PAPod 551 - Cracking the Code: Embracing Uncertainty with Sam Olliges

How's your Monday? Oh, no, it's today. Today's Tuesday, huh?

It is. Yeah, it's second Monday. Yeah, the worst Monday. No, I think the first Monday is worse than the second Monday. That's fair. Yeah, because you're coming off the weekend. And at least second Monday, you're coming off first Monday, right? That's right. And anybody can make it through a Wednesday. So that's not a big deal. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And then Thursday is like the first Friday. Yep. And then Friday is Saturday.

Exactly. And then Saturday is Sunday. And then Sunday just doesn't exist. Yeah. I think we've solved all the world's problems. Thank God we got that done. Okay. Well, good talking to you. See you later. We'll be right back. Music.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Pre-Accident Investing Extra podcast. I am your host, Todd Conklin, who somehow for some reason can't talk today. Hello? Check, check, check. Is this on? Is it working? Okay. I think you have me. So how are you? We're just screaming along. Every day is quite an adventure. I just, what an interesting place the world is and we live here. And it just, it's astounding to me and scary and frightening and chaotic.

And it's filled with uncertainty, which I suppose is why we get together and chat all the time is around this notion of uncertainty. Because the more you think about uncertainty, the more uncertain the future becomes, which again is not the smartest thing I've ever said, but it is kind of what's happening. And so we get a chance to talk about how do you make stable, sure systems in the midst of a world that is scrambling like an egg?

It's a good question. It is a very good question. This weekend was interesting for me because I tried to crack kind of a group cook session, cooking session, where we tried to crack the recipe. So I made papas rellenas. Papas rellenas. Am I saying that right? Stuffed mashed potatoes that are then breaded and fried. And I'm just going to say this as we get into this conversation. What could be wrong with that? I mean, seriously, what could go? There's nothing that could go wrong with that.

It starts with mashed potatoes, in this case, stuff with meat and cheese, and then breaded and fried. It's like you take all the universe's greatest treats and put them together. If you served it on a giant potato chip, it would be the perfect meal. It really would be the perfect meal. And they were pretty darn good. I'm pretty impressed, actually. They came out a million times better than I thought they would.

So there, because I kind of thought, I don't know, when you start looking at frying balls of mashed potatoes in hot oil, you start to think there's a lot of ways for this to go wrong. I mean, just a lot of ways for this to go wrong. And none of them happened. Lucked out, I think. I mean, that was a good thing. But that was kind of an interesting experiment. I don't know what's next. Who knows? We do have an interesting concert, though, coming up. A guy named Shiny Ribs.

I can't really describe what kind of music it is because I don't know how to do it. But if you get a chance and a kind of a wild hair, look up this guy's shiny ribs because it's a double shiny ribs weekend in Santa Fe. So I'm pretty sure there's going to be some exposure to the shiny ribs environment. How are you doing? How are things going?

It's, again, an interesting time to be around. And so that's always kind of good to check in on one another. And it's very interesting just because Jenny and I wrote this book on workers.

Workers aren't the problem they're the solution i'm a leadership for a new leading differently i don't remember what it's called it's got a complicated name but i think i've told you and i actually owe you a podcast with jenny to talk about this so that's coming in fact it's in the works it really changed the way i looked at things like recruiting and and and retaining workers.

Because I realized, wow, my bias to that is definitely my bias and doesn't accurately track reality very closely anymore. And it's interesting because today's podcast, we're going to talk to a young safety professional who's really on the journey at kind of a cool industry.

And he's going to talk about that very thing, that attracting workers is pretty easy. Retaining workers has become more and more of a challenge. And it's inherently kind of in a part of our safety discussion, because we know that as experience matures out of the organization and young, skilled talent comes into the organization, that transition is really important for operations. It's really important for business continuity.

It's really important for customer satisfaction. It meets a lot of tests. It's also super important for safety. And that's a pretty interesting conversation to have. I mean, it's interesting. And you'll kind of notice that Sam talks about that a little as we progress through the podcast, which, you know, I might as well just talk about the podcast because it's coming up. I sat down with Sam, and Sam's going to talk a little bit about his industry, which is super interesting.

You know, most of us do pretty interesting work. I don't know if you know this, but I find your work interesting. People do interesting work. Sam just is kind of interesting in that they pretty much build water towers. And I don't know how you guys are, but I've become very, I really like the fact that there's a water tower. Because I really like the fact that when you turn water on, it comes out of the faucet in your home. And you didn't have to carry it from the river.

That's just going to be honest with you. That is a huge, huge advantage. And that water tower is kind of a big part of pressurizing the community's water system, but it's also a very interesting thing to construct.

And that's kind of where this conversation goes. So I enjoy this immensely just because it's always fun to talk to somebody who's really thinking about safety and reliability and resilience in his or her industry and willing to talk about sort of the pluses and minuses of taking the organization on this journey.

So if you will, sit back. I'm going to jump right into it. This, my friends, is a conversation between yourself, myself, and, And young Sam, the brilliant young Sam. My name's Sam Olegus. I work for a company out of Fort Worth, Texas called Landmark Structures, and we build water towers all over the country. Oh man, best job ever. It's pretty fun. Like they look like big doorknobs? Yeah, pretty much. If you're looking at them from like top down, that would be a big doorknob.

No, do that many people, yeah, that's true. Do that many people look at water tires from the top down? Not really, unless you're in a plane. Yeah, pilots and helicopter people, which are also pilots. So that's cool. So how many will you guys build in a month or whatever? In a month? I mean, it's, I don't know if we could build one in a month, but I mean, we probably build 80 to 100 a year, I would say. Wow. I mean, and we're one of several companies that do it.

We build, I'd say, close to 40% of them across the country, and all we do, I don't know if you, you know, there's different types, but the ones that have the concrete shaft and then the steel tank on top, that's what we do. That's all we build. Wow. Yeah. Wow, that's interesting. So how'd you get this gig? I actually worked for one of our competitors in Louisville, Kentucky, grew up in Louisville, Kentucky my entire life, and this company reached out

to me and recruited me. And I moved my wife and kid down here. And then shortly after they recruited me, found out she was pregnant with our second kid. So congratulations. Well, thank you very much. And so she gets to experience Texas summers as a pregnant lady. But I mean, fortunately, I mean, it's not that different from Louisville, is it? It's a little hotter. Yeah. Yeah. Louisville's more unpredictable and has more mild days than.

Yeah, that's probably true. That is probably true indeed. That is probably true. So do you travel much? I mean, do you go from site to site? What's the story there? Yeah. Yeah. So I travel all over the country, visiting the job sites and checking on the crews, seeing how they're doing.

And one of the big things that actually brought me to this company in particular was that when I was interviewing with who is now my boss, he asked me and, you know, we interviewed been going well and he goes, so are you a behavior based safety guy or are you a hop guy? And I was like, this is going to make or break the interview right here. Wow. That's kind of a lot of pressure. Yeah. Did you say, did you look at him and say, what do you want me to be?

I'll be whoever you want me to be. No, I, I, well, I had just recently, probably in the last year before that discovered the new view. So, so I told him, I was like, you know, I'm new to it, but I'm a hop guy. Like the, the new view stuff is, is where I'm trying to, to drive myself and, and go with, with how I want to be a safety professional. How'd you discover it? You're gonna laugh so i we the company i was working for our competitor we were having.

Not bad accidents but just silly accidents things that shouldn't have happened things we should have been able to fix and i actually went to google and i said i just last ditch effort i'm like how can i do safety differently to help people and lo and behold the book that you and sydney wrote popped How funny, really? I was like, it can't be this easy. It can't be this easy. I bought it. I read it, fell in love with it. And I've been on a, I don't know.

I was, I was going to say a downhill spiral ever since, but I think it's an uphill spiral. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. But it feels downhill. It does. It's a lot of work to fill downhill. Because the moment you feel like you've got it, 12 more things open up. And how'd the, how'd the company take it? I mean, how did that transitions? Was it rough at first? Was it hard to change the conversation? They didn't take it very well. They didn't take it at all, actually. It was kind of shot down.

And part of that's my fault because I think I got my feet wet with it, and I tried to throw it out there, and I didn't have enough information to back me up yet. So when questions were asked and the possibility was open, I didn't have answers. So so that was that was kind of my fault i think for introducing it too quickly.

And and trying to to shift things too drastically too quickly but you know looking back on how i could have done it differently at the time i you know i definitely would have learned a lot more and and then from there, you know, try to maybe trickle it in and ease it in and, and do like, you know, everybody talks about the micro experimentation. And then rather than just go in with this idea, go in with examples where it's worked for us, you know, on small scales.

Yeah. I always think of that as kind of strategically opportunistic that you, you sort of wait for opportunities to, to do that. But do you think, so I think that, that the idea that you didn't know enough, I think that's super normal? Like, I don't think, I don't think you ever know enough. No. Like, and it always feels like you're learning more and everything's kind of a wild experiment.

How much time did you get to spend with the leadership? Because I always think the key is if you get the leadership started on the learning journey with you, then that's kind of a good place to be.

I mean, I had a, I had a bit of exposure to the leadership. You know, the, I reported directly to the safety director of the company and the company I was working for at the time, they're, relatively small i mean that the tank industry in and of itself is pretty small but there was, 500 people so you know it was kind of a a family feel sort of thing you know and and so i mean i knew the ceo and you know talked to him about

stuff but never really got the chance to expose him to it because i didn't feel like i got that buy-in from the director and it's again i don't think it's his it was his fault you know i just didn't have the answers to the questions he asked, which you know in hindsight sucks because i feel like it could really help yeah but sometimes the question some yes sometimes the questions are hard right or they're not hard it's just you kind of have

to be ready for them and you yeah you sort of at first don't know what they're going to ask the great thing sam is that as you go through this journey many times you can kind of guess what the supervisors are going to ask. They start asking the same thing over and over again, which is actually pretty good data because that tells you, that's an area we have a lot of potential in. That's kind of cool.

Yeah, and with the old view of thinking, I can kind of anticipate that stuff, but I didn't know where he was going to go with the new view stuff. I didn't know what exposure he had to it, and it turns out he had none. He hasn't done a whole lot with it. But I wouldn't even say he is a behavior-based safety guy because a lot of the stuff that they did was new view oriented. So, I mean, they were already doing the work, but I didn't see that at the time

because I was still so fresh with it. Yeah, I understand. That makes sense. Which is unfortunate again, you know, but no, when I got the opportunity to come here and dive headfirst into it and talk with my boss and like implement these things, like it's just.

It it's like go and do like yeah yeah let's try it let's give it a shot and it's like that's what i want like let's do it how's it going i mean tell me some stories what's been going on well so right now i've been i've been really focusing a lot on and and don't twitch when i say this error no i won't twitch well i mean i'd normally twitch but usually not on the second monday but so so i've been really interested in error lately and

not in the sense of like what errors are people making i am very much of the opinion that error is boring in that sense we all make a ton of errors all the time i think i looked it up and something like five errors per hour on average i don't remember the study that i looked up and saw that but and i'm sure that varies between different ones, but I'm looking at errors and, and like error traps. One, one that I just saw the other day, we have a hoist system inside the shaft of the tank.

And there's, there's an arrow on it that says up and down for the lever. Okay, great. Easy enough arrow up and down, but there's also the word up and down, but the, the word up is next to the arrow that points down and the word down is next to the arrow that points up. So which one is it, you know, and I feel like that's just an error trap that we, you know, we, we can, we can fix, we can, we can tweak that, you know, reroute some hoses and boom, that problem solved.

So just think little things like that.

So that's the most interesting stuff to see. Have you, have you heard of a guy named Don Norman? Don Norman, it sounds familiar. He wrote a book called The Design of Everyday Things. And, and especially as you look for a sort of air provoking environments, you know, like those airs or those arrows. Sorry, I'm from Western Kansas. So everything sounds the same to me. That's a, that's a design flaw. And Don Norman has this whole incredibly interesting book. He actually talks a lot about doors.

That if you can't figure out if you need to push or pull the door, it's a bad door. I remember you talking about this on one of your podcasts. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so that's, I think you're in the right place because, well, first of all, I know you're in the right place because it's all kind of this little journey. And so mistakes become really interesting, but only in that they start to become interesting in that you start looking for places where mistakes are made a lot.

And once you figure out that the mistakes are a function of the design of the system, then it's really easy to sort of make that system more robust by changing the way it's designed. So, you know, the world's probably most interesting example, although it's kind of dated now, is the USB stick. Yeah. You know, now that they've gone to USB-Cs, it's so interesting. They've just designed, it'd be impossible to do it wrong.

I mean, it's really hard to do it wrong. And so all those air-provoking conditions have completely been removed. And now it's just a pretty efficient little system. And then the European Union got involved and said, it's stupid that we have to have all these power cords. Make everything have the same slot. And so they've uniformed around this USB-C and I'll bet you in the United States in the next couple of years, everything will be there.

I mean, it's going to all be there, which means we got to buy a bunch of new crap. But I mean, they like that too. So that's a plus. I mean, iPhones finally got on board and went to the USB-C. So I think they were kind of the last hold out there.

Yeah, and they can because, you know, they're the 100,000 pound gorilla.

So they can pretty much do what they want to do well what's exciting what's what's been fun for you i mean what's what's the coolest part i think the coolest part has been honestly the micro experimentation thing being able to have that latitude to think of something that that may or may not work you don't know and and say hey i want to try this and there's never a question it's just go do it yeah give it a shot you know as long as there's we're not going to hurt people go for

it because the outcome you know whether whether or not it provides us a new way of doing something that's safer or you know provides less air traps for example we're going to learn something from it you know we're going to get some valuable information that we can then use to either design the next experiment or to to implement and help our guys out in the field because i have always been of the opinion that.

The easier we can make it for the guys on the field, the less that they have to think about safety, the better off they're going to be. Because you make things hard on them, they're not going to want to do it. And that's understandable. We don't like to do hard things. We like to do easy things. We like to get things done quicker. So anything we can do to help with that has been awesome. And another thing that has really encouraged me with the new view is the outlook on accidents.

I think it was, I don't know which one, whether it was you or Sydney that wrote it in the Do Safety Differently book, but it was something along the lines of talking about the absence of accidents doesn't predict the presence of a safe environment. And that's something I've said for years myself, and I'm not claiming to be the first. I'm sure I wasn't, but. Oh, go ahead and take it. Go ahead and take it.

Go for it. that, but, but when I read that, that was the moment for me that it was like, holy crap, where has this been all my life? Like I've been in safety for 13 years now. And, you know, I've been saying this for, I don't know how many years, but then here it's in this book. Like these guys must know what they're talking about. They must, they, they, they seem to have their stuff together.

Well, in systems, I mean, people are mostly, so I was thinking of it, I mean, exactly the way you're thinking about is that is that really good people hold together really crappy systems you know crappy instructions crappy clients crappy conditions crappy weather crappy locations you probably have all those things i would guess every one of those is on your checklist and and so what why are we successful because really good

people hold it together and so you've got kind of less inadequate systems being held together by more than adequate people who are fallible, who make mistakes. And so it's going to fail. And that's the crazy thing about it is that forever, and this is the part that I think about on my journey, you know, we used to kind of wait for an accident to learn. And now what we're realizing is, well, you don't really have to wait for the accident. It's going to fail.

Look for where you're doing critical work and then look around it and say, okay, when this does fail, how's it going to fail? And what controls do we have in place? How much capacity do we have? Can we extend the system extensively? And you must see that a lot because. I mean, you have sort of a super interesting collection of hazards. Yeah, it's very unique. It's definitely a high hazard industry. Yeah.

And I don't know if I would go as far to say as we're a high reliability industry yet, because for as dangerous as the work is, overall, the industry is pretty safe. Yeah. How big is the crew out there? So on the concrete side of things, you're looking probably five to six guys that are building the pedestal, the shaft of the tank. Is that like a monopour? I mean, do they start and go until it's finished? No, it's done in sections. Oh, very cool. In sections.

And each company, if you start looking at the concrete shafted tanks out there, you'll start to notice they have a little bit different pattern on them. Each company has their own specific pattern. some of them pour in four foot sections some pour in seven foot sections six foot sections it's, it's whatever specific to that company until we get to the elevation we need and then then you put the tank on top and the steel side yeah yeah it's that easy that easy takes 30 minutes yeah.

And then the steel side it's the same thing probably four to five usually building the steel part of the tank and so then they have a pretty highly experienced like field supervisor are out with them that runs the crew? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we've got, you know, the tank industry being as small as it is, you have this handful of people that have been here 20, 30, some even 40 and 50 years. I mean, I've worked with guys in their,

they're eighties, they're mid eighties that have been doing it since the seventies. Jeez. And they're still doing it to this day, still climbing tanks to this day. Wow. Because one, they love it, but two, they're just wanting to make sure that next generation, which really in their situation, it's like four generations are prepared. So, so there's a lot of experience. How are you trying to capture that experience?

A lot of it's word of mouth unfortunately but you know we are looking at kind of a standard work situation now too and trying to understand what is normal for us not maybe not normal in general but normal for us to try to make that transition easier for some of the younger guys because you know there's only so much experience to go around we have to build that as we go is Is it difficult to recruit younger guys or younger people?

It can be. It's difficult to keep them, I guess. It's not difficult to recruit them. You know, this industry pays very well on the concrete side, on the welder side, everything. It pays very well, but it, you know, it's hard work. You know, you're traveling, you're miles away from home. They work on, you know, turns that are not your traditional five-day work week. So they might work, you know, 10 or 11 days on and get three or four days off and then go back to another 10 or 11 day turn.

Wow. So, you know, it's long stretches away from home. And that can be hard. I mean, even on days where, or weeks where I'm gone for three or four days, like that's rough on my two-year-old. But, you know, I'm back before the weekend. Yeah. Does it influence their, like their mental health, like in the construction trades where they're starting to see, you know.

Those weird turns like that long stretches with super short little weekend off kind of three day off thing. Absolutely. It does. I've, you know, I've, I haven't been in, in the tank industry long. I've only been in the tank industry for about four years now, but I can definitely see where it, it wears on some guys and they, you know, they, they, they need somebody to talk to.

And sometimes that's all it takes. Somebody, sometimes they just need to talk to somebody, They need to talk it out and they're good. Sometimes you, you know, you need to kind of recommend that they, they seek out some professional help, you know, and that's okay. And let them know it's okay. Cause you know, construction workers, they're, you know, they're big, bad, tough guys. They don't need, they don't need to talk to anybody that's in their head. That's weak minded stuff.

So for them to be able to hear that, you know, Hey, it's okay to talk to people. That's fine. Nobody's going to make fun of you for that. You know, that's, that's a big thing for them. What would you share? What have you learned and what would you share to somebody new coming into safety now? Because you've been at plenty long enough to sort of have some ideas of things you wish you'd have known.

The biggest thing I would share is, you know, unfortunately, a lot of us have seen tragedy and it, you know, to be prepared for that to happen and be prepared to have a network of people there to support you. So, you know, it may not weigh on you in the moment. So if you have like a fatal incident that you're handling, God forbid.

But if you have that, that, you know, you can handle it in the time, but later after everything settles down and the adrenaline goes away and, you know, it's going to start to hit you that, you know, someone passed away and you were responsible for either investigating it or understanding what happened and you're going to feel like, you know, not great about it. I don't know how to word it any better than that, but it's, you're just not going to feel great about it.

And to, to be able to have that support network behind them to, to talk that stuff out. Oh, thank you, Sam. What'd you think? It's, it's just a great conversation to have. And I'm lucky I get to have them a lot. I mean, and you probably do too. We can't probably spend enough time talking to each other about the work we do and asking questions like, well, what'd you learn? What was good?

What was interesting? Where was it hard? You know, those kind of questions, they're not only valuable in that they help us understand another person's journey into changing the safety culture and influencing the operational safety of an organization, but they're also really kind of cleansing for the person to talk about with you. They get a chance to tell their story and that's always really valuable. And that's exactly what Sam did.

That was, that was a great use of time. And I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I kind of feel like you did. So I'm not very worried about it. That's just a fun thing to do. And now it's back to work. I mean, unfortunately that's what has to happen.

So whatever you're doing, it's time to put your work hat back on and get right back into it, baby. Learn as much as you can. That's really valuable. Have as much fun as you possibly can squeeze into a day. Take care of each other. Check in on one another. And for goodness sakes, you guys. Music.