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: