Full Transcript for Five Things to do, Starting Tomorrow

talk about them. So principle number one, errors normal. So, what's something I can do to demonstrate that I believe error's normal? And I think the most obvious thing that we can do. Is normalize talking about errors and mistakes. And this is not something we like to do, right? We we typically don't like to talk about our mistakes or our errors. We we maybe we like to talk about other people's mistakes, but we we kind of don't like to talk about our own. But if we really believe that error is normal, it's as normal as breathing. It's not something that just happens to dumb, stupid, lazy people. It's normal for humans to make errors. And if that's what we believe, then we shouldn't be hesitant to talk about where we made errors and more importantly, what we learned from them. Now you might have, if you heard one of my earlier podcasts, I talked about how I got this big scar on my hand from an error I made doing a woodworking project. And Believe me, that is not something that I wanted to talk about, because my first reaction after that was, holy cow, that was stupid. What a dumbass. And I don't want anyone else to know about this. I especially didn't want my oldest son David, who's also a woodworker, to know about this. And then I started thinking about it, you know, that that's that that's counter to what I believe. And so I I I thought about what I could what I could do differently to make sure this didn't happen again. And there were some things that I learned from that and some things that I could improve. And so the next time I talked to David, I I told him about it, told him what happened, told him what I was going to do differently. And that that's it didn't wasn't easy. I'd rather not told him. But if we believe that errors normal, let's start normalizing the way we talk about errors. That's an easy thing that we can do. So You know, don't force it, but when something comes up in conversation that reminds you of of where we made a mistake or an error, bring it out. Hey, yeah, when I was I was doing this the other day and this is what happened, and and here's what I learned from that. Because the more we model that behavior, the more comfortable it becomes for other people to do the same. So let's normalize the way we talk about human error. Okay? Number two, principle number two. Blame fixes nothing. Here's the thing I would ask you to do to demonstrate that belief. And I know that everybody has HR policies and rules and procedures and everything that you you're good. That's those things that you'll have to wait for the organization to decide to change. But here's something you can do starting tomorrow when you observe an event or a behavior that concerns you, or you hear about an incident. Always assume good intent. Always assume that that was a worker in a difficult position trying to get their work done as best they could. Always start with that assumption. And if the data takes you somewhere else, then so be it. But if we start with the assumption of, wow, that was stupid, I wouldn't have done that. You're never going to get away from that, and we're going to be right back to blaming the victim or the last person that touched it. So always in your mind, start with the assumption that was a worker trying to do their work under difficult conditions. And let your let your conversation, your questions, your follow-up go from there. Okay? So always assume positive intent. All right. Number three. Principle number three, learning's deliberate. And if we believe that learning's deliberate, I guess one of the things we could do is every time there's an incident, safety incident, quality incident, productivity loss, equipment damage, we could focus on making sure we learn from that. And we absolutely should. But if we really believe learning is a deliberate thing, learning from normal work. presents so many more opportunities for learning than waiting for an event. So here's what I challenge you to do. Set aside 15 minutes every day you're at work. If you're in the plant or in the office, every day you're there, set aside 15 minutes with one simple goal. I'm going to go to talk with someone about their work and try to learn one thing that I didn't know. And if I get the opportunity for that person to learn something from me, that's even better. But I am going to spend 15 minutes going out and talking to someone with no agenda other than to learn something that I didn't already know. And here's one of the pieces of advice I'd give you when you do that. Don't start the conversation with safety. Don't go ask the person, hey, what do you do that's unsafe? Where could you get hurt? What's the worst thing that could happen to you? Because then you're going to have a very narrow discussion focused on the safety aspects of their work. My favorite opening question when I when I approach someone in that situation is, hey, tell me a little bit about your work. Tell me a little bit about what you're doing here. And let them decide what's the important stuff that they want to share with you. And then you can have a good discussion about what it is that they decided they wanted to tell you. Okay? So learning's deliberate. So let's be deliberate and set aside 15 minutes every day we're at work. Go talk to someone, learn one thing we didn't already know. Number four, principle number four, context influences behavior. So, and and I think if you're in one of those organizations that still is really into behavior-based safety, this is one of the things you can do in the confines of your behavior-based safety program that I think will make it much better and give you much better results. Okay. Don't focus on the behavior. Focus on the conditions that led to the behavior. All right. So when you see something that's concerning that you believe is unsafe, or maybe it's not following a procedure, or maybe it could result in a quality episode or productivity loss, go up to the person, have a conversation,

acknowledge the behavior you observe, but then quickly move to, hey, what was going on that that led you to do that? What were the what what conditions did you encounter? What was it that was going on in the work area that led you to do that? Because those conditions, if we can change those conditions, are much more likely to give us a positive lasting outcome than trying to change behavior. Trying to change behavior is really, really difficult, especially if we don't do anything about the underlying conditions that led to that. Behavior. I love that quote by Clive Lloyd that behavior's not the problem. Behavior's an expression of the problem. So let's focus on the conditions. That's the context that drove their behavior. The conditions that they encountered that led them to do whatever that was you saw. Okay, so focus on the conditions, not the behavior. Number five. What's principle number five? The way leaders respond to failure matters. So here's what I'd ask you to do. And, you know, your response after a failure may and probably is going to be heavily dictated by your company's policies and your HR procedures and things like that. And yes, you you may not have it within your ability to change them. But here's something you can do. I think one of the biggest Issues or the biggest challenges we have when you think about our response to failure. It's the immediate reaction we have when we hear bad news. The look on our face, the words that blurt out of our mouth instantly sets the tone for everything that follows. We immediately send a really clear message to the audience. Am I looking for who to blame or am I looking for what we can learn? Because we can't do both. So here's what I'd ask you to do to demonstrate that belief. When you get that bad news, when you get that phone call, or someone comes to your office and says, Guess what happened? Take five seconds. Take five seconds. Don't say a word. Freeze your face. Take a deep breath, count to five. And while you're counting to five, just think about what message am I getting ready to send to the audience? Because once that comes out of our mouths, We can't undo that. We have already sent a clear message. Am I looking to learn or am I looking for to blame? We can't do both. And we can't undo it once it comes out of our mouths. So just take five seconds, take a deep breath, count the five, and think about what message am I getting ready to send? All right? So that's five things. Number one, normalize talking about human error. Talk about where we made errors and mistakes and what we learned from it. Number two, always assume good intent. When you see somebody doing something that worries you or they're not following a procedure or it's not safe, always assume that that's a worker doing their best to get their work done under difficult circumstances and let the conversation go from there. All right. Number three, set aside 15 minutes every day you're at work with no other agenda. Than to go talk to someone about their work and to learn one thing you didn't know before. Number four, focus on conditions, not behaviors. Acknowledge the behavior, but focus on the conditions that led to the behavior. And if we can change those conditions, that's much more effective than trying to change the behavior. And number five, when you hear bad news, take a deep breath, count to five, think what message am I getting ready to send? before you open your mouth. Those five things are how we start to demonstrate this belief system that we call human and organizational performance. Okay? Those are five things you can do on your own, starting today, without waiting for the organization to make some big announcement or put together big plans or roll out package. You can do this starting today. Now I promised you one bonus one. And I got this from Josh Bryant. If you if you heard my podcast episode with Josh Bryant, I hope you remembered this. I asked him at the end of it, what's the last thing you would leave people with? And he said something like this: He said, Let your first question be, what was it that made that make sense at the time? What was it that made it make sense to you to do that at the time? Ask that question. Rather than why'd you do that? What was going on that made it make sense for you to do that? And if you think about it, that one question after an event or after you see something concerning takes all of those principles into account, right? We acknowledge that you know we're not yelling at someone for making an error. We're assuming they had good intents and we're trying to understand why. You know, we're trying to learn about what happened. We're trying to understand the conditions that person encountered that led to the behavior. And our response is not to yell and scream and holler. It's to try to understand what that person was experiencing that allowed that action to make sense to them at the time. So always start with that question. Hey, what was going on that led you or that led that action to make sense to you at that time? What did it what was happening that allowed it to make sense to you to do that? Those are the things we can focus on. Okay. Hey, I hope this was helpful. I hope you like what you hear. If you have any thoughts or comments, I'd love to hear them. if you have any any suggestions for a future episode, my contact information's in the description of this podcast. send me a note and I'll see what I can do. Until then. Take care.