PAPod 513 - Do We Need a 6th Principle?

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Everybody. Welcome to the Pre-Accident Investigation Podcast. I'm your host, Todd Conklin. Are you excited? Are you ready? Here we go. It's time for another podcast. And that's exciting and interesting. I'm kind of pleased about this one today because there's so much going on. Oh, my goodness. I don't even know where to start. That's how much is going on. But So you know that for years and years and years, we've had these five principles.

And I'm not sure why we have five, except that we have five. The original principles that came out of the IMPO were five principles, and they made good sense. And we used them for years, and Shane and I would teach them all across the globe, the country, and talk about them. And you could hear Tony Mashara talking about them from IMPO. And you could go to almost any facility in North America and hear about the five principles. Those five principles are five principles.

So I never thought about why are there five or how come there's not 11 or how come there's not two? There's five. And we've talked about them on the podcast a bunch. You know, people make mistakes. Blame fixes nothing. Right. Learning is vital to operations. motivations, context drives behavior, and how leadership respond matters. And those principles have, over the time, they've morphed and grown and matured. And that's all been pretty normal. I mean, it's been 25 plus years on these

five principles. They're going to change. And we're learning more and we're getting smarter. And the world is much more complex, which seems impossible, but it is. It totally is. And so now what's happening is there's been a relatively interesting discussion about adding a sixth principle. And the funny thing to me is that people say it to me as if it's going to be super controversial. And I don't know if I feel that way because I'm not sure if I'm sold that five

is the right answer. I don't know. I mean, I haven't thought about it. I do know that there's a difference between a principle and a practice. And principles guide practices. And so principles are kind of this important part of how we think as an organization. And organizations need to have a set of core principles. That's really valuable. And I think of principles, I kind of think of the organization as like a river. So your organization is constantly in motion. It's moving.

You can never enter the same river twice. I mean, it's a river, right? It's constantly flowing, flowing, flowing, flowing, flowing. And what the principles are, kind of like the riverbanks, they guide the organization's direction. They guide the organization as it flows. They guide the organization as it moves towards a lake. I'm trying to, for a minute, I couldn't think what rivers do.

And so principles are guiding things. They're like riverbanks, and they help guide decisions, and they help clarify and understand the direction that the organization wants to move. So that's really a great thing. The sixth principle they're talking about, should I say it now or wait till the thing? Maybe I'll wait till the thing. The sixth principle is really set up, and it's really important, but I question whether it's a principle or a practice.

That's kind of what today's discussion is. And we're going to have the discussion with Brent Sutton, so you get a little New Zealand accent going, and Jeff Lith, who's also pretty deeply involved in this project. And listen carefully how gentle they are to me. It's very fun, actually. I like it a lot because they're trying to sort of figure out what's this all mean? Where's this all go? And that's the pod for today. Things are great with me.

So, yeah, I hardly have, I mean, I can't even think of a reason to complain. I mean, I knock on some wood, but I'm still in the same bicycle. I'm currently riding my townie around to make sure I'm spreading the love. But, yeah, no one's stolen anything for a while. It's been kind of a genteel period, but that's good. Everything's great here. I saw lots of friends recently, and so that was super fun as well. Yeah, I got nothing but good, and I hope the same exact same thing is happening to you.

That would be super important and fun for me to think about. Until then, we should probably kind of get into this little conversation and see what happens. So let's join... This little conversation with Brent and Jeff and I, and we'll talk about Brent and Jeff and me, join me. Yeah, Brent, Jeff, and me. Man, grammar is hard. English is difficult. But let's listen to this carefully and see what you think. I'm curious what your opinion is at the end of this discussion.

Without much more ado or fanfare or introduction, let's talk about a sixth principle.

So brit you've been writing these little i don't know what do you call them you might call them books but i would call them more like pamphlets i mean and i don't mean that offensively that sounded offensive but they're like little tiny books like what would you call those kind of like like beginner guides little yeah beginner guides guides is a good word because it's it doesn't have the full impact of having to sit down over a series of hours and read the book you

can read it on a plane trip right or you can read it in in a quick amount of time and what it is is just like a little taster right a sampler and how many of these how many of these have you done now well the third's coming out shortly and there's going to to be 10 in total and the reason 10 because we worked out that if your table's really wonky you can basically position them in the different quarters that's right because one side probably is going to need like three and one side's going to

need one yeah yeah because we we felt that they needed to have life after reading yes yeah so each book is about 10 10 000 words so what what What made you think that was a target idea? I mean, because that's a really interesting idea.

I was having a chat with a really good emerging hop leader, a guy called Bobby Calgar, and we were just talking about how it was difficult for people coming into the space to actually grab little elements of hop and the things that sit around it to try and make sense of them. And that whole notion that wouldn't it be great to get a little book where you were introduced to some concepts. Right.

Those concepts would have lots of storytelling around it that people could sort of align it in their head and then to go out and do something to actually see it in practice. And kind of entice them if they want more information. There's always more information. Absolutely. And that's the sampler part. So the first one, what's the title of the first one?

Uh introduction to hop okay so that's basically paying homage to the origin okay so that's kind of the and then the second one is uh about human error oh nice yeah that one deserves its own for sure and now so it's getting up well no go ahead yeah so so human error it was you know really telling the story of the performance modes and sort of you know understanding that that the The things that help us to do work well can also be the things that actually lead us to errors or mistakes.

Yeah, and the Raspberries and stuff is always valuable because conceptually it's such an interesting intellectual journey. It really causes you to think differently about how people perform functions. And it's a tough mindset to shift. Yeah. So we did a lot of storytelling around those modes where we told the stories when work was successful or when people were innovating. And then we told the stories about when it could lead to mistakes or lapses.

Perfect. And now the third one, which is why we're talking today, what's the third one going to be? And go ahead and say it because I know what it is. I'm enticing you. And you're going to say it and then I'm going to have a little tiny conniption fit. But go ahead.

Yeah, and the third volume is the sixth principle of HOP, Control Save Lives, with a huge question mark. Conniption, conniption, conniption, conniption. So here's my deal, and this is what we should talk about, is I love the idea of adding Control Saves Lives. I love the – this is just me talking. It increases its importance and it's clever and it's interesting and it really does tack on nicely as kind of an additional sixth principle.

The other thing I should say before we get too far into this, and Jeff's on the line too, so speak up anytime, Jeff, is I'm not convinced that the five principles are the only five principles in the world and that they should never be touched. I mean, I don't think it's an inclusive representation of everything humankind knows. I probably have a bias just because, you know, years ago we started with the impo five principles, and over time they've sort of morphed and matured and changed.

But I'm not sure five is magical, and so I'm not holding on to five. The thing I would sort of introduce into this conversation is the difference between a principle and a practice. us. But what worries me about having this conversation is that sounds like an egghead thing to talk about. That's like, well, how many angels can dance on the head of this pin?

Well, it depends what kind of music. If it's more EDM rave-like, you could probably put more angels on the pinhead than if it's Baroque folk dancing, which would require more space per angel. So you're going to reduce the number of angels. I mean, it seems like you can get sort of lost in kind of technical, academic, philosophical discussions. But I really do believe there's a huge difference between a principle and a practice. So a principle says people make mistakes, right? That's a principle.

We understand that that's something that happens, even though people recently have disagreed with that idea. I promise you, you can disagree as much as you want to, and people are still going to make mistakes because people are fallible. And even the best people make the most mistakes. Control save lives is something you do. Unless I'm reading this wrong. What do you guys think? Wow. It is really quiet. Did I just blow your brain? No, I think there's two things here, Todd.

I mean, in the book, we actually explore the lens through, is it a principle? Is it a value? Is it a mindset or is it a practice? And is there really a difference between those things? I would ask. I think they're very subtle.

Yeah. I mean, the problem with all of it is that if it's not a practice then ultimately it becomes another campaign yeah but but let's so let's argue this a bit because people make mistakes right they'll just pick that one because it's an easy one to pick plus we just talked about it there's really nothing to practice there it's something you just realize right and so then what happens is once you realize people are fallible what it does is it

shifts your thinking from the people – if people would simply perform this job perfectly, we would never have a failure to people won't be capable of performing this job perfectly every time. So therefore, we must have recoverability built into the system. So people make mistakes really allows things like controls and safeguards and graceful extensibility, those kind of words. It allows those to have life.

And so one of the things that the principle does is it establishes – I mean, I always think about it kind of like riverbanks. The principles are riverbanks. And the river is the actual organization. The river is the practice. It's constantly in motion. It's never the same twice. It's got interesting oddities, eddies and waterfalls and snakes and piranhas, depending on what continent the river's located.

But the riverbanks sort of provide sort of the guiding features that keep the river moving in some direction. And so when you look at a principle, and this is a really interesting discussion, is I don't see principles as truths because I'm not really certain what truth means, right? Because if something happens to one person, it's true.

So the airport story I keep talking about, when I walk through the big stanchions and there's nobody there and I have to go zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip just to get to the thing. And I say, why do I have to walk through all these accordion stanchions to get to the front of this line? And they say, because it's always busy. And I say, but I'm the only person here. They'll say, well, yeah, but in three hours, it'll be busy. Okay, but now I'm the only person here.

So truth at that moment is it's not busy. And those are a giant inefficiency. They're a waste of time and they're kind of offensive. So that's true. I mean, we could argue what truth is, but that's true at that moment. And it sounds like it must not be true three hours later when there's 500 people waiting to get through the line. For 30 minutes. Yeah, for 30 minutes. And both are true, and they coexist in the same context.

They may not coexist at the same time, but they coexist at the same context. So you get into this idea that principles sort of provide the riverbanks or however, whatever metaphor you want, knock yourself out. I mean, because there's got to be a better one than that one. Right.

And then the practice is how you do it. So like accountability. Let's talk about that. And then we'll come back to controls. Accountability is not a principle. Accountability is a practice. Right. And one of the things that we struggle with in organizations throughout the globe is this idea of, well, how do I hold workers accountable? Well, so you don't hold workers accountable as an outcome. Accountability is a practice. It's how you run your organization.

And accountability is, in my opinion, probably more important pre-event. Then it is an establishing post-event. But that's the practice idea. So what do you, I mean, I should shut up now because I'm curious to see what you think about that. Well, I'll jump in. Please do. I'd normally like to land on something fairly solid. This is a discussion. This principle value mindset practice discussion is one I'm really content with it staying a conversation. And I think the community can do that.

You know, there's some squabbles in the community that I don't think needs to happen, but I don't know that this one's going to get squabbly. But I think that this discussion is necessary and that at this year, at this stage, we're capable of having that discussion. And I think this conversation we're having right now is kind of the point, is not to be right or wrong or land on the correct answer.

But if we can stimulate this conversation in the community, then we'll be doing what we set out to do, which is raising awareness of all the facets of this important piece that is control. But are we weakening the communication strategy that the five principles clearly has and have had on sort of setting the tone for how the human performance ideas are different than traditional safety ideas by actually adding practices?

And if we start adding practices, shouldn't we also add practices on control-save lies, risk assessment identifies hazard? I mean, can't we start putting all the actions in the principal list as well? Or will we start? Let me, can I turn it back on you? Yeah, of course. So you dabbled in the listing, the five, and for a time there added a plus one. So it was a temporary partner to the five. And then you stepped back from that. And is this why?

Is this thinking why you stepped back? Oh, yeah, definitely. The reason I added the plus one is I think it's really clever. And I think it's a really important message. I mean the bottom line is we're arguing over like there's too much candy here. I mean this isn't a – so if we – if organizations get better at having controls in place, then fewer people will die. I mean so it's a great thing. And yeah, that's – I'm glad you brought that up because I'm not – it's certainly not against it.

I mean, there's a pretty good case to make that it's a little bit of old school thinking, because the idea becomes, well, you can find every risk and then put a control on it, which is kind of back to that linear thinking. But I'm not sure anyone's really purposely arguing that. What I think they're saying is that we need to be better at having recovery. We need to be at least as good as having recovery as we are having prevention. And what I think this tackles is the bias of prevention.

I mean, because what I think our big job for the last several years has been to help organizations realize that prevention strategies alone simply are not enough. And that's, I mean, that's been a really important message. Now, the funny thing is for us talking, it's that seems incredibly obvious. I mean, it's just like, well, duh, but actually it, it's not obvious. There's, there's a belief that if we prevent all bad things from happening, then the outcome will be no bad things will happen.

And then what normally happens is, is we're pretty good at preventing bad things from happening. But what we're really good at is having adaptive employees who are constantly adjusting performance in real time.

And so they're successful. stressful so then the payoff for the organization is well we're good at preventing well when you get good at preventing what happens is you prevent a lot of stuff but then here it comes and and we should nod to laurie shelby because she's been a part of this discussion for years in fact she was the first person i ever heard talk about the sixth principle then what happens is when something bad happens the organization's kind of kind of caught with their pants down oh i

shouldn't use that surprised that's a that's covered their pants if you're a visual thinker that probably took you to a very interesting yeah yeah that's a very interesting place to go i don't know i i it's a great conversation and like i said i i say a little bit i think in the intro that um. Great conversations over the last couple of years, maybe a bit more squabbly this year, but great conversations have been stimulated over the last few years.

And I, in listening to the conversations over the last while, I've heard people really embrace these principles and go down a track of thinking with it that kind of steers them away from those fundamentals. Why are we even talking about this? It's really basic. So, for instance.

You know, they'll err as normal and blame fix as nothing and they'll adopt the practice of learning teams and they'll get really caught up in just talking to people and what people have to say and somehow get so fascinated by that that they can think that talking those things through are the same as acting and implementing and ensuring, validating and verifying control. So I think that it is time, I feel it's time for a reminder, and I kind of allude to that in the beginning of the book.

And then, which is unusual for me, you know, I like, I think this is a good conversation, and it's a necessary conversation. And I think we're, the community's capable and should be having this conversation. Where they land, right or wrong, I'm oddly okay with that being open. Because I think this is a discussion that has merit, and hopefully it takes some of the oxygen out of some of the ongoing conversations that don't have merit. I mean, maybe.

What do you think, Brett? I mean, one of the reasons I think the little pamphlet books are a good idea is because they sort of facilitate this thinking. I mean, the thing that scares me the most always is that, and you just hit it perfectly, Jeff, is that once you get into doing some practice, then you start thinking that practice is the thing.

And it's not the thing. The thing is understanding the complexity of the workplace and really from prevention all the way to recovery, having a rounded, full, holistic program that sort of provides an opportunity for people to fail as elegantly as they possibly can. But, Brent, I cut you off. I asked you a question, and then I didn't let you answer. No. I think it's very multi-layered, Todd.

But I think context drives behavior. So the first thing we tried to do in the new book is to really give the context to that background. Because if I think about the end of the world that I'm at down in Australia and New Zealand, there's a lot of regulatory focus around critical risks. Tasks that there's a lot of focus around reducing the death rate, the fatality rate in certain industries. So that drives organizations to give focus.

And that's why I think down this end of the world, control save lives has started to become like a mantra. And my concern is that these mantras, they end up as a poster. Yeah. They start off being noble. Yeah, hence the fact it's called a mantra. Yeah, I mean, of course they're going to end up. I mean, that's its job. So how do we take control-save lives and turn it into a principle? What is the principle that drives control-save lives? Maybe that's a good question.

I didn't even think that was coming. Sorry to pop that on you. Well, I don't believe it is a principle. But what's the principle that drives that practice? Us well for me it's it's the the inevitability of error right and the context of the system and how it drives behavior so if we say i know it's crazy every system will eventually fail every system runs degraded if we say this therefore control save lives i mean it's still that's a kind of a conglomeration.

But I mean, maybe the principle, and again, I think we're all in the same boat on this. I'm not in love with this. I'm certainly not advocating we do this. But it's really curious to me, if we build a principle that says every system will eventually fail catastrophically, that's a principle. And then the response to that would be, therefore we have to have controls in place for when the system eventually does fail but I don't know.

We're going someplace there I'm team I touch on the fact that if there's work there's risk and if work can't be free of risk then what happens. And if that risk has that potential for energy to be present and that energy could be life-changing, then it's a question of, If versus when. Yeah. Many organizations. No, it's a question of when versus if. Well, but the problem is a lot of organizations keep thinking if because they keep thinking in terms of probability.

Right. Yeah. And part of the book is to say it's freaking when. But what about the way the economics guys look at it, where they see risk as opportunity? And to be fair, risk is opportunity. There's no question about it.

And in the book we actually raise that thing about why do we see humans as a threat when they actually are an opportunity right in the system we actually focus on that time because the problem is safety sees everything as a threat because you know this notion of a hazard there's no such thing as a good hazard a hazard won't you know direct you say hello right or make it faster or I mean, if you look at how efficiency works,

right, it's easier to not get a ladder than it is to get a ladder, right? But if you don't get a ladder, then, you know, you don't set up a platform, whatever. The potential for that to fail is high. And that threat has always driven that prevention bias. So we turn it around to say there's a huge opportunity. Yeah. And that's how financial people or economists see risk. as an opportunity.

And I wonder if that's something we should collectively, as Jeff would say, in the community, which sounds very good, Jeff. All right. If that's something we should think about, because I'm not sure our peers are thinking about it. I don't know, Jeff, you're kind of more on the pointy end of the stick than I am because of the website and stuff. But I mean, I always think that's a really interesting thing. I was just thinking that workers kind of take on that economic incentive.

If work is the exchange of risk for money, what is danger pay and what's the motivation for those night shifts and high hazard tasks? And we know there's danger pay or what, you know, some kind of shift differential. We have lots of names for it, you know, and people that do higher risk work are hopefully, they're, you know, they're recognized and rewarded for doing higher risk work. I mean, in a perfect world, that's what I want to see happen. But I know it's a really interesting idea.

And the thing that I would say is I don't think it's bad. I mean, I don't want to come out of this thinking, you know, he's against that because I'm not against it. It's just I've become really interested in the difference between a principle sort of sets the thinking and the practice is something that you do with the principle. Right. So you have to have practice because principles without practice would be stupid or philosophical.

What is the sound of one hand clapping, right? I mean, that's – right? I mean, right? That's part of it. But the practice part is really an interesting part. I don't know. I think it's a terrific – And without – I mean – And putting it out there in these booklets, is that where that term comes from? You know, I think we're just three guys sitting around having this chat, but I think the cool thing that's going to happen here in a few short weeks is we'll open this chat really up to folks.

And I think we need to have this conversation and let people chime in on this, you know, as many as are willing. I think it's a great conversation and we're capable of having this conversation and it's an important one to have. So let's sit with it. I mean, we don't have to be in a rush to sort this out. And going through the process with the community of having this conversation, I think, is going to be very fruitful for us. Final words, Brent? What do you think? I think it's timely.

Look, it's timely. I mean, I had someone recently tell me, Todd, that they felt that, you know, Hopp didn't address these types of risks. And I said to them, so where did its heritage come from?

But hop doesn't overtly call out critical risks because of its heritage out of nuclear yeah i mean it's crazy i said to them if you understand the heritage of hop you understand why it doesn't have to be overt because everything could kill you yeah in that environment and i think it's just that that mental connection that we have that if we're not calling it out as a separate thing then we can't be taking it seriously.

So part of the book is to basically give people those different lenses so that they can give it some deeper thought rather than just seeing it ultimately as being a poster on the wall. Because, dare I say it, that probably at some point in the life zero harm was some form of noble cause but it ended up as a sticker on someone's hard hat. Music.

What do you think i told you it's an interesting conversation and who knows i i do think control save live is a really important message but i'm not sure it's a principle a principle would say we thought we think about the alignment between risk and control i mean this was i don't know i I don't want to, I'm not even sure I can solve it. I'm not even sure I should solve it, but I think it's an interesting thing to think about. That's the pod.

Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. And for goodness sakes, you guys, be safe. Music.