the realm of safety, which is frequently the case and and which I think is fine. But let's understand that human and organizational performance has the ability to impact everything. So I thought today I would talk a little bit about. continuous improvement and how human and organizational performance, if we if we take that set of beliefs and we apply it to our improv continuous improvement efforts, how we can turbocharge those things we're trying to improve. So let me give you a little bit of my background. I I spent a fair bit of time in the continuous improvement world. I guess first when I was a a department superintendent during my time at Alcoa I Alcoa was really getting interested in the Toyota production system. And of course they rebrand branded it as the Alcoa Business System, but it was based on on TPS. And I really it really made sense to me. And I really tried to do a a good job of applying that methodology to the department that I managed. And After that plant was curtailed, I was offered an opportunity to work in a in a continuous improvement role inside Alcoa. Got to travel around the the the company and and help other plants with continuous improvement efforts. And then I took a role as a continuous improvement manager for the US based part of our business. And this is all in the days before I heard of human and organizational performance, right? But I I really did think that this continuous improvement methodology and and efforts was was well founded and and very much worthwhile. so I spent quite a bit of time in that world before I really got into human and organizational performance. And since I've been in this job or in this in this role, both at Alcoa and then as an independent consultant, I've had the opportunity to work with other country companies with their continuous improvement efforts. So I I've got a little bit of experience in the area and I've learned a few things that I think we can all benefit from by introducing HOP to our continuous improvement efforts. So I'm going to talk about three big things that I see and and and these are things that I was guilty of when I was in a continuous improvement role and also that I've seen other companies fall into these traps with their own continuous improvement efforts. So I want I'm going to talk about them. And this is by no means a definitive list. These are just three things that I've seen over and over again where I think human and organizational performance could provide us a clear benefit. All right. And those three things that I think are impacting continuous improvement efforts are not. Effectively engaging workers, using the black line as a starting point rather than the blue line, and not planning for failure with our continuous improvement efforts. Now let me talk about each one of them in a little more detail. And the first one is the first one because I think this is a big deal. Not effectively engaging workers. And if you listen to my episode, my last episode with Jason Koontz, I love the definition of engagement that he uses. engagement only happens when more than one person is learning. And I think very often we feel like when we're going out and we're doing continuous improvement work, if we just go tell the operators what it is we're doing, then we're we're engaging them. And I think that's a really bad trap to fall into. Engagement only happens if more than one person is learning. I I'll give you an example. One of the clients that I spent some time with a few years ago, this was a company who was very, very proud of their continuous improvement culture and especially their use of Kaizen methodology. And you know, Kaizen simply means change for the better. And I think way too often When we think of change for the better, we think of what's better for the company. And we go out and we tell workers what they need to do to benefit the company. And so this company I I where I was working, I did a lot of interviews with employees and I asked them about their their kaizens and their continuous improvement efforts. And the the answer I got over and over and over again when I'd ask them, tell me about the, you know, how what do you think of the kaizen? process here. I was frequently met with an eye roll, and then they said something like this the engineers show up to lead a kaizen and they've already made up their mind what the improvement is going to be and what the outcome is going to look like. So we are just sitting there along for the ride. That is not engaging the workers. And I think all too often that's a trap we fall into. We see a problem, we think we know the answer. And so we go tell the workers, this is what we need to do to improve. And I think when we do that, we don't take into account is this going to make the the work easier or harder for the workers? Is it going to is it going to be a benefit to them? Or is it just going to be a benefit to the company? Because if it's
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just a benefit to the company, whatever that change is, it's probably not going to be sustainable unless we you know, stand there and crack a whip and make sure that people do it the way we've redesigned it. So I think one of the things that we could do better is just view the workers as the most valuable resource in how the work happens and how the work can be improved. Because I I promise you, they know things about the work that we don't know. And they probably almost always have some really good ideas about how to improve the work. And so remember, engagement only happens if more than one person's learning. So we need to be learning from them and at the same time using this as an opportunity to help them learn from our knowledge of the process, of the customer demands, of the quality requirements, of the continuous improvement, the cost. All those things that we all care about because the the thing we really want to get out of a continuous improvement effort is that it's good for everybody. We want to benefit the company, we want to make, you know, make more money, lower cost, increase volume, better quality, all those things. But we also want to make work better for the workers, because that's the only way it really becomes sustainable. So this only happens if we take the time to really engage the workers and communicate with them and listen to them. So that's, I think, one of the first things where we can improve our continuous improvement oper efforts is a better job of engaging the workers. Number two, use the very frequently. When we start a continuous improvement effort, we see a process, or maybe it's a maybe it's a workstation or process production center that we see a problem at. We're having throughput issues, we're introducing quality defects, whatever that problem is. And one of the first things we do is we look at how the process works today. And I think the trap that we fall into very often is we look at how the work is supposed. Supposed to happen, the black line, rather than how the work actually happens, the blue line. So we pull up all the procedures and the SOPs and the work instructions. And you know, maybe we go out and we ask the workers, tell me what you're doing. And you know, this goes back to the to to problem number one: not engaging the workers, if we haven't taken the time to engage with the workers. They're probably going to be really reluctant to tell us how the work actually happens. So what we end up doing then is we end up basing our improvement efforts, basing that's that that baseline from which we are going to improve. We base it on how we think work happens rather than how work really happens. So then whatever change we make is going from a different starting point. Than what the workers are really doing. And so it's probably not going to work for the workers. It's not going to deliver the improvement that we'd like to see. It's probably not going to be sustainable. So I think one of the things that can really, really help us in our continuous improvement efforts, as it does with our safety efforts, is really spending time with the workers in understanding the blue line, how work really happens. versus how we think it happens or how we designed it to happen. And this only works if the workers trust us enough to tell us how they really do the work. We want, you know, we need to know if we're going to try to improve the work, we need to know where they can't follow the SOP or where they create workarounds and shortcuts in order to get their work done, where the equipment doesn't operate the just the way it's supposed to. Where they don't always have the right materials or parts. We need to know all these things so that our continuous improvement effort starts from a place of operational reality rather than this fantasy that is the procedures and the work instructions and everything else that we think applies. So really spend time with the workers, building trust first, and then understanding. How they actually do the work. The more we know about how work really happens, the better chance we have of working with the workers to create sustainable improvement. If we start from where the procedure says work happens, or how the procedure says work happens, we we're we're starting with a you know a bad premise and we're probably not going to be successful. So Don't use the black line as a starting point. Don't start from the place of where you think the work happens or how you think the work happens. Start from understanding how the work really happens, talking to the workers, building trust, being open with each other, learning everything they know about the work, and then we can work with them on how to improve it. So that's number two. Number three. Problem with our continuous improvement efforts, where I think Hop can help us, is not planning for failure. we talk a lot about this in the safety realm of being prepared for failure and being able to fail successfully. Well, the same thing needs to apply if we're talking about productivity, quality, efficiency, effectiveness, cost. but there's a few other things that I think we can work into that. I think one of the things that we do that sets us up for failure is not doing the first two things I talk about. If we if we don't properly engage the workers, if we don't implement change without good sufficient input from the workers or involvement from the workers, it is going to fail. I'm gonna say 99 times out of a hundred. So I think one of the things we need to do. Much like we talk about in the realm of safety, is do a better job of planning those improvements and testing them. Can we do small micro experiments with that test? Can we try it with with one crew at one production center before we roll it out to all the crews on all the production centers to make sure that we've got a change that works for everybody? And then what happens if at two o'clock in the morning? That change we implemented causes
a failure. I think we need to, you know, do a better job of embracing the idea that with our continuous improvement efforts, they're not all gonna work. A lot of them are gonna fail. And that's why we should have a a a really good plan, do, check, adjust methodology in place so that we have a plan for, hey, if this doesn't work. This is how we're going to know it's not working, and this is what we're going to do about it. Because I think one of the things we need to do is view failure as a natural part of the continuous improvement process. The workplace is a complex system. In complex systems, failures are normal. This is not just in the safety world, it's in everything we do. So I think we just need to accept that. The fact that many of our continuous improvement efforts are not going to pan out, they're going to fail, which provides us an excellent opportunity for learning. If we can accept those failures, be prepared for them, understand where they're possible, be ready to adjust. We have just learned something about the process, about the equipment, about the people, about the materials that we can incorporate into the next iteration of improvement. So Look at failure as a natural part of the continuous improvement cycle and treat it as an opportunity to learn and improve. Don't quit, throw up your hands, get despondent, go home. It's part of the process, and we need to view it as such. So do small micro experiments where we can fail safely without having a big impact on the operation. Get feedback from the workers, engage them early on, but be prepared for failures to occur. look at them as opportunities to learn, adjust, improve, and do better next time. So just think of all these things we talked about with continuous improvement. And I've I've kind of touched on it without kind of outright saying it, I guess, but let's layer hop into this. So if we approach these continuous improvement efforts, and especially these, these, these three things I talked about. And think of these through the lens of the five hot principles. Accept that error is normal. Workers are going to make mistakes. So how do we keep them more than one mistake away from a bad outcome? How do we alert them that they've made a mistake or that they are making a mistake and give them an opportunity to recover before we get a bad outcome in quality and productivity, efficiency, effectiveness, cost? Let's not blame the worker when we have a bad outcome. Again, failure is part of the continuous improvement process. Let's not blame the worker if it doesn't work. Let's figure out what we can learn from that so we can improve it for the workers and make them more successful. Let's dedicate ourselves to learning. Learning is a deliberate activity. That should be a key part of the continuous improvement process. I think all too often, as as with the example I gave you at the beginning, we jump into a continuous improvement effort thinking we already know the answer. And what we end up doing is implementing something that doesn't work for the workers. So I think one of the most important parts of the improvement process is learning. And the best place to learn is out there with the workers, observing the process, talking to the workers, listening to what they tell us. Doing what they do or seeing what they do, seeing how they respond, that's the most important part of the continuous improvement process. Understand the context that drives their behavior. They don't just wake up in the morning and decide they're gonna go to work and screw stuff up. When they make mistakes, when they deviate, when they create workarounds, when they take shortcuts, when they don't follow the rules, those are driven by context, things like. The work conditions, the the way the machine's operating, production pressures, short crewing, time pressure, all those other things that occur every day in the workplace drive their behavior. So let's try to understand that rather than just point the finger at the behavior. And then again, finally, remember that our response to failure matters. So we can get upset and we can get angry and we can lash out when our continuous improvement efforts don't work the way we wanted to, or we can just embrace that, hey, failure's a natural part of the process. Let's learn everything we can from this, adjust, try something else, and see if we can make it a little bit better for both us and for the workers. So take that hop methodology, apply it to your continuous improvement efforts. And I think you will turbocharge, you will improve your continuous improvement efforts by doing that. Because again, human and organizational performance is not a safety initiative. It's a set of beliefs that drive our behaviors, and it can apply to everything we do. It's just good for business, every aspect of the business. So If we want to practice it initially in safety, that's okay. But don't forget about it when you get ready to do continuous improvement work because I think it's very, very applicable to improving our continuous improvement efforts. Sound good? Thanks a lot. Hey, if you like what you hear here, hear here, if you like what you hear, send me a note. Give me a comment, send me an email. If you have thoughts about a future topic, let me know. if I can work it in, I'll work it in. I'd love to hear from you. And until next time, I'm Steve Scott. This has been Not Just Another Damn Safety Podcast.