PreAccident Investigation Podcast

This is a quick teaser for tomorrow's big show.  

Todays Safety Moment is a guest spot.  Here is Bob Edwards telling a story about how to learn better by asking better questions.  The ultimate challenge in managing safety is not about knowing the answer - it is about knowing the question...and in this story the question was much more effective than any answer.  Go figure, paint color is important to safe performance?  Enjoy!

I met Chuck Pettinger years ago and I have always liked and respected him.  He's a great guy - easy to like.  He is also a quantoid - sometimes not as easy to like (pun intended).  Chuck lives in the world of predictive data and he travels very comfortably through these ideas.  He makes data obtainable, interesting, and helpful.  You will have to be the judge on how understanding the linear world can help us predict failure in the non-linear world.  Either way, I think you will find this podcast interesting and valuable.  It helps that Dr. Chuck is such a great guy with whom to have a conversation.  Enjoy meeting somebody interesting, refreshing, and funny.  Here is Dr. Chuck.

This week's safety moment tackles the troubles with asking people to be more careful. There is a tension between our human need to tell people to be careful and the complete uselessness of telling people to be safe.  Part of me wants you to know that I care and part of me thinks that telling you to care should be enough.  Thanks for all the feedback on this podcast.  It is a good question and I don't have an answer.

Today's podcast features Bill Rigot.  Bill is an engineer, really an engineer, who has thought a lot about how humans perform in organizations.  Bill is not afraid to talk about his journey from the traditional view of safety and performance to now seeing safety differently - very differently.  Bill has been involved with accident investigations, organizational interventions, and bell choirs.  You will really appreciate this podcast, Bill is interesting, entertaining, and an all-around great guy.  You will be a little bit smarter after this fun and fast-paced talk.

You can either learn and improve or blame and punish...but you can't do both.  Many of you wonder why you can't have it both ways, a world where you can learn and punish at the same time, and that question is an interesting one.  This safety moment begins (just barely) this very discussion.  Spoiler Alert:  Think of this problem like having the ability to drive in two directions at once.  As much as you want to be able to drive in two directions at the same time...you simply can't.  Enjoy

This podcast is with a person you may not know - and you should.  This is Shane Bush and he is one of the best facilitators around.  His knowledge is deep and his experience is remarkable.  He is fun and interesting.  Shane has thought a lot about how workers and errors and a normal combination - nothing even very interesting. Shane goes even further to say that most errors are not important and do not make much of a difference, operationally.  The ease and experience brings to this discussion of worker safety and error is simply amazing.  This is worth a listen.

This safety moment discusses the separation between Safety, Quality, and Production and asks, "Should these be different departments in our organizations - because these are not different goals for our workers?"  Its a good question, one that should be asked.  Has our traditional organizational structure done as much good as it could do? Is it time to restructure our organizations?  Think about this one a bit and see how you would answer this question.

Meet Tony Muschara.  If you don't know his name you probably know his work.  Tony has been one of the longest-practicing New View safety and reliability professionals. Tony works around the world with clients who do work that simply cannot fail.  Tony helps us understand how we can be more effective by introducing the idea Critical Steps in our work processes.  We can fix everything, we don't need to fix everything, but we must fix the places where failure will have the highest costs to life and assets. Tony is a wonderful man and this conversation in generous and enlightening.  Enjoy!

This safety moment asks you to ask you workers a question, "Where will the next accident happen at this facility?"  It is a simple question, not very scientific or measurable, but incredibly accurate and predictive.  You workers know where your organization's systems are strong and good and where your organization's systems are weak and error-prone.  Knowing where your systems are weak allows you to identify problems that are happening...not problems that have happened.  Enjoy this little tiny tip...and learn from this tips power.