Have you ever had an idea, or heard an idea, thinking it was brilliant, only to realise that the idea is not that new, and didn't come from where you thought it did? Welcome to the discipline of organisational psychology.
Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.
Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you're in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.
Industrial and organisational psychology, or IO psych as it is often called, is well over 100 years old. It was labelled as the exploration of 'real life' psychology. It's official birth is suggested to be 1913, with the publication of the first text on the subject called Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, by Hugo Munsterberg.
How is it that such a field, with 100 years of history and research and development, is not that familiar to most of us working in health and safety?
Well today I hope that will change just a little, as I dialogue with Diya Dey, an organisational psychologist based in Melbourne Australia. Diya has experience in both consulting and working in-house, and is currently in a organisational psychology role focussed on organisational wellbeing in the Victorian State Government.
When I first met Diya, I found her curious, and generous. A great combination in my book, so it was only natural that I would invite her into a conversation with the Safety on Tap community about how industrial and organisation psychology relates to, and can enhance, work health and safety.
Here's my conversation with Diya Dey:
Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep218
You seem to have answers for everything, he said to me. He was 100% right and 100% wrong at the same time. This is a podcast about how that can be, and how you can engage with better answers.
Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.
Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you're in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.
Before you think that this episode will be a gratuitous brag about how good I think I am wrapped up in some parable of a story, stay with me for a few minutes.
When he said to me, 'you seem to have answers for everything', he WAS both right and wrong at the same time.
He was right because to him, it did seem that I had answers for lots of the things we were talking about and working through in our coaching together. He was wrong, because I wasn't really giving him answers in the way that questions are usually asked, or problems are usually solved with solutions. What I was giving him was responses. Responses to his question, to his story, to his context.
Responses aren't answers. Responses are what we do when it's our turn, in a dialogue two or more people engage in a turn-taking exchange. Dialogue is an ancient word, very central to modern human experience, which comes from two Greek words put together: dia- translates to through, and logos translated to meaning, dialogos, or dialogue, the movement of flow of meaning through the people involved.
You can see turn taking all the time, which isn’t dialogue. It's more like tennis. One person serves, another receives and returns the ball. The object of tennis, and the object of a huge proportion of our interactions with other people, is to get to the end, to resolve the point, usually in favour of one person or the other.
Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep217
What does it sound like, to have permission to not focus on certain things in health and safety? What one concept are we missing from risk management that makes a massive difference?
Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.
Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you're in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.
My guest today is Tim Lie. Is he a safety professional? I ask him that, so you'll have to wait and see what he says. What I can tell you is that his roles have included group HSE responsibilities, lifecycle alignment, culture, and capability. You don't often hear those things in people's job titles, do you?
I met Tim a while back when I was invited along to a national health and safety team workshop. It took all of 2 minutes for me to be really curious about Tim. He is broadly read, he has both a practitioner and academic background, he is an engineer who loves solving problems but is hyper tuned into the messy people side of business, and he talks in a way that gives you a deep insight into how his brain works, which is fascinating.
So that's why I wanted to introduce him to you! We had a wide ranging chat, dove deep on a few things but still covered a fair bit of ground. I hope you enjoy, here's my chat with Tim Lie:
Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep216
Radio, television, and the content we consume have changed enormously since I was a kid. This is a podcast about the physics, and the metaphor of this change and how we can change too, but only if we want to remain resonant.
Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.
Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you're in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.
There used to be just a handful of TV stations, and a handful of radio stations. It was kind of easy as a kid, because the TV guide fit onto a single page in the newspaper, and the discussion about what to watch was easier because there were only a few options to choose from. Cartoons on Channel 7 on the afternoons we were allowed to watch TV, then Channel 2 at 6pm for the ABC news, on Wednesdays the highlight of the TV week was a bit of police drama with Blue Heelers on Channel 7 at 8.30, and Friday night football on Channel 9 kicked off the sporting entertainment of the weekend.
Bandwidth used to be a constraint. On the radiomagnetic spectrum, there are only a limited number of frequencies which TV or radio could use to broadcast their content to you. Even if you have a digital radio in your car or at home, you can still see the remnants of this bandwidth constraint, when a radio station includes a number in the name - Mix 106.5, 104.1 Today FM.
The number is the actual frequency (measured in Mega Hz for FM stations), the actual number of times the wave goes up and down per second. That number meant it was easy for you to tune into the right station, to listen to what they had to offer, loud and clear. If you were one point off, one tweak of the dial, and not only did you have the wrong frequency, you had garbled, snowy, or no radio content to listen to.
There is no doubt that the use of the radiomagnetic spectrum for communication, and its associated constraint of a limited number of frequencies, shaped our culture enormously.
Until the constraint disappeared. With the internet we went from limited bandwidth to broadband - because we jumped off the radiomagnetic spectrum and entered a world of limitless channels to choose from, unlimited space for broadcast, and people who were more than happy to no longer be constrained to the 3 or 5 channels they used to have to choose from.
Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep215
Are the ideas of science at odds with a humanist approach? Can we solve all the big problems with big data and analytics? Can you really succeed with tools and practices and not understand the philosophy behind them?
Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.
Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you're in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.
The healthcare industry is one of the biggest growing in many economies around the world as population growth continues, more people are living longer, and advances in medical care and pharmaceuticals are preventing more and more illness and death than ever before.
Dr Satyan Chari has been hard at work in this sector for many years, and I've been trying to get him on the podcast for ages. He is a great communicator, has done some cool collaborative improvement projects, and has always struck me as someone who knows his stuff but is anything but a know-it-all.
It's been a long time coming, and a little longer than usual, I hope you enjoy, here's Satyan:
Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep214
Two quick questions for you: first, did you get what you got in 2023 by design, or did your year kind of happen to you by accident? Second question, what's going to change for you in 2024? I have gifts for you inside, keep listening!
Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.
Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you're in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.
This episode will be released on the 18th of December, and many of you may have even stopped work for the year. The past few weeks are a unique time in the yearly cycle, when the health and safety leaders I work with turn their minds to those two important questions I just asked:
- Did you get what you got in 2023 by design, or did your year kind of happen to you by accident?
- What's going to change for you in 2024?
We are now realising that just focussing on preventing bad stuff is a pretty limited view of health and safety, and that many of our approaches are limited in the application and the quality of their outputs. So how would we broaden out focus to study and improve normal work? It turns out there are theories, models, and people who've doing this for 80 years. Allow me to introduce Human Factors, Ergonomics, and Systems Thinking.
Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.
Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you're in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.
My guest today is Associate Professor Gemma Read, from the Centre for Human Factors and Sociotechnical Systems, at the University of the Sunshine Coast.
We talk about one of Gemma's journal papers to bring this dialogue to life. The paper, called "State of science: evolving perspectives on human error", is really quite readable (click here to download it) [hyperlink URL is https://research.usc.edu.au/esploro/outputs/journalArticle/State-of-science-evolving-perspectives-on/99571607402621]
Here's Gemma:
Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep212
Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.
If we want to improve our performance in ANY area of our life, work or otherwise, there are ONLY three ways to do it, three kinds of how before we decide what to do. For most of us, the decisions we make every day, many times a day, about which of the three ways to take, is invisible. Until now.
Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you're in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.
Most people who go to the gym exercise more than people who exercise on their own because of the very fact that they are at a gym, and there are people around them are working out. And research suggests that you tend to exercise at the level of those people around you, whether they are high fitness or low fitness, you’ll tend to match them.
Exercising at home is entirely possible for almost every person on the planet, and free.
But when we invest in doing it with help and with the right kind of others, it almost always accelerates our results.
Take that up a notch with a personal trainer, where you get more tailored help for your situation, you have built-in accountability and boosted motivation because of the design of the help/support you invest in (the PT).
I mentioned there are three ways to improve performance, and only three. Everything you do in your life fits into one of these three categories.
Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep211
I don't agree. And here's why. We should hear this a lot more in health and safety practice. The need to say these words, and the way it sounds when we say it, is more important to our effectiveness than you can imagine.
Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.
Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you're in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.
In year one, my school report said that I participated with vigour in everything, creative and imaginative, but easily distracted. In year two I was described as enthusiastic, with much to contribute, but restless and tended to distract other students. In year three, Mrs Noonan lauded my vivid imagination, pleasing progress, but said straight out I was inconsiderate of others. In year four I managed to earn the teachers label as polite, interested, capable, but lacking concentration and very easily distracted. For the first time it seems, Miss Newcombe made the connection between my apparent weaknesses and my strengths, recognising my participation in group work and class discussions as extremely good. And by year 6, poor Miss Rodgers who was one year out of teachers college didn't know what hit her. Hard working, creative, and capable she said I was, and then came the shit sandwich of feedback - great participation in discussions, but the enthusiasm leads to rather thoughtless actions, which can be disruptive, and this does hinder Andrew producing work I was capable of.
The biggest problem with communication is the assumption that it has happened. And the #1 cause of conflict is when people fail to understand each other. If I said to you that we don't have enough disagreement in health and safety, what would you say to me? Does that conjure up all the times that you've had to go up against a worker, supervisor, or manager on a hazard or inadequate risk control? Or when you've gone head to head with an auditor, client, or inspector? How many times have you had to defend a safety requirement, 'because, it's a requirement'? Or the system says? Or infamously, it's a legal requirement (said with such conviction that it's become automatic, even though deep down we know that most things labelled as legal requirements are not)?
Ok so we probably have enough disagreements.
What if I tweaked my statement, and said to you that we don't have enough good quality disagreements in health and safety? What comes to mind? What does that mean?
Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep209
I have some questions for you. As you hear these, just nod your head or shake it if you agree or disagree. Does it ever feel like you can't give a good clear definition of what health and safety is? That the work is never ending? That it's tricky to definitively describe what we are trying to do? That it's difficult to predict what will happen? That we can't make firm promises about our systems or controls or interventions? That what works in one context doesn't seem to in others so we are always creating things anew? That interpretation and multiple perspectives in health and safety are both frustrating but seemingly inevitable?
Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.
Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you're in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.
I wouldn't be bringing you this conversation today unless I was confident you'd be nodding to most of those questions I just asked. The logical rational way to solve those problems might be to get a clearer definition of health and safety, to do more research on what works, to standardise, to invest better metrics to measure….the list of things people are putting huge time and resources into are significant.
Well what if I suggested to you that a lot of it could be wasted effort? That maybe health and safety can't be adequately defined? That it is necessarily reinvented in each context? That we cannot ever know the answer or even the problem until we throw something against the wall?
The questions I asked you come from the definition of wicked problems, which means that if you were nodding along, it's more likely that you will come to see and understand health and safety as a wicked problem.
And if health and safety is a wicked problem, then trying to improve it using methods and mindsets, tools and techniques from other kinds of problems might be as useful as trying to mow your lawn with scissors, or to educate your kids using social media as the teacher.
My guest today is Craig Ashurst. Craig's a real T shaped person, with breadth of experience including risk and health and safety, and now significant depth in the area of wicked problems.
If health and safety might be a wicked problem, then it might pay for us to understand wicked problems if we want to be more effective in our work.
Here's Craig:
Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep209
We are in the business of change. But we aren't always great at it. This is a podcast about babies and blindness, carrots and elephants, and the necessary tension between where we want to go, and where we are right now.
I don't think we will ever be able to rest on our laurels, even if we become the most influential and effective safety professionals in history. Even if all the hazards are identified, all the controls are known and in place, I think two things will always be true. The first truth is that the only thing that stays the same is change - change in operations, change in people, change in resourcing, change in the work environment or industry context. The second truth, or maybe I should say what I believe to be true, comes from the High Reliability Organising research. Even when everything seems great, our ongoing job is to create and maintain a sense of unease about things, which keeps us tuned into and anticipating change and what needs to change.
I gave up the clever but trite phrase 'my job is to make myself redundant' many years ago for this reason. I will make the argument that not only is the job never finished, that we need to earn our place in our organisation using this very logic.
And until that time, it can feel really, really frustrating.
Ep208: Is your professional practice unethical?
Full show notes: safetyontap.com/ep208
Is your professional practice unethical?
Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.
Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you're in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.
Let's begin with an agreement, I'd like to agree somethings with you before you keep listening.
The first is that the work of health and safety is a fundamentally ethical thing, we do what we do because we believe it is what is right. So the first thing I'd like to agree on is that we can't talk about health and safety without talking about ethics.
The second, is that we either can't, or shouldn't, call ourselves professionals if we don't understand the fundamentals of what we say and do. Plenty of people might know the words and activities of health and safety at a surface level, but what separates them from professionals like us is our greater grasp of the fundamental aspects of health and safety and all that entails. That's the second agreement - to be professional means a greater fundamental grasp of the nature of what we do and why.
If you don't agree with these, stop listening, there isn't any point because this conversation will be nonsensical to you. If you do agree, then this might make sense, in which case it also might be helpful to you. You decide.
Ok, you’re still here, let's proceed.
Today's guest is Simon Cassin. Simon has real range - from serving his community as a fire fighter, to lived experience of harm at work, through ongoing study and practice in the arenas of philosophy and health and safety, and importantly how the two interact.
Here's Simon:
Ep207: On the Hook & the Cost of Free, with Andrew Barrett
Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep207
Today, you can access the entire collection of information used to create university-level health and safety programs, for free. Today, you could sign-up for an MBA, and in a year from now have an MBA, for free. If you haven't done either of these things, and you probably haven't, there's a reason. For the people who have taken that first step, almost all of them drop out and walk away. This is a story about the rationality of never starting and of giving up, and how we can create the conditions for you and those around us to actually get better.
Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.
Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you're in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.
I worked in an organization in which it was normal for people to talk about responsibility saying things like 'ok Jill, you're on the hook for that action'. When discussing significant projects, or high workload, or risky things to have your name one, people might kindly ask 'do you want to be on the hook for that?'
At the time I thought it was a strange phrase. It conjured up images of 'catching' slippery sea creatures and dragging them to their demise, or in darker moments the more dread filled meat hook so favoured by horror writers and medieval dungeon keepers.
It tuns out the idiom 'on the hook' does come from fishing. A fish on the hook has been caught, it no other options, what happens next is decided. On the flip side, a fish not yet on the hook is free, and one which was on the hook but is no longer, has 'slipped' off the hook.
This metaphor for gives us a long runway into a discussion about responsibility and accountability more generally, which I will explore in an episode soon, but for now we need to talk about putting ourselves on the hook, taking responsibility for the things we control.
Ep206: Change and Change Managers, with Gilbert Kruidenier
Full Show Notes: https://safetyontap.com/ep206
Change! It's the only thing that stays the same in health and safety. Today's guest is a professional change manager, though the label doesn't entirely capture what he does and how he does it.
Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.
Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you're in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.
Gilbert Kruidenier is my guest today. He has worked all over the world in operations, process improvement, and change, which seems to be where he adds the most value, because that’s why his phone keeps ringing. In some ways, for many of you, he is also a window into the future, designing his work around projects rather than permanent roles. He is a university lecturer on change, a leader in the Change Management Institute here in Australia, and co-author of the book 'Bad Change: 50 ways change doesn't work and 266 tips to make things better!'
This conversation is a little longer than my usual interviews. I'm sorry if that doesn't fit into your commute or gym session, but I'm not sorry 'cos of how interesting and useful this conversation was, and we barely scratched the surface.
Here's Gilbert:
Ep205: Platinum, Covid, and how ideas spread, with Andrew Barrett
Full Show Notes: https://safetyontap.com/ep205
I noticed when they started saying 'Welcome back Mr Barrett' when I boarded the plane. But I really took notice, when they stopped saying it. This is a podcast about ideas, and stories, and our opportunity to pay more attention to how they affect our work as health and safety professionals.
Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.
Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you're in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.
Before Covid I travelled a fair bit, and despite proving time and time again how effective virtual coaching and facilitation can be during Covid, once travel restrictions were eased I found myself being asked to come here and go there more than I would like. Covid saw two automatic extensions of my frequent flyer status, since if you can't fly you can't maintain it. Once travel was permitted again, I found myself dropped from the top tier frequent flyer colour down to the next one. I've always said that frequent flyer status is not exciting nor something to be coveted, all it indicates is that I spend too much time away from my family.
Stick with me, for regular listeners you'll know that my story and metaphor ties into what we do as health and safety professionals, rather than an egotistical rant. There is something small, something human about stepping onto a plane, and someone looking at the colour at the bottom of the pass, looking you in the eye, and saying welcome back. They don't know me, they see data which tells them on this airline, we value loyalty and we welcome people by name.
Until they didn't. It seems that stepping onto a plane, Gold status bumps me down the human respect pecking order, so there is no personal 'welcome back My Barrett' anymore. They changed their idea about what loyalty, status and customer service sounds like. One tiny change made me notice, and changed the way I feel.
Infectious Ideas, Genes and Memes
An idea which I was introduced to me early in my career, and which was reinforced a lot, an idea which I came to believe and would re-tell to others was that safety management systems were the solution to health and safety performance. That idea became so intertwined in my professional identity and practice that it shaped me, and blinded me, and twisted me.
Another idea which was part of my early professional shaping is the story that 'part of our job is to protect the Board of Directors'. That one did a real doozy on me, creating confusion and anger and inconsistency and bad behaviour in the name of a story which I believed at the start because other people handed that idea down to me so became my story. Except when I decided that it wouldn't be my story, that I needed a new story to replace it. Needless to say that one needs an entire lying-on-the-couch podcast session, but ultimately boils down to very important but grammatically minor tweaks I made to the core idea in the story: instead of 'part of our job is to protect the Board of Directors', my new story was 'most of my job is supporting safe and healthy work, which becomes protection for the Board of Directors'. How did those ideas come to be? In part, they were spread, like a virus, from others to me, and they became infective.
You may have heard the word genes, spelled g-e-n-e-s, in reference to the unique DNA coding which animals and plants inherit from their parents in the process of reproduction. Genes contain the information which lead to your height, your eye colour, and many parts of your physical and psychological make-up, including tendency for disease, creativity and intellect.
In the biological world, something like Covid did not exactly exist until the day that it did. What happened that day was a combination of mutation of genes within cells, an increasingly hospitable environment for those cells, and then rapid copying or replication of those virus cells and their spread into hospitable environments, namely human beings. The cells which had evolved reproduced, the ones that didn't evolve didn't survive, and that is the basic equation for the explosive spread of that virus, including it's variants which were just human labels for distinct mutations of the original genetic makeup of the virus.
The copying, mutation, and selection which ideas in our culture undergo is an analogy to biological genetic evolution through generations over time. In 1976 Richard Dawkins wrote a book titled the Selfish Gene, in which he expanded on the idea of 'memes' as described by numerous other authors, including Huxley as far back as the 1800's. A meme was originally meant to signify a cultural idea, a bit like a piece of DNA, which spreads, duplicates and mutates according to cultural pressures, like competition, and favourable or inhospitable environment.
Survival, Spread, and Virality
An example of this most of us can identify with is how ideas of hatred or violence spread. These ideas are not new in human history, but definitely evolve over time, which means that there continues to be environments of greater or lesser benefit to the ideas. We might think that a cultural environment like religion and religious believers is inhospitable to violence or hatred, yet we see institutional religion and believers as promotors and perpetrators of so much hatred and violence in the past. We might say that developed countries have cultures which are increasingly inhospitable to hatred and violence, yet every single one of them has obsessive sporting sub-cultures based on the idea that my team is the best, which means I hate your team, and the way we prove it is to go to battle with balls, batts and white lines on mowed grass fields.
Can you see how complicated it gets when we start seeing ideas and how they spread?
It's no mistake that memes, as cultural ideas akin to biological genes, are often described as 'viral' - spreading and evolving rapidly. The way to spot traits is to look for things common across multiple generations. My wife and I have blue eyes so my kids will all have blue eyes. But sporting ability? That's harder to see, but it's there if you look. So let's think about the virality of ideas in health and safety.
What are the things which you were introduced to as a young or new health and safety professional which you accepted as they were. Once of mine was about safety management systems. What about yours? That compliance is the goal? That everything needs a record? That people do make bad decisions? That complacency is a real, valid, and satisfactory explanation for an incident? That danger pay is an acceptable trade off for high risk working conditions? That Unions truly do want to protect worker safety? Or that Unions weaponise safety? That Regulators should be welcomed to the workplace? Or that Regulators should be quickly shown a fabrication of real work and shown the door?
What about our role? That we are here to protect? Or care? That if we don't do safety no one else will? That even if we know the training is crappy, we convince people it's not that bad because we think it's the right thing to do? That you are a better safety person because of your real world experience? Or you are better because you studied? Or you are better because you had a personal safety or health scare? Or you are a better professional because you had a father or brother or daughter or friend die at work?
Paying Attention to How Ideas Spread
All these things are memes, not cute cat face memes or Chuck Another Shrimp on the Barbie memes, they are the idea threads which replicate, evolve and spread in our culture, the stuff we say and do and read and pay attention to and develop and expect at work and what work expects of us.
The greatest irony of all about Dawkins concept of the meme, was that it was, in his words, 'hijacked by the internet'. Instead of an interesting theory for us to look at culture, it became the label for cheesy, cheap and shallow attention sucking snippets all within the square frame in your social media feed. This hijacking led to three very interesting things happening which we can learn from.
First, memes started behaving less like genes when people became intent and deliberate about how they changed them. Instead of evolutionary selection (which explains why giraffes have long necks) or mutation (such as the cause of Down Syndrome or Cystic Fibrosis), people actively muck around and change ideas. Think about how many memes you've seen based on The Matrix Movie, Game of Thrones, Donald Trump or anything with a cat in it.
In safety we see how people are deliberately mutating original ideas. The concept of management commitment enshrined in safety management systems was twisted into a signed policy. The concept of risk management overemphasised the risk assessment step, at the expense of risk identification and risk control. Hollnagels original idea of Safety I inside Safety II got turned into Safety I versus Safety II. Most people don't even know where the ideas have come from let alone at what point in time someone changed or twisted the original idea.
The second interesting observation coming from the internet's hijacking of memes, is that memes result in behaviours in which people are actively trying to make something viral. In biology this is kind of nonsense, even viruses aren't deliberately viral in the sense that it's not like someone or some people designed it to spread, it spread because the environment suited it and there was no downward pressure on its spread. And the internet is a far less hostile place for ideas to evolve and spread than in the natural environment. It took 1000 years for humans to figure out that the biggest juiciest seeds are worth saving and breeding to plant as next years crop, instead of wandering around the forest hoping to find enough to eat. 1000 years for the idea of agriculture to evolve. It has taken around 100 years for the idea that organisations should employ people specifically focussed on safety. It has taken only a few decades for the idea of safety management systems to become mainstream, and less than that for business leaders to think that Lost Time Injury is a good indicator of safety performance. The concept of work as imagined and work as done is over 70 years old, but the idea only spread within the last 20, and only two people on the entire planet are responsible for most of that virality.
This second insight means that the ideas that spread are the ones that win. Not the best ideas, not even the original ideas. Ideas that spread, win.
Are we infected, infectious, or both?
The concept of ideas as cultural memes gives us an opportunity to do a little reflection on something which is all around us, but not something most of us pay much attention to.
What kinds of ideas do you believe, spread, or shape without realising it?
Do you take ideas as-is, or do you try to change them as you spread them?
What kinds of ideas do you take as fact, and what ideas have you rejected or changed?
We get frustrated when people in our organisations 'don't get it'. That might be because other ideas are far more viral than the ones you are trying to make extinct.
This epsiode as been in half-draft for over two years ago (in fact, there are heaps just like that in half-draft). Thanks to Mick Bates for unknowingly giving me the nudge to finish this podcast when he shared some helpful reflections on how extremist ideas and beliefs come to be.
Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, what's the one thing you'll do to take positive, effective or rewarding action, to grow yourself, and drastically improve health and safety along the way?
Seeya!
Sometimes, 99% is as good as 0%. And it's really quite useful to know when that's the case.
Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.
Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you're in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.
This episode is brought to you by real people, doing real high risk work. But even more than that, this episode is brought to you because well timed, well structured curious questions asked of the people who do that work, reveal insights that we can all learn a whole lot from.
"210 to 318, am I okay to come past on your left side?"
What you just heard is often called poscomms.
Poscomms is short for Positive Communication. Poscomms serves as an important control measure to prevent the unwanted or uncontrolled interaction of people and plant, usually large plant or machinery in mining and civil construction works. Picture large dump trucks or truck and trailer, bulldozers and excavators.
So what's the actual control, the things which is effective for minimising the risk of people and plant interaction? It turns out, it’s quite a number of things. The basic ingredients are:
'I've got it Baz', I can hear you thinking. Why are you talking about a really self-evident control for a common risk on lots of kinds of sites, on a podcast designed for deeper professional development?
Well to explain, we need to make a quick diversion and talk about the bung hole.
Bung Holes
A bung is a kind of cork, which you put into the holes in a boat to stop it sinking.
Why do boats have holes? Most boats, most except really big ones which permanently stay in the water, have holes in them because the boat needs to drain when it comes out of the water. Boats take on water, so they need a drain hole. A bung hole.
If you've ever been boating, you'll know about the bung hole. Because one single piece of cork or plastic is the thing that will, without a shadow of a doubt, make the difference between you floating, or sinking the boat.
If someone forgets to put the bung back in the bung hole, you're sunk.
Even if you did secure every single bung hole, but forgot one. You will sink.
That's when 99% is as good as 0%.
So we are sitting outside with this construction crew after their morning pre-start meeting. We were talking with the people who do the work in order to discuss with the senior governance committee about whether the safety vision was evident out on site. And yes, that is data, and the process was data gathering for reporting purposes - not everything is a number, but I digress.
We had done a couple of things to do our best to get the psychological safety sufficient for the group to discuss work as done.
I asked 'what's something you know, that's really important to you, that you wish other people knew?'
One of the excavator operators jumps in without missing a beat.
"No one acknowledges me radio calls, I just wish when I jump on the radio to a spotter or another operator, that I get an acknowledgement'.
'What do you mean?' I asked. I could have guessed, but in these situations, my only goal is to encourage the person to talk more, using their own words, without my assumptions or interpretations. If you want to stimulate good dialogue, a question like 'what do you mean' is what's called an encourager.
'I got no idea whether anyone has heard me call, who is around, and what is happening on the ground'.
Remember what it sounds like? This poscomms control?
Initial message. Respond.
Initial message. No response.
99% is as good as 0%.
No response, no poscomms, incomplete visibility, incomplete information. Uncertain delay, or just as likely proceeding blind. Uncontrolled risk. Drift towards failure.
Approximately 70 seconds later, the group had talked about what good actually sounds like, and there was greater clarity of what people expected. Not only that, the group had started to self-organise around one person's expert knowledge of work as done. They took that perspective as important, and understood what needed to happen and why. The broader team who aren't involved directly in plant movement also became witness to this work as done, the potential for immediate adaptation, and what to pay attention to in the hours thereafter.
How confident are we that what we think is working, is working? How comfortable are we with our current uncertainty?
The idea of 99% = 0% is not the same as saying that everything is useless. There are positive changes that are evident, in the way that risks are understood, controls are defined, planning ensures there are enough spotters, that everyone has a radio, and the radio's are charged, inductions set clear expectations, plant operators are actually on their radio's and the calls are clear and understandable.
The 99% = 0% Rule simply means that a lot of effort means diddly squat without all the right ingredients.
These are the ingredients that come together to make the critical control cake. But even cakes need a minimum of critical parts - some dry stuff like flour, some sweet stuff like sugar, some wet stuff like milk or eggs, and something to help it rise like yeast or bicarb.
And yet a big list of those things were in place on the site for that poscomms control measure to work. Except the plant operators don't hear anything back.
The trap, the real temptation is when the 99% fools everyone into thinking that it's close enough to 100%. It makes mathematical sense if you round it up. It doesn't work that way. Near enough is good enough.
The last bung missing in the boat. The yeast missing from the cake. The acknowledgement missing after the radio call.
All too often in our game, the 99% is as good as 0%.
And it's useful to know when.
Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, what's the one thing you'll do to take positive, effective or rewarding action, to grow yourself, and drastically improve health and safety along the way?
Seeya!
Why on earth would you remove the words health and safety, in order to improve health and safety?
Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.
Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you're in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.
My guest today is Rob Kirkwood. Rob is a health and safety professional with some pretty cool work experiences including as an alpine guide, industrial abseiler, a fisheries ranger and spent a few years working in Antarctica.
But what I think is most cool about Rob's work, is that he's figuring out how to improve health and safety by removing those words from his company's vocabulary. How's that make sense, I hear you wonder? Well, Rob will fill you in, but it starts with his realisation that there was just too much bad stuff associated with the words health and safety, and on the flip side a huge opportunity to refocus his leaders and people on organisational performance.
<<Download the full transcript>>
I've taken a bit of a break from creating new podcast episodes, and as I come back to you with this episode, I started reflecting on what happens when you're gone.
Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.
Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you're in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.
I've been gone from new podcast production for a few months. It was a break I didn't think I would need to take decided to take and it got me thinking about what it means for me to be present for you, what it might mean for being absent, and the parallels with health and safety practice.
One of the questions I frequently encourage the professionals I coach to ask the people who they seek to serve, is 'what does good service look and sound like in practice?'
"Being in search of a beautiful question can lead to a new sense of purpose and direction. A beautiful question is one that challenges assumptions, considers new possibilities, and serves as a catalyst for action and change. Crafting and engaging with such beautiful questions is like an art. Like other art forms, it takes practice, and requires learning from practice. When practiced well, artful inquiry can lead to transformative learning and innovative change".
Southern, N. (2015) Framing Inquiry, in G. R. Bushe &. R. J Marshak (Eds) Dialogic Organizational Development (p. 271)
Those beautiful words you hear in the introduction are from Nancy Southern, reflecting what it takes to frame effective inquiry, based on the insights from Warren Berger's 2014 book A Beautiful Question.
Inspired by that, this episode is a wonderful combination for me. A past guest, who is curious, humble, and super interesting, combined with no structure to the podcast episode whatsoever apart from curious questions. You'll remember Ron Gantt from episode 146. Ron and I wanted to catch up, and this is what we talked about. For some of you, knowing the podcast topic and how the guest fits the topic is important for a podcast to be worth listening to. Sometimes, as Southern and Berger hint at, not knowing and trying to ask better more beautiful questions is a wonderful and productive way to learn.
I hope you enjoy this conversation with Ron Gantt, even if none of us know where it's heading until we get there.
Here's Ron:
Hey it's Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap!
On the 13th of May 2022 I had the extraordinary experience of spending a few hours in a virtual event with Safety on Tap listeners from around the world to celebrate 200 episodes of the Safety on Tap podcast.
This is a podcast, but its more than that, it's a community, and I wanted to celebrate with you.
We spent weeks getting your feedback on favourite episodes, most impactful lessons, questions for guests coming back and combing through years of feedback and emails you've been kind enough to send me.
This is the recording of that live event, if you couldn't make it I'm sorry to have missed you, but hope you feel just as much a part of this community.
We had a few technical issues with the recording in the first few minutes, so I'll catch everyone up on how it all unfolded.
We recorded the event in my home studio, which is in Kaurna country in South Australia. We had guests joining us from all over the world, and we paid our respects to the traditional custodians of those lands and to elders past, present and emerging.
I was chuffed to have previous guest and friend of the show Amanda Clements join as my co-host for the event.
The event was in FIVE main parts:
First up I shared a few reflections on the beginning of Safety on Tap
Next, we created some time and space for the live audience members to connect with each other. I'll tell you more about that in a few minutes.
Next, we lined up some rapid interviews with previous podcast guests based on your favourites and your questions.
After that, despite my protests, Amanda insisted that she would turn the mic around and interview me with questions sent in by you, and
Finally, we put a handful of real life everyday listeners just like you in the spotlight, to hear their lessons, reflections and insights from 200 episodes of Safety on Tap.
There's only so much we could do in two hours, and we had so many past guests in the audience that if we spoke to all of them we'd have been there all day! Plus many more who sent their well wishes but couldn't make it. So, massive shout out to Tim Allred, Cam Stevens, Sue Bahn, Patrick Hudson, Todd Conklin, John Green, David Borys, Sal McMahon, Kersty Christensen, Andy White, Cam Warren, Clive Lloyd, Mark Stipic and my one and only, past guest and Dad, Brian Barrett.
We co-designed the event for and with you, the listener, combining the three big goals of a Chief Connector like me: to connect you with new ideas, to connect you with each other, and to connect you with your better future self. Learning, and taking action to improve. This was not a webinar so the chat was free and open, and we had the audience talking to each other in the chat and asking questions of previous guests - no permission required, just simple and open learning through dialogue and reflection, it was amazing.
If you were there, I hope this helps reinforce your learning. If you weren't, I'm sorry you couldn’t be with us, I hope this is the next best thing.
his is a cheeky episode, halfway between episode 199 and episode 200, with two really short messages for you - an invitation and a request.
First, I want you to be a part of episode 200!
In exactly the same way that phones are only as good as having people to talk to, a team is only a team because of who is part of it, and roads only exist because cars needed something to drive on, a podcast is only a podcast because of you, the listener!
I should say listeners, plural, since there are thousands of you all over the globe. What better way to celebrate the 200th Safety on Tap podcast episode, than to get together, in realtime, so we can connect and learn and grow as a community?!
I know her personally, we were part of a business group a few years ago.
Having gotten far more focussed and proactive with my overall financial goals and position in recent years, I asked this Financial Planner to come over and help us plan our finances.
We prepared a lot, laid it all out - mortgage situation, credit, assets, a business, a family trust, a farming partnership, superannuation (401k), insurances, cash position, investments.....it was all there.
I wanted the Financial Planner to help challenge and refine our Financial Plans.
I was confused when she kept suggesting that we really should buy more shares, and certainly move our insurances somewhere else. I just wanted a few hours of planning help I would gladly pay for.
She left saying she would send some info, and I actually didn't hear from her.
It turns out the Financial Planner isn't interested in helping people with their financial planning, but to push them towards products and services for which they get a commission.
Call me naive, I was still surprised. And I didn't get what I wanted.
So I laughed when today's email said 'We've got solutions for all your finance needs' - EXCEPT THE ACTUAL PLANNING PART OF FINANCIAL PLANNING.
My guest today is Antony Malmo.
Antony is a self described Wellbeing Smuggler, Jargon Cutter, Systems Wrangler, and C-suite Whisperer. He's a director at Allos Australia, an organisation that approaches workplace mental health systemically; from EAP support and Psych Health and Safety, to Leadership & Strategy. He studied ecosystem science and psychology at University, and then abandoned both those career paths to spend almost a decade working with businesses in Colombia (South America), in the late 2000s, as it emerged from the world's long-running civil war. Ever since, he's been trying to understand how communities build resilience, how businesses can flourish amid uncertainty, and what the future of mental health will look like.
I like the way Antony thinks, how he connects the dots between ideas, and love how generous he is and really wanted to have a deep-dive conversation with him. Instead of keeping that to myself, I wanted you to be part of it too, so here it is, my chat with Antony Malmo:
So what's the beliefs, assumptions, and images we have that make sense of our thoughts and behaviour here? Is it that war is bad? That military aggression is unacceptable? Maybe, but it doesn't explain our blindness to so many other things equally as objectionable and far more prolonged.
No, we have different kinds of assumptions and beliefs and images about how the world works, and when those get violated. And we often don't even know about them ourselves.
We'll call these mental models.
What if you could better guide your organisation on what's most important, and be more confident about the results you can deliver? That's what today's guest is asking of all of us, assuming that’s the kind of professional we want to be.
My guest today is Professor Rob Briner, and he has had a bee in his bonnet about what people like us do, in part because of what people like Rob do. He'll explain more in a minute.
Rob is Professor of Organisational Psychology at Queen Mary University of London and at Bjørknes University College Olso Nye Høyskole, Visiting Professor Birkbeck University of London, and Cofounder & Scientific Director Center for Evidence-Based Management.
Rob's been working at bridging the sometimes enormous chasm between the actual decisions and priorities and programs people like us bring into organisations, and the evidence-based things that actually work to make things better inside organisations.
That's what he and his colleagues call evidence-based management.
And as I quickly found out, this is not about finding the 'right' answer quicker, it's about a mindset and a discipline of professional practice which I think is very well-aimed at people like us.