Bikeshedding

 

Bikeshedding – A term that many safety people haven’t heard of yet know explicitly well.

It comes from Parkinson’s law of triviality as per the below

Parkinson’s law of triviality is C. Northcote Parkinson’s 1957 argument that members of an organisation give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. He provides the example of a fictional committee whose job was to approve the plans for a nuclear power plant spending the majority of its time on discussions about relatively minor but easy-to-grasp issues, such as what materials to use for the staff bike shed, while neglecting the proposed design of the plant itself, which is far more important but also a far more difficult and complex task [Source]

Sound familiar?

Ever focused on:

• A risk assessment (Take 5, SWMS, JHA) and not the infield execution.
• Correcting a behaviour with no discussion with the individual.
• The number on a risk assessment (H14, M8) vs verifying the risk prevention controls are in place
• The statistic and not the name of the person who is injured
• How many hazard cards handed in vs actual site condition

If you’ve answered yes to any of the above, you’ve participated in bikeshedding. Yet feel comfortable we all do it unfortunately. It’s damn hard to stay focused on what’s important. Especially, as seemingly in Safety this appears to change every few years depending on who you listen to.

To me, two things should be looked for if you want to avoid bikeshedding:

1. What is the trajectory of what you are doing? ie take the action to its logical (and realistic) next step and then the step after that – be honest with this. Where does this lead you? Does it make a material change in reducing the risk?
2. Does the action actually correlate towards your view of success or improvement? Or do you just think it will?

Low hanging fruit is great for quick wins, just make sure it’s fruit you are picking and you are not a koala eating leaves.

 

Sourcing Feedback

Technology has created some wonderful opportunities.It has allowed us the bridge the tyranny of distance which has plagued humankind and allowed us to scale exponentially.

What it has done however has introduced a by-product of dehumanising individuals through less than optimal connection when taken to the nth degree.

The employee engagement survey emailed out to people is one such tool which in theory ticks all the boxes; easy, cheap, scalable. Quick let’s throw a hundred questions at people via survey monkey!

Unfortunately, itmisses the point; I will only share information to someone I trust, who I know will act on it and won’t chew my arse for being honest.

Rather than doing long, convoluted employee surveys, stick to a simple feedback mechanism: Continue, or Consider 

This may seem counter-productive but it elicits honest feedback when asked even if the individual doesn’t have the three three things mentioned above. It allows people to let you know something needs work. It’s then contingent on you who is asking to go and find where it’s falling down or even kill it in its entirety.

If you’re a leader don’t be lazy and manage by survey, get down to the appropriate level, near the risk, get dirty and ask. Build enough personal capital and trust that they want to tell you what you need to hear vs what they think you want to hear.

Managing by the Minimum

“But it doesn’t say I have to do that”

Often we focus on people only wanting to do the system requirements to meet compliance which sees the system as the least viable manner in which to manage Safety.

I just had a discussion with a management team which flipped the concept and said why shouldn’t we do more as their starting point. Their logic, if we want committed and not just compliant people we need to allocate time and resources to create that.

These people exist, and they are brilliant to work with. If you find them, hold on to them!

I wrote a short piece on Linkedin here on a similar subject, Self-fulfilling Prophecies aka you get what you expect!

Meetings, Past or future orientated?

Meetings – My starting position is always “Take minutes, waste time”.

Why? It forces me to consider the return on investment for the labour dollars sitting in the room. Funny that most people have zero financial limits of authority, yet they can call meetings with 5-10 people in them which easily can creep past $1k an hour in cost for oft times zero benefits.

My teams that I have been on will know I dislike regular progress meetings, discussing status is to me a waste of time. Clarifying, building understanding, challenging and supporting behaviours are very different to running through a list of action items.

It would be great to see more tech adoption of platforms such as Asana, BetterWorks, Todist etc which then makes people accountable for issuing information about their progress (increasing transparency) and others to be across that detail. If there is a status meeting every week I’ve found no-one looks at providing collaborative feedback till a piece of work is finished vs in progress.

Something as simple as using Google docs to share drafts so people can comment and work together on projects enables that type of behaviour. Rarely does our system /platform set ourselves up for this. Agile implementation could benefit safety teams markedly.

The world is social, unfortunately the world of work is only just catching up.

Here is another short post I wrote on LinkedIn re: Improving Meetings

Two is One, One is none

On a past project we had some schedule critical works to carry out which would require the stringing of overhead power lines over two active rail lines.

To gain permission to work over critical infrastructure you can imagine the level of detailed planning required to convince rail execs to a) give us the track possession and b) provide enough assurance that we would hand it back on time, job done.

We decided to take a different track to the standard formal risk assessment (submit, review, challenge monitor requirements, implement) and facilitated a session where they verbally told us their plan and we drew and wrote it over the biggest whiteboard we could find.

Up until this point, these type of activities for the contractor were box ticking excercise to get the green light. Not something done to add value. We recognised this and took 30 mins to frame the ‘why’ we undertake these types of analysis. Critical to the process we attempted to underpin the activity by outlining:

• We committed to provide them a replicatable process they could use on other jobs – principle based vs prescriptive. But also the output so they could modify for other jobs
• We would bring them into our meetings with the rail coordination meetings, giving them direct access to the process
• We outlined this was a process to build trust and alignment and to ensure to the best of their ability that they would do what they said they would do ie Be reliable

The first two reasons flopped, didn’t even get a reaction. The third however touched into their personal values. The team was led by the owners son, and he was a strong personality but also had strong character and ethics. He was a man of his word and knew that this is why they won work. His contractual letters weren’t fancy but he did what he said he would.

With him on board, both the session, output, approval and the works were undertaken without event. From memory, the team said it was the most amount of cable that had been pulled in a discrete window and over such a large distance, even with a few hiccups which were overcome.

I wasn’t proud of that accomplishment however, fireproofing rarely elicits acknowledgement in my experience. My moment of pride and awe came when I was walking through the wet mess (on-site tavern) when the team called me over. They explained to me what they took away from the planning session and showed me how they now incorporated a daily debrief and planning session using stubbies, cans, ashtrays and other items on the tables. My first thought ignoring all of the obvious concerns around alcohol, venue etc was this is novel, so I sat down and they ran me through their daily achievements and plans.

It wasn’t on a pretty powerpoint or P6, but it worked. The energy around the team, the openness, the acknowledgement of things done well (and not so well) and discussion around what if scenarios was striking to hear. It brought them even more together as a team. I’m sure in no small measure to those daily sessions, they completed their works on the Project without a first aid injury, under budget and under time which led them to preferred provider for the major miner from that point onwards.

Thanks to Dave and the team.

 

Drawing it out

Language is important – it’s one of the pivotal ways in which we share our experiences with others. It’s also pretty amazing when you think about it, you are pushing air and sound waves through the air to someone and they understand it, pretty neat in anyone’s language (couldn’t help myself).

Whilst my love of language is very deep, it does trip me up at times when it becomes a barrier towards shared understanding. Vernacular, pace, pitch, volume, tone and non-verbal cues can all get in the way depending on your reference point. I have found a little thing, however, which can dramatically improve the depth of understanding between two people, drawing it out.

I’ve often been nicknamed Mr Squiggle or Whiteboard Wade in jest at my second nature to reach for a whiteboard pen the moment a solution is called for. I have a chuckle to myself, yet it gets better solutions and buy-in, every time. The dusty bonnet of a Hilux or the heel of my boot was my weapon of choice before I got my pen license, which works just as well.

How does it work you ask?

• Your facing the same direction, side by side and not in an adversarial position facing each other across a table
• You share the same pen showing that you are willing to cede control to gain a better understanding and value their input
• You build upon each other’s drawing showing an ability to collaborate towards shared output
• You accept the quality of less than perfect drawing because, let’s face it, not many of us are very good at sketching.
• You are drawing an abstract of the issues which de-escalate the emotional side of the issue.
• You accept that errors can be made and you can move forward by wiping marks off and starting again
• It’s easily shareable by taking a photo of the output
• It’s is low cost, low tech and has minimal barriers to start using

It’s great to see companies that are embracing drawing and whiteboarding through enabling the behaviour by installing whiteboard walls in their workplaces. Yet even if you have a glass partitioned office (and don’t mind the Beautiful Mind jokes) you can use paint markers on glass to achieve the same effect.

 

I’m sure there is also virtual meeting apps / platforms which incorporate drawing, text, video and voice into their software in which this can be done remotely prior to the widespread use of VR for meetings. Please let me know via twitter if you know of one!

By no means is drawing a panacea to solve all of the ills associated with miscommunication between individual or groups yet it goes a long way to bridge the gap. Amusing to note that as emojis, sketch notes and the like rise in popularity, are we are circling back to the cave to relearn connection?

Asking for Help

We all understand the importance of asking for help. Or do we?

I work in a ‘tough’ industry where perceived, values of individualism, strength, endurance and can-do are the norm. Rarely is the term vulnerability discussed or praised. I see this play out in multiple worksites where leaders haven’t spent the time to enable their people to ask questions, including the often dreaded “I don’t know”. Which is often feared in the current climate of not failing at all costs.

By the way, my own people at times won’t ask me for clarification or assistance, they ask a peer or direct report to clarify – that’s something we all need to work on including me.

In having the courage to ask for help, I’ve not come across a better way to build trust, rapport and respect than by asking for help from someone. It cuts across power differentials as it humanises the person who is asking for help and invites another to show their own humanity by assisting. We all can appreciate and empathise with someone who needs assistance as we often have been in a similar situation with the passage of time often being the only differing variable.

Those who achieve big things are the ones who accept help when it’s offered, even if it wasn’t requested. The challenge is changing the stigma around showing your vulnerability, which in doing so places the outcome ahead of your ego.

This is what leadership is.

Asking the difficult question

Often I am sure you have been in a room where the issue at hand is likely to have derived from members beliefs and actions within that room. A manager lambasting the poor safety performance of a workplace that you are a part of most often being the case.

The best teams look inwards immediately, accepting an obligation to improve and look to what effect have their actions or inaction had on the likelihood of serious events. The less mature teams look to deflect perceived blame and create actions for ‘others’ who are having all the events.

If you are unfortunate to be part of a less mature team it’s often hard to swallow when no accountability is accepted and a potential opportunity is lost. I came across the term Grey Rhino, which I think sums the situation up well.

A “grey rhino” is a highly probable, high impact yet neglected threat: kin to both the elephant in the room and the improbable and unforeseeable black swan. Gray rhinos are not random surprises, but occur after a series of warnings and visible evidence [Source]

How then do we lure the beast out and bring it into the open? The most succinct and to the point bait that I’ve used in the past is to ask:

What is the one thing that is true that you think we all don’t want to hear. 

This is a powerful question to ask in any environment and as a leader, it’s your simple, yet effective gauge on how open you are to bad news. If no one continually comes forward you either have an amazing team and working environment or there are trust issues that need to be considered.

Either way, it’s tough to coax insightful information out into the open in a group setting, especially when there is a strong bias of self-preservation. There may be a need for some light seeding or priming, but that’s a subject for another day.

It’s not the bottom, it’s the foundation

We all have bad days, those days where it seems you can do no right. Then you have those days where you wonder if you’ll make it out the other side with the shirt on your back.

We had a tumultuous month at work where our client was internally reshuffling their divisional reporting hierarchy and was making everyone look over their shoulder. Our team understood the implications and knew that change was in the wind. I sent an email to the team, hoping to quell the noises distracting our focus, which identified that we had a role to play by ensuring our own performance was a positive example of our client managing the project well.

Written with the best intentions it was picked up by the client, unfortunately misunderstood and taken out of context. For the next two days, I saw a situation spiralling out of control where I had little or no control wondering what repercussions would eventuate. What made it worse was that my wife was pregnant and I was on leave over a critical period.

Eventually, the situation was amicably resolved through a great deal of personal capital being used up to bridge the gap.

Those moments where we find ourselves at the figurative *bottom* (it’s all relative, your views are the only that matter here) we have a choice. Don’t think it’s not going to happen to you either, it’s all a balance of probabilities – you and the people you work with are human.

Choose to believe it’s not the bottom falling out of the cup but know that you’re building the foundation for future success.

Why don’t they listen to me?

One of the critical barriers to overcome for any H&S individual is the various bias which exists when having an interaction out in the field. The most common cross purpose interaction pattern which plays out is the well-intentioned H&S person not understanding why the supervisor or superintendent is barreling down on them when they have chosen to complete an interaction on the pivotal task which all others hinge upon.

Word of advice – You are likely at a work site at the request of someone, often to assure them that the work is being conducted in line with the system requirements. How you do this is largely up to your own character, but don’t be an arse. If you want to do an interaction on a mission critical activity, spend the time and build a relationship with the work group supervisor and one up, earn their trust and let them tell you the best time to cause a disruption with minimal by-product.

Trust is often thought to have been exchanged from the part of the well-intentioned observer when often this is rarely the case. Quotes abound in a self-depreciating manner around ‘good intentions’. Don’t for a second believe that the individual you are looking to ‘help’ is aligned to your view of the world. Many people don’t appreciate the concept of sonder but it bears including here to reflect upon.

Another important concept is to understand what Liminal Thinking (Video) is.

Nine practices to help you minimise reality distortion, envision possibilities, and create positive change when conducting interactions can be summarised as:

1. Assume that you are not objective. If you’re part of the system you want to change, you’re part of the problem.

2. Empty your cup. You can’t learn new things without letting go of old things. Stop, look, and listen. Suspend judgment. What’s going on?

3. Create safe space. If you don’t understand the underlying need, nothing else matters. People will not share their innermost needs unless they feel safe, respected, and accepted for who they are.

4. Triangulate and validate. Look at situations from as many points of view as possible. Consider the possibility that seemingly different or contradictory beliefs may be valid. If something doesn’t make sense to you, then you’re missing something.

5. Ask questions, make connections. Try to understand people’s hopes, dreams and frustrations. Explore the social system and make connections to create new opportunities.

6. Disrupt routines. Many beliefs are embedded in habitual routines that run on autopilot. If a routine is a problem, disrupt the routine to create new possibilities.

7. Act as-if in the here-and-now. You can test beliefs even if you don’t believe they are true. All you need to do is act as if they were true and see what happens. If you find something that works, do more of it.

8. Make sense with stories. If you give people facts without a story, they will explain it within their existing belief system. The best way to promote a new or different belief is not with facts, but with a story.

9. Evolve yourself. If you can be open about how change affects you personally, you have a better chance of achieving your aims. To change the world, you must be willing to change yourself.

 

Read, reflect and embody the above – you’ll be surprised what you uncover and the change you’ll be able to affect

 

 

Cut & Paste

I’m known as a stoically calm person where little tends to fire me up in a bull sees red type of scenario. A couple of phrases however really tests that demeanour. It’s also something you see within the HS industry that holds a lot of good people back, as they are not self-aware of the by-products of the below statements;

On a past project, we did it like this

In another organisation, we did this

We have never done it that way before

I’ve never heard of that working

I’ve tried it once and won’t again

You get the picture. It’s the quickest way to alienate people who were not part of that organisation or Project as it creates an exclusive culture and an in-group who had success within another team. It says to those, who were not part of it, that your experience is somewhat less than or not equal to that past effort of others. If we want our teams and people to be engaged we need to acknowledge this elephant in the room which was aptly labelled the Lucretius problem by Nassim Taleb in Anti-Fragile

The Lucretius problem is a self-limiting ceiling which holds us back. It’s a heuristic, which whilst useful at acknowledging past success, it typically bears no correlation to current or future success as the variables and data set have been fundamentally changed.

This is also evident when individuals close down or stop seeking new ways to think and do. Akin to stopping to listen to the music of the day, it’s a choice where you only play the greatest hits, which precisely is the problem. They are all your favourites and not the best outcome for the team. Collaboration, coupled with integrated approaches reflecting best practice should be always strived for.

To be clear, I am a strong advocate of similar principles being applied across multiple domains, yet draw the line at prescriptive ‘cut and paste’ type approaches. People need to be involved and part of something bigger than themselves, providing a solution doesn’t assist with driving your purpose.

Normally a common issue I see is taking a document, making a change to the letterhead and then emailing it out with little or no communication and consultation. By all means, use it as a first draft, yet contextualise it yourself to ensure it’s as empathetic with the conditions as possible and then issue for feedback.

So the next time an issue presents itself which you have a ready-made solution on your hard drive, hold back. Appreciate the uniqueness of the situation and the collective experience of the team and social structures. Trust that by understanding & applying your strongly held principles, that through, a well-facilitated process the group, will decide a better and bespoke outcome rather than doing things the way we have always done them.

Be bold, be brave and be a positive deviance from the norm!

Drawing Yourself a Bigger Box (or smashing it)

Position descriptions vs reality are typically are two different things. It’s similar to the planned vs actual way we do work. We aren’t crash hot at planning when multi dependencies are a factor in a tightly coupled system so why would we do differently in the way we organize our people?

Unfortunately, the same prevailing logic holds, reduce things down to their smallest unique component and analyze it in detail around the likely ways it will fail. Then write a process which only addresses the unique aspect of the system ala, job descriptions.

I’m here to challenge that box that is drawn for you and the lines which it interacts with. I call BS, it doesn’t work.

It’s the interplay between people where the magic happens, not by drawing more lines and boxes.

So let’s not be complicated and focus on boxes, they are for bureaucrats (Great video here about reducing complicated was here). Acknowledge that trust is created more by asking for assistance, rather than offering it and this will imbue your peers more likely to come together and support sustainable initiatives or prototypes which address constraints across a multidisciplinary platform.

For instance, if you’re having an issue with individuals not removing barricading when the task is finished, your likely to find the same type of behavior manifests itself in completing inspection test plans, timesheets or output logs, rework etc. That’s then three other roles plus a supervisory role which can work together to find a common cause. If you stick to your box you will likely only address a symptom rather than a root cause.

Likewise, if you are looking for that next promotion remember the adage; what got you here, won’t get you there. It’s incumbent upon you to identify the tasks your one up and one down are doing, don’t wait. Growth can’t be made unless you get out and expand that box of yours.

No one tells you to do this, but I guarantee, but when coupled with a curious attitude and no desire to take credit for your one-ups work, you will go far, damn fast. Likewise, if you are assisting the roles aside you or under you such as grad roles, it’s showing your ability to take a holistic approach to the wider organisation capabilities.

Don’t be like the elephant who grew up with a rope around its ankle and is suffering learned helplessness when it is older, bust out of the box drawn for you and by you and open your eyes to operating at your highest form of self.

 

In Case of Emergency Break Glass

As humans we are great at judging our past selves based on information we have only come into posession since an event has occurred. We beat ourselves and others with hindsight bias and continue to promise ourselves; never again will I miss the cues and the dots that I should have seen to be connected.

Sorry to disappoint, ain’t going to happen.

Steve Jobs in a famous commencement speech said you have to move forward without being able to connect the dots but feel comfortable knowing that when you look back it will all make sense. Cold comfort, thanks, Steve.

In reality, we want certainty and linear causation but it’s not a true representation of reality, it’s not #RealRiskReality.

We shy away from planning to fail as it doesn’t fit with the stories and myths we tell ourselves. Plan B’s mean that you don’t have enough conviction in plan A and the like. Some people missed the note on VUCA it seems. We also leap to trying to document all ‘credible’ fault paths and attempt to control these through paper-based systems when people are our most resilient component of our organisations.

How much work do we do around building our teams resilience and ability to manage change? How do we enable rather than put faith in solely documentation and process?

Culture decks like Netflix’s are positive examples where this can be turned on its head and trust embedded in organisations. It helps leaders get out of the way and let people do awesome s**t.

If you don’t have the benefit of working for a forwarding thinking organisation – set trigger points and have the tools at hand to use. Glass hammers are a perfect example – what other aspects can we use as glass hammers? And what trigger points do we set ourselves when action is required? Too often the banality of ‘the creep’ sets in and we forget our purpose, create markers so we don’t lose our way.

The Harbinger of Bad News

It’s a thankless task reporting bad news. I’ve yet to find someone that looks forward to seeing me when I walk with ‘that look’ unscheduled into their office. I’ve been met with a variety of reactions from eye rolling, cursing and the like yet my personal favourite was with a slight chuckle ‘Have ya ever got any good news to report?’

I know, it’s not me, when the emotions come out from leaders, more often than not it’s a sign of their deep-seated care for the people they have working with them. Sometimes though you get the knee-jerk reaction, it’s been a shit day for them and you cop a mouthful full of hindsight bias rammed down your throat. It’s tough in those situations to deliver the message and not sugar coat it, putting the person’s mood or demeanour ahead of transparency.

There is no one or right solution I’ve found, even though we all know the drill; events are good, they prevent more serious events occurring and identify where we can improve. But in the heat of the moment, that’s tough to rationalise, and energy often leaks out in sometimes destructive ways.

I’m sure you are thinking ‘Don’t shoot the messenger, it’s not your fault’ but to be honest, it always is. If we don’t think this we lose our skin in the game, which isn’t healthy. No skin in the game equals no connection, and no connection means an ease to dehumanise the injured person, the second victim and everyone associated. It’s then when events become numbers and stats replace names, faces and families.

So rather than suppress emotion or rebuff it, let’s accept people are human in their initial reactions and cut them some slack. We have to accept duality and the dichotomy of emotion if we want to have genuine and caring leaders. Where possible, let’s do this though in private, or run the risk of it influencing your workplace culture, like interpretations of George Bush being told 9/11 was occurring while reading a children’s book in public.

You have a choice to not judge people on a specific snapshot in time as representative of themselves or their commitment to their people. However whilst emotion shows energy and builds momentum, action should be the measurement that your influence efforts target.

Flash of Brilliance

A well known and useful binary model is Rasmussen’s drift to danger model which depicts the by-products of an individual’s desire for efficiency and minimising energy vs an organisation’s desire for profitability and economic rationality. I’ve used it often on the bonnet of a dirty hilux or on the ground with a steel cap to ask people how far are we operating outside of our perceived green zone and what’s driving it. 

When you dive past the wide generalisations (I’m not lazy, the company always tries to screw the little guy over) you’re likely to hit strategic insight and especially when coupled with ‘what did you see at work which made you feel that way’.

I’ve found this approach when completed over a representative sample often gives you a real pulse of a workplace (minus observer and recollection bias). It also gives you the behaviours, decisions or worldviews which are being perceived by the workgroups in either a positive or negative light.

When reviewing the above feedback leaders have an ability to tailor the wielding of legitimate (and non-legitimate) power into memorable actions. These expand the space of possibilities, whilst placing firm trigger points (escalation areas) and boundaries under which success must be achieved.

In an advancing thunderstorm whilst thunder is loud and unexpected, lightning illuminates the oppressive sky with a single spark of brilliance, striking with tremendous power.
So, what do your lightning bolts look like to the workgroup? Or are you just thunder?

Unexpected delight is priceless

During an event investigation, a team was thoroughly reviewing the context and prior activities which predated the event. The mood in the room was sombre, the nature of the near miss event was high risk, jovially the senior leader remarked that he actually enjoyed the investigation process. This turned heads, and more than one person thought he had lost the plot. He remarked the process reminded him of all the positive actions which had been taken by the team and the obstacles overcome. This was tough for the team to hear, especially as a root cause which was attributable to the team was staring them in the face. He went on that the evidence collected was a highlight reel of the care and diligence the workgroup took and was proud of the team over the entire activity which was spread over 16 months. It’s not often that we get a chance to review the hard work that had gone into the soon to be finished scope. The session turned then, from one looking for fault and pushing blame away, to a celebration of the team and their resilience across the entire scope.

Dr Drew Rae was recently attributed with the comment “The moment of the accident redefines both the future and the past…What appeared to have been safe is not only now unsafe, but with hindsight never has been safe.” It also depends largely on your own frame of reference as well – fault or appreciation, your choice matters.