EP 630 - Dr. Nicholas Weatherly

Safety FM with Jay Allen

Speaker 1

00:04

This show is brought to you by Safety FM. Okay, we are coming to you live from Energy Safety Canada in good old Banff. And as we are hanging out today, Dr. Nick, how are you?

S1
Speaker 1
00:17
Doing well. You can pull the microphone closer to you if you need to. No problem. You just legitimately came off the stage.

S1
Speaker 1
00:24
I mean, it's not fair for me to grab people to do this, but how'd it go?

S2
Speaker 2
00:29
Oh, wow. That was good. It was my first time here and good crowd, good discussions and happy to be able to come sit at the big kids table and talk to you

S1
Speaker 1
00:40
for a little bit. So let me ask, let me answer a strange question. Do you, I don't wanna say do you feel out of your element but you're talking a little bit about behavior-based safety and you are aware there's a whole bunch of hop aficionados around here so how's it going because I because there's I'm not gonna say the rub but there's people are like hold on there's a behaviorist guy Why is he at a Hop Conference?

S1
Speaker 1
01:03
I didn't even know this was a Hop Conference. I didn't know there were people talking about Hop. I didn't know there were some limitations here.

S2
Speaker 2
01:10
Well, I guess we'll see because, like you said, I just got done and you escorted me here. So, you know, maybe everybody likes you. Maybe I didn't get tackled because, but no, that was, you know, that was kind of the fun thing.

S2
Speaker 2
01:23
You know, I had spoken with Gordon Walsh and some other folks about doing a kind of actionable talk about hop and you know my intent was that I'm just the lowly behavior guy. You know and the thing is I don't really, I don't disagree with some of the pushback on the way people talk about applied behavior science or whatnot, but my whole thing is I'm a scientist. I have a line of research and behavior analysis, I'm a consultant and a coach, and I've been an academic unit head. But people take the science, and then they build IP around it.

S2
Speaker 2
02:11
And then they'll kind of market it as ABS or behavior-based safety. And then someone's like, I don't like this approach. There go I don't like the science. And I was here just to kind of build bridges.

S2
Speaker 2
02:22
You know that I'm just a behavior guy. There's behavior in making hop actionable. So let's all work together.

S1
Speaker 1
02:30
So let's talk a little bit about that. So the name of the presentation was operationalizing human and organizational performance. Could you give us a quick overview for the people that were not here?

S1
Speaker 1
02:40
That way they know exactly what we're talking about, then we can go into going a little bit deeper.

S2
Speaker 2
02:43
Yeah, right on. So It really was focused on taking the principles and the philosophy of HOP and identifying the role of human behavior in it and what does it mean to not blame people so on and so forth, and just show that there is a value in an understanding that there's a science behind behavior change, and if you can harness that science, you can maximize the impact of your implementation of Hobb philosophies, and that was kind of the purpose of it.

S1
Speaker 1
03:18
So as you decide to do this, I'm sure you spoke with some of your colleagues and you're telling them I'm taking this approach of operationalizing hop which is different than the behavior side. I mean not the operationalizing portion of it. What are they telling you?

S1
Speaker 1
03:34
Are they telling you that you're off your rocker in regards to doing this? You're shaking your head yes. Yeah,

S2
Speaker 2
03:40
there was a lot of that. You know, there's a, those of us that work a lot in safety, It was, they understood the value just because the hop folks have done such a brilliant job of getting their messaging out there. But there was a little bit of, you're going into the wolves den, there was a little bit of, you know, they don't like you.

S1
Speaker 1
04:07
What are you doing going there, dude? So let's talk about that because you're from the same side of the planet that I'm from, so We're down in Florida. You decided to come out here number 1.

S1
Speaker 1
04:18
It's freezing which I mean, it's good. It's different When you get here, do you have a level of concern of what you're getting into? And I mean, it's not like somebody's gonna beat you up as I don't care because that sounded extremely wrong But what was what was it? Was there any kind of thought process of, what are you getting yourself into?

S2
Speaker 2
04:35
You know, there was, honestly, there was a little of that prior to my starting to go to talks. And that was 1 of my main, other than my talking, 1 of my main goals was I really just wanted to learn perspectives. 1 of the things I talked about in my talk was that there's so much alignment between the fundamental principles of early 20th century behavior analysis and the philosophies of a hop, that there was a common sense alignment there.

S2
Speaker 2
05:13
But when I started looking into it more obviously There's a lot of pushback. And then I've been with clients, and I've met with their hop teams, and I've mentioned they will literally, they've literally started the meeting saying, just so you're aware, I'm against everything that you stand for.

S1
Speaker 1
05:31
And I was like,

S2
Speaker 2
05:32
thanks, right on. And, but then I started going to talks around here, and they're talking about systems and don't blame and getting out in the field and meeting people where they are and all these things that are fundamental principles of that. It's not new in behavior analysis.

S2
Speaker 2
05:50
We've been studying this since 1910. So it's, so I was like, these are my people. You know, they just, they don't know it yet, but we're aligned on this.

S1
Speaker 1
05:59
Well, I've sat down with Scott Doe, Scott Geller, I've sat down with Tim Ludwig, and they have all given me a perspective at some point or another where they believe that hop did come out of behavior-based safety. Now there are arguments on how did that, how did they come up with that association, How did they come up with that idea? When you look at this, because you're going around speaking about this, and we'll say it a quote unquote, hop conference, even though that's not how I see it.

S1
Speaker 1
06:26
What are the things that you see that are similar that you said, okay, I can draw, not really a line in the sand, but you can have a conversation where you go, look at this and look at this and how they're able to, quote unquote, tie together.

S2
Speaker 2
06:39
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. So 1 of the first things that we're taught in behavior analysis, so my undergraduate, master's and PhD is all in behavior analysis applied to systems and safety and leadership and training. So 1 of the first fundamental, this is before I knew about HOP, 1 of the first fundamental things, and again this goes back to early 20th century, is you don't blame the victim.

S2
Speaker 2
07:09
It's in our textbooks, we're forced to memorize definitions based on that, you know, it's the whole thing. And then it's, we have a thing in behavior analysis called, you know, functional assessment to performance diagnostics, which just means that you have, every behavior has a function. There's a reason for the behavior. You have to understand what is causing the behavior in order for you to select a solution for it.

S2
Speaker 2
07:30
It's a function-based management intervention. So you have to understand the context. The environment is responsible for behavior change. Another big area is behavioral systems analysis, which is a huge area of behavior analysis, and it's understanding systems and how systems are interconnected across organizational process and performer levels.

S2
Speaker 2
07:52
And so when I started seeing HOP, and it was, all right, you don't blame, you focus on the system, a big area of behavior analysis is goal setting. You don't just randomly say 0, 0 incidents. You say, all right, well, what is your current baseline level of performance and select reasonable goals? So when I started learning about HOP, I was like, it's right up my alley, you know, and then and I had mentioned in my talk That I made the mistake of googling hop and ABS and then right that was bad idea And And I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute, they're not as on board as I thought they would be on board.

S2
Speaker 2
08:37
So then, but again, come up here, seek to understand. But that's why I see the alignment. Well,

S1
Speaker 1
08:43
and I'll mention the firm by name, but Aubrey Daniels actually goes around and they teach a version of hop and as our people are fully aware There are very heavily driven behavior based Behavior based safety system and a lot of people have accused them of really doing hop light with behavior based safety When you look at some of the different approaches, do you think that we have it wrong? Do you think that we need to really lean towards the behavior side and tie in some hop elements onto it? So let's say behavior-based safety and then have hop as a bolt on, if that makes sense?

S2
Speaker 2
09:16
Yeah, and

S1
Speaker 1
09:17
I used to- In its opinion, I'm not asking for data yet. We can always ask data because I know how academics are. It's like, why did you ask me an opinion question?

S1
Speaker 1
09:26
We talk about factuals.

S2
Speaker 2
09:27
No, I've got tons of opinions, a lot easier for me with opinions. And I used to work for Aubrey Daniels.

S1
Speaker 1
09:34
I'm not trying to cause controversy. No, no, you're good. I just said it by remembering an interview.

S1
Speaker 1
09:39
I just

S2
Speaker 2
09:39
want full disclosure. But it's 1 of those things where as a behavior analyst, sometimes there is a hubris that we're the experts in behavior, so we got it. We got everything.

S2
Speaker 2
09:59
Everything comes from us and so on and so forth. My favorite type of behavior analyst is the person who doesn't know that they're using the science of behavior. The video game industry, multibillion dollar industry, They're using behavioral principles. They found that on their own co-author of Book that I wrote deliberate coaching Paul.

S2
Speaker 2
10:23
Gimani. He is a He found he found value in supporting people and using behavioral principles without knowing that he was using behavioral principles. And I love that. So that's why it's...

S2
Speaker 2
10:38
I'm all about collaboration. The IO psychologists have their role in the systems. The HR has their role in the systems. Whenever it gets down to, all right, at some point there's a metric, we can link behavior, let's look at variables.

S2
Speaker 2
10:57
Well, that's my area of expertise. But there are people that come in at a higher level than the system to embed philosophies and groundwork. So my whole thing is we all have a role that we're working together. So I don't view it as necessarily that they got their stuff from us because I'm not to the point that I think, number 1, our stuff isn't easily accessible, and number 2, I'm not so arrogant to think that they can't build things about behavior science without accessing all of our stuff.

S2
Speaker 2
11:31
You know, they found it in the same way where it's my thing is we talk about strategy implementation and we will take your philosophy and strategies and we'll just get people to put it into action. So that's why it's I don't think that I conflict because I'm just the behavior guy. That's all I'm here for

S1
Speaker 1
11:53
So when you look at this you mean part of the answer that she gave you thought talked about philosophies inside a system Do you think that it's something that's needed? Do you think philosophies need to be put into systems? Once again, not data driven, opinion brushing.

S2
Speaker 2
12:07
You know, from a, you know, just to not to nerd out too much, you know, but the, you know, I talk about that, you know, you throw a ball in the air it comes down because of gravity laws laws of physics if you see behavior occurring regardless of whether it's occurring under a you know operational discipline standpoint or a hop standpoint so on and forth so and so forth it's still occurring because of the same laws of behavior. There are things that come before behavior that are setting that behavior up, and whether that behavior continues is based on what happens during and after the behavior. Good things happen, the behavior continues.

S2
Speaker 2
12:45
Bad things happen, behavior goes away. Simple, simple subtlety of behavior science. So rules and core values and philosophies are important as antecedents, as prompts to set behavior up. The problem is if you stop there and you don't support those behaviors on the job, that's where things fall apart.

S2
Speaker 2
13:10
So it's necessary, but it's just again it's behavior science 101. If you only focus on what happens before behavior, the philosophies, replicably, demonstrably, controllably, those behaviors will go away because science tells me so.

S1
Speaker 1
13:28
So I look at it and I go, there's so many things to unpack on that particular answer. So as you're sitting here and you're coming up with it and you talk about the antecedents, can you go into a little bit more detail about that?

S2
Speaker 2
13:37
Yeah, so we talk about, and there was a good question after the talk about, he's saying, his question was about, I don't really dig the notion of like you can't blame somebody. At some point, don't you have to blame somebody? And what we talk about is you first have to set people up for success.

S2
Speaker 2
14:03
So the antecedents, the prompts are, all right, processes are in place. Everybody's bringing in new safety processes, safety process person. They have their training works. They have the expectations, have the rules, they have the manuals, they have the tools, so on and so forth.

S2
Speaker 2
14:20
So all of those things are set up. What's ignored is now when they're in the field doing it, is there positive feedback when good things happen? Do they see the value in following through with all those things? Because if they don't, they will find their own way to do it.

S2
Speaker 2
14:38
People do it, they do it because it works. So we tend to focus all on kind of that antecedent side, the training process side, because you can check that box and be done with

S1
Speaker 1
14:46
it.

S2
Speaker 2
14:46
And then old man Rutherley comes in there and I say, hey, I want you to actively go out there and coach like all the time. That's how you shape behavior. They're like, dude, that's a lot of work.

S2
Speaker 2
14:57
Can I just put them back in the training or get a new safety process in place? Like those are good, but you need both. You need the A's and the C's.

S1
Speaker 1
15:07
So when you take a look at it, and there will be people that are out there, so let's say for instance there's a vehicle accident that occurs inside of an organization, where all of a sudden somebody will say, well if you're doing a behavior-based safety rule wise, all of a sudden you're going to bring these people back in, you're going to train them and tell them don't have car accidents and then proceed forward and then if it occurs again, do the training again, but this time maybe a little bit louder. Yeah, exactly. Do you look at it and go there is some truth to it?

S1
Speaker 1
15:33
There is not some some true to it or people just have have it incorrect.

S2
Speaker 2
15:38
Yeah, it's it's mainly people have it incorrect You know, it's mainly just you know, but it's it just gets back to that why question of I'm going to, but it's the same thing when people talk about leading with writing people up or firing people where it's what we try to, which again is in line with a lot of the talks here, is just stop for a minute. Just stop for a minute and understand what's going on because if not, you know, this is safety. If you just go trial and error, you're literally dealing with lives.

S2
Speaker 2
16:08
So if it's, you know, if you have a bad training, but you just do it more, It's still bad. It doesn't fix anything. So it's, you know, can they demonstrate the skills that they want? Yep, they know how to drive.

S2
Speaker 2
16:26
All right, right on. So why are you sending them back to there? You know, is it, well, you gave them 15 minutes to do something that takes a half hour. That's why they were reckless.

S2
Speaker 2
16:37
All right, we can fix that. Let's work on that. It's just get alignment and understand what's actually causing it. And then if they really do need better training, give them better training, not just this rinse and repeat.

S2
Speaker 2
16:49
And then most importantly, when they do what you want, acknowledge that. And not just acknowledge it, you build habits by showing them the value in doing it. It's not just like, hey, you did a good job following X, Y, and Z protocol. Did you get there when you wanted to?

S2
Speaker 2
17:04
Yep. Did you get there a little bit faster because you followed what we've been talking about? I actually did. So what did you do differently?

S2
Speaker 2
17:11
All right. So now they see the value in doing it. It's not just you blindly telling them to do something and that's where the interactions come in. That's where the coaching interactions come in.

S1
Speaker 1
17:20
So let me ask another side of the question here. You've heard a lot this week in regards of Black Line, Blue Line, also referred to as Work Imagine versus Work Performed. Yep.

S1
Speaker 1
17:30
How do you think it ties into behavior-based safety?

S2
Speaker 2
17:32
Yeah, it's...

S1
Speaker 1
17:33
If it does at all,

S2
Speaker 2
17:34
of course. Yeah, no. There's sometimes we'll talk about it as like managing by wandering around, you know, and that, you know, the closer you get to the work, the more important those individuals are.

S2
Speaker 2
17:49
Those are the people that have the most value in the organization. The frontline workers, the frontline supervisors, so on and so forth. So for example, we go through processes of behavior mapping or reverse engineering, And the idea is, okay, let's see the things you care about, the metrics you care about, so on and so forth. But I want to identify the critical behaviors that people need to engage in to hit those targets.

S2
Speaker 2
18:15
There's somebody 10 levels up that are looking at some targets in some room. And the job of working with individual levels of leaders is to help identify those behaviors. So what people will sometimes naturally do is they'll go to a senior manager and say, What are your frontline people supposed to do? I don't care what the senior leaders think they're supposed to do.

S2
Speaker 2
18:35
I want to go to the example our frontline people have them tell me what they're supposed to do. That's the process whenever we go through and kind of start an engagement is we don't interview senior leadership on what they're supposed to do, we interview the actual people and what they're supposed to do, because if not that's where you get that disconnect, you know, and everybody has different motivation. The, like the Boeing example, the last conversation, the last talk, where it was if you have people at the top level making decisions on what behaviors they're making decisions for different reasons. People are controlled by their environment.

S2
Speaker 2
19:10
The people at the front line actually doing it they're making decisions based on what works for them to get the job done. And those are 2 different things, control and behavior. And I wanna talk to the person who's actually doing it.

S1
Speaker 1
19:21
So let me ask the weird question here, because you have the middle manager that plays a factor into the whole thing as well. So the middle manager has a very interesting position, especially when you're talking about these 2 separate ends, because besides that they're there representing the people from the field, they also have to tell the people up top, this is what's going on in the field, and vice versa. When you look at that and you go, okay, we talked black line, blue line, how does this get addressed in a behavior based safety system?

S2
Speaker 2
19:52
Yeah, that's a good question. So it's the 1 thing, the reason why we like to work with individual levels of leadership, and we literally will assign people one-on-one coaches, you know, frontline leaders get coaches, second level leaders get coaches, so on and so forth, is because their behavior is controlled by their environment the same way. So 1 thing that we look for is what are their expectations of what they have to report up?

S2
Speaker 2
20:24
You know, if you're a mid-manager, what are their expectations and their job responsibilities with their direct reports? And we really actively ensure alignment. And that is that kind of reverse engineering behavior mapping process. So that way it's, alright, you know, multiple different ways of getting results.

S2
Speaker 2
20:42
What do your bosses want as admin manager? They want X, Y, and Z. Alright, let's make it as easy as possible for them to see that they can get what they want in a way that is still ethical and safe and productive and supports the most valuable part of any organization which are the people. And if we can make it as easy as possible for them to paint that message, like that's what we focus on.

S1
Speaker 1
21:03
Okay, So you probably have heard with some of the sessions about how there's this perception that behaviorists are constantly out seeking for audits and inspections. What's your thought process on that? Or in this 1 I'm almost willing to say what's your data on

S2
Speaker 2
21:21
it? Yeah, that's a, yeah, so categorize in 2 different ways. And this is something Aubrey Dandres talks about really well. So We kind of differentiate between coaching to evaluate versus coaching to help.

S2
Speaker 2
21:37
If you're just going in there, and this is where when I talk about behavior science, behavior analysis versus somebody who is categorizing certain things as behavior-based safety, which you know they're saying okay it's very audit driven, where it's behavior analysis, the fundamental principles of the science of behavior, are not based on audits. You know just if you just go in and check, you're leading to evaluate somebody. You're not trying to change behavior, you're just leading to mark things off. That is not how you change behavior.

S2
Speaker 2
22:08
So we're talking about coaching and leading to help people understand what they're doing and help shape their behavior up so that way we can get systematic and small improvements in performance. If you're just going in and checking the box and walking away, you don't shape behavior that way. And the fundamental, 1 of the big differentiators for a average leader and a great leader is they can shape behavior. They can take where your behavior is currently and they can reinforce incremental improvements in that behavior.

S2
Speaker 2
22:39
And you can't do that by evaluating and doing audits. Now, you might need data from someplace on there, but those data are not part of your leadership and coaching plan. You're working with senior leaders on, okay, I'm gonna build a good measurement system and then I will teach you how to use the data. But it is really an anti-audit approach.

S1
Speaker 1
23:02
But you hear it all the time that that's not what most people believe is the concept. They believe that you are inspecting the death people in regards of doing audit and near-miss reporting is the other big 1 that you hear about. So when you're addressing it in this particular fashion, I look at it to go, this is a misconception that a lot of people, I mean, this is not the first time, of course, talking about it, but there is a misconception that a lot of people have about behavior-based safety.

S2
Speaker 2
23:28
Yeah. And it's not necessarily wrong. There are companies that do that and they do it under the guise of behavior-based safety which is linked to behavior analysis and behavior science. And so a lot of you know just getting back to the kind of the behavior mapping reverse engineering process you know what data do you have that you're looking at?

S2
Speaker 2
23:48
And what's important for a C-suite person, different data and outcomes, what they're looking for, mid-manager all the way down. And so then it's okay, so we need to see what's working and what's not. What are ways that we can do this? Okay, what are the easiest ways we can do this?

S2
Speaker 2
24:04
And then it's what do you do with those data? And that's where a lot of disconnects come. They'll take those and they'll use the data to punish. And that's 1 of the first fundamental things that we have to work on is you're taking these data And you're not using them correctly.

S2
Speaker 2
24:17
You know, there are people doing more good things than bad things. You're supposed to be using data to show the value in what's working. And, you know, so I think that's a disconnect.

S1
Speaker 1
24:28
So a couple more questions for you if you don't mind. I know that we're in a limited time of course. So coming out to Energy Safety Canada, you come out here, there was probably already an approach in regards of what people were thinking in regards of once you got here.

S1
Speaker 1
24:42
You talked to Gord, Gord says come out here. You look at it and you go, when you know that you're going to draw out your presentation, you're going to go into it, did you make it hop-centric, hop-focused? Or did you go, let me go with what I know and I'll run it through?

S2
Speaker 2
24:56
I made it, I wanted to make it as easy as possible to build that bridge, so I did make it more hop focused. I wanted to set the stage of hop as a philosophy without me pretending that I'm an expert because that's why we work in so many different systems. I'm not an expert in your safety programs.

S2
Speaker 2
25:18
I'm just here to find the behaviors and help you with those. But I thought that might be a good approach is I can just put it in context and just show the value of the behaviors in there. And then what I just learned so much about this from this conference was that I did put certain things in there where, for example, I'm gonna talk about, what does it actually mean to fix the system? Everyone's gonna be like, oh man, this dude is so enlightened.

S2
Speaker 2
25:44
Yeah, he's talking about, I went to so many things where they're talking about what it actually means to fix the system. So I was like, we're all on the same page. But I did put it under that philosophy so I could just, I didn't want to just talk at people about behavior. I wanted to link it to what they know.

S1
Speaker 1
25:58
Well I'll tell you, I mean this particular group up here, what they have going on at Energy Safety Canada. They're really far ahead of most of the other organizations that I get to interact with so it's really amazing to see. So, us being from Florida I have to ask what do you think about this venue overall and what Energy Safety Canada is doing?

S2
Speaker 2
26:13
Oh it's beautiful. I'm classic tourist mode man. I'm just taking pictures, FaceTime with my daughter and wife just like, oh did you see this and everything and now they want to come up and play in the snow and yeah I love it up here.

S2
Speaker 2
26:27
I mean it's a postcard.

S1
Speaker 1
26:28
Well I keep on telling people it's the pictures do not do it justice. Yeah. I mean it's not that the pitchers are bad in the first place but once you get here there's something entirely different than any other place that I've been to so I wanted to get your word of you especially going to Florida so if people want to know more about what you have going on, where can they find out more information?

S2
Speaker 2
26:47
Yes, you can go to scci.biz. My email is nicw.scci.biz. We also have a podcast called the Behavioral Leadership Podcast.

S2
Speaker 2
26:57
So yeah, so reach out to me. Let's connect, be friends.

S1
Speaker 1
27:01
Well, I really do appreciate you coming on today.

S2
Speaker 2
27:03
Yeah. Thanks again.

S3
Speaker 3
27:07
The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the host and its guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within this podcast are only examples. They should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available as they are based only on very limited and dated open source information.

S3
Speaker 3
27:26
Assumptions made within this analysis are not reflective of the position of the company. No part of this podcast may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the creator of the podcast. J Allen.