Show Notes
For these next few podcasts, I want to share the six principles of human performance. I’ll cover each one, but they all go together. If HP is really part of our culture, then all six of them are required for deep understanding and a successful cultural shift. Some are harder than others, and we will address those issues. But combined, they are philosophies we must live by to truly implement human performance into our safety culture.
A side benefit is that HP is not just a safety thing. It’s an operational philosophy. Many of our clients who travel the HP path find it benefits all areas of performance in an organization.
Since we often have to sell safety culture improvement efforts to management, this should be communicated frequently. HP is not a safety thing, it’s an operational philosophy designed to improve all areas of organizational performance. When looking for management buy-in, it’s of great importance to speak their language. This is not insinuating that management doesn’t care about safety, it’s about speaking in a language that they speak often. How can we improve our organizational systems to increase performance? That is the main concept of HP.
So here are the six principles:
- People are fallible and even the best make mistakes
- Error-likely situations are predictable
- Individual behaviors are influenced by culture and leadership
- Organizations and people drift
- Events can be avoided by learning
- People achieve high levels of performance, based on encouragement and reinforcement.
Today, I’m going to focus on the first principle:
1. People are fallible and even the best make mistakes.
Here’s my favorite quote regarding this principle from Norman Cousins:
“To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species”
This is usually where education on human performance begins. We must start by generating awareness to all levels of the organization how the brain works. We need to educate our team on how external things influence our brains to determine the right path to follow. The old view seems to look at employee behavior as a moral decision that someone makes or doesn’t make.
But it’s much more complex than that. When we gain awareness into how our brains are wired, we can see that the choices between right and wrong are heavily influenced by a multitude of things. Often, at-risk behavior is actually perceived as a good idea in the mind of the worker. Other times, the brain was overloaded to the point it just couldn’t make a good decision, or at least the decision management would prefer the worker make.
Understanding the brain is imperative for HP to work. We can start with our brain. We must move away from the judgement mode inherent to our brain and move over to the knowledge mode of learning these concepts to ultimately enhance our performance.
There are many voices in the construction industry that believe people can choose not to be complacent and pay attention at all times. There are loud voices that believe not paying attention is an individual problem that can be trained or disciplined out of people.
The reality is it’s just not possible for humans to pay attention all the time. Attention is a finite resource. In the context of a jobsite, it’s even worse. There is so much going on within the typical jobsite that what a human can pay attention to is usually limited to right in front of them. Even then, the resource quickly runs out of fuel.
Our brain is equipped with the reticular activating system. Its purpose is to help us focus. The paradox is that it narrows our focus. It can be viewed as a positive thing so you can focus on the task at hand. The tradeoff is that it blurs out everything else around you.
In the context of a jobsite, your brain can do amazing work at focusing on what is directly in front of you. The tradeoff is you miss all these other things going on, other subcontractors, other components of your work that your brain has deemed less critical. You can’t train this out of your brain.
You can’t train your brain to be aware of everything going on around you, at every second of every day. Attention is a finite resource. You can train your brain to be more aware, to an extent, but you can’t train it to pay attention to everything at all times.
People struggle with this concept. There are loud voices saying that people can successfully multi-task. It’s actually more common that attention is jumping quickly from one task to another in mere seconds. Try to juggle and sing a song at the same time. Often, the perception of someone saying they are excellent at multi-tasking, is in reality their ability to quickly jump back and forth from one thing to another.
In the context of a jobsite, are people really calculating fall clearance distance and installing the shear connectors on the decking at the same time? Or are they focusing on installing the shear connector one second, and then adjusting their harness the next?
There is a common misperception that people often do two tasks at the exact same time, when they are actually jumping back and forth from different responsibilities at high speed. Am I hammering a nail at the exact same time I ensure my d-ring is between my shoulders? Or is my attention devoted to different things at different times. Maybe some people can do both at the same time. Most people jump back and forth.
Sometimes I teach how when you drive down the road, your brain helps you focus on the white and yellow lines to focus on the task at hand. But we can’t focus on every single tree we pass, every car about to pass us, and all the things flying by our eyes at a fast rate. If we did, our brain would overload. Some people get this with the example of missing their own exit. They were driving, focusing on the white and yellow lines, and inadvertently drove by their own exit. Sometimes you do focus on all the trees going by. And then you look down and realize you are outside the lines, or going 85 in a 65mph zone.
We are not focused on everything when we drive down the road. We are diverting our attention to different things, constantly moving back and forth with our attention.
The point is, our brain is designed to focus on one thing at a time. In the dynamic work of construction, focusing on scaffold components, tool inspections, personal fall arrest systems, rigging, safety paperwork and the actual job to do, all at the same time, is impossible to do without losing attention to something.
With the speed example I gave, the auto industry understands the science of this. Cruise control is an error reduction tool based on how our brains work. A human just can’t go the exact speed limit for long periods of time without becoming complacent. So, the car is designed with a tool to keep you in a specific range. It wasn’t designed based on the concept that people are lazy and stupid. It was based on the scientific understanding of how human brains are designed.
Let’s break that down a little deeper. Cruise control was not created out of the belief that some people are superior and some people are inferior. Cruise control came from the study of the human brain.
When we look at people like they are inferior because they didn’t pay attention to something, we are missing the point that even the very best make mistakes. No one is perfect. No one can be trained or disciplined into perfection. The best quarterback makes mistakes. The best musician misses a note. The best speaker stumbles on their words. Nobody is perfect.
As I mention often on this podcast, we have two brains. We have the limbic, more subconscious system, and the prefrontal more conscious system. Error can occur in both of these parts of our brain. However, it is more likely to occur in our prefrontal system.
When people have to think and make decisions, they are more likely to miss something. A complex task, such as LOTO, confined space or personal fall arrest is filled with decision making. There is decision making, not just with the safety aspect, but also the job they have to do. The more complex the work, the more decisions people have to make, the more prone for error the work becomes.
When people are doing less complex work, they can do the task without thinking about it very much. This means the work becomes more subconscious, so less error occurs. However, there is potential for complacency because of the very fact that the work is more subconscious. It’s boring. People can think about other things and accomplish the task at the same time. This can lead to complacency; however, less error typically occurs in this work.
There have been studies comparing assembly line work to construction work. On a macro scale, assembly line work is over and over again. It becomes repetitive and subconscious. It’s just less likely to screw up. Construction work is filled with decision making. This leads to a greater error rate because our non-perfect brains have to think and make good calls but often miss things. Combine that with all the things going on at work that influence those decisions.
Our workers aren’t always choosing between wrong and right. They are often choosing what they think is the best thing to do within imperfect circumstances. All this happens inside of a brain that quickly runs out of steam, or just overloads. An HP concept that we must see the truth within is that most people are trying to do a good job, they just happen to be placed inside of complex, imperfect systems.
The average assembly line worker makes about 5 errors per hour. The average construction worker makes 15-20 errors per hour. That….. is……normal.
Our brain is typically in one of three performance modes when at work: Skill based, rule based or knowledge based. Both rule and knowledge-based modes are operating in the prefrontal. Skill based work occurs mostly in the limbic brain.
When people have to follow a long list of rules, like in LOTO and confined space work, they are likely to make a mistake. Same thing with knowledge-based modes where they have to think about it and make a good decision, like how to install a beautiful personal fall arrest system.
The fact is our brains have not developed much from the caveman days when compared to the rate that technology has advanced. Our brains just can’t keep up with the speed of the complex, technological advancement of our current work. Because of this, a lot of HP is about managing the human brain, understanding how it is designed, and creating defenses for its known weaknesses.
Errors and violations
That brings us to the two main types of human failure that occur in the workplace: Errors and violations.
To miss something, not pay attention, forget a step in the work, not see something that someone else sees; those are all examples of normal errors that humans make because they are human. The way our brains are wired, it should be expected to make mistakes.
Violations are where people knowingly break a rule. These too are human failures, but they are also rarely culpable behaviors. Both error and violations are typically system induced. Most often, it’s the system people are placed within that creates the potential for error, not the person we placed in the system.
Violations are different than error because a person is knowingly breaking a rule. Violations are harder for mangers and supervisors to accept as system induced because the worker may be trained, have the tools, be provided with the equipment, etc. and still violate a rule. It becomes easier to judge the worker in these scenarios without the deeper knowledge of how systems influence behavior. Understanding why violating a rule makes sense to a worker, and why it was perceived as a good idea, takes a deep level of emotional intelligence and self-awareness.
To really grasp this concept is hard. There is the technical rational aspect of talking about goal conflicts within work. But at the same time, people have to work on their ego and its never-ending ability to judge others, to really get this concept. Both are required to gain deep awareness of HP. We have to teach people the science, but we also have to equip them with the emotional intelligence and self-awareness for it to really work.
Real work is full of goal conflicts. The goal in construction is to hurry up and get the job done to meet the schedule, while at the same time taking all the necessary time to do the work according to the rules. We have to accept that those two responsibilities are juggling acts that workers experience every single day on the job. One voice wants them to get quality work done at an acceptable pace that meets the schedule. The other voice wants them to follow every safety step, at every time, for every task. Within this juggling act, people make tradeoffs.
When people use their prefrontal cortex to think about what they are doing, make decisions with limited resources, they typically borrow from the safety resource to get the job done. If people are going to skip something, its typically a safety thing they skip.
Here’s a real-world, recent example of this. A foreman is asked to replace a bunch of sprinkler heads in an existing building where huge semi-trucks are being cleaned. The floor is sloped for needed water runoff in the facility. The trucks are lined up closely together, which makes using a boom lift impossible. The client doesn’t move any trucks out of the contractor’s way. The foreman is provided with scissor lifts to do the work.
So, what does this foreman do? He uses 2x12s to place under one side of the scissor lift due to the incline of the floor, to get the job done.
He knows he is violating a rule. But his perception is that it’s what management really wants, for him to get the job done in the imperfect circumstances he is faced Hwith. Is he frustrated? Of course, he is. He tells me how much anxiety he feels using the scissor lift in an unsafe manner. He doesn’t want to do the job this way. But between the client and his own organization, his perception is what management really wants is to get the job done with what he has. Don’t bitch about it. Just figure it out.
This is not an inferior person making a purposeful violation. This is a worker placed in a goal conflicting system, making a decision based on a perception of what management really wants. The decision may not be aligned with what management really wants, it’s based on a decision of the perception of what management really wants.
It’s important to understand, management is not inferior either in these scenarios. They are typically just unaware, or lack depth in their awareness, of how workers perceive the desires of management. Management may also be unaware of the realities of this job due to complex systems they are also placed within.
The point of this is not to judge anyone. The point is to be aware that these types of situations, these goal conflicts, are happening all the time, over and over again in construction work. It’s normal. It’s normal people, doing normal work in normally flawed systems.
If we can ensure our entire team is aware of the technical scientific side of this view, and equipped with the non-judgmental self-awareness side, then we can start whittling away at these system-induced violations.
As a safety profession, we have to stop looking for things people have done wrong. We have to start learning why their decision to violate a rule made sense to them. It’s the system that is influencing this decision making. What about the system is influencing this?
One of the most common system influences I see in our culture assessment work is a lack of understanding of field realities by management. Over and over again I see where the worker wants management to come out to the job and see the realities workers face in the field. “If that manager would just come out here to see what we are up against. If that manager would just spend a day in the field talking to us.”
What I have seen in this world most often, is that the worker doesn’t want to break the rule. Their perception is that they are being forced to, to get the job done.
In defense of management, they too have reasons why they don’t visit the job. We are constantly doing more with less resources in our industry. Time is finite. There are only so many hours in the day, and so many people are working longer hours, with increasing responsibilities, and with less resources available. Often, management doesn’t visit the job because they don’t have the time.
As industries are becoming more aware of this, I am seeing efforts to address it. Some of our clients are having “all out days” or scheduled visits to the jobsite to learn about these issues, communicate with workers, and try to get better at improving the systems.
Of course, it requires emotional intelligence to do this work. We have to know that our words can influence workers to hold back, or let it all out, based on how we communicate. That element is required within this concept. Sometimes, managers are sent out to the field without being equipped with the influence component. We must ensure our managers and supervisors are well prepared for this before we start scheduling their field visits.
So, in summary, people are failable and even the best make mistakes. To error is human nature. There are two types of human failures that commonly occur in our complex, dynamic work. The first is a simple mistake, a brain fart. The second is a violation. Although the worker is knowingly violating a rule, most often, it is perceived as a good idea. It is perceived as being efficient and what management really wants. Sometimes our brain just gets overloaded, or it is operating in a mode that is highly prone for error.
Both errors and violations are typically system induced. These are normal issues; normal people face on a day-to-day basis. These are not personal problems; these are system problems. We must ensure our entire team is well educated in these concepts. We must stop looking for where people went wrong and instead find where the system failed our people.
Next time we will cover how error-likely situations are predictable and how to get better at predicting them. Till then, have a beautiful day.