When building a training module or other learning opportunity, it's a challenge to ensure the content is retained long after the class ends, helping people operate safely and wisely into the future. Knowledge that fades quickly after a final exam or class is over doesn't benefit either the attendees who put in the time to participate or the managers and leaders who support those programs, targeting improvements that benefit individuals and the company.
Improving Human Performance in Energy
Riz and Mike will cover two documents that will be released this year. Both documents address key issues of our time in the energy sector, bringing together subject matter experts across the industry, evaluating current trends, and making recommendations for how we can set up our industry to be more reliable, safe, and successful, in a changing world.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Real-Time System Operations (NERC, led by ResilientGrid).
Human and Organizational Performance Improvement Manual (Department of Energy).
Making Trash Sexy
Doug Whitehead will talk about the psychology used every day in Waste Management systems across North America. This includes everything from worker safety to influencing humans to not just recycle but recycle correctly! Nobody cares about waste until it's not managed.
Doug serves as the Solid Waste Director for Lee County, one of two fully integrated municipal solid waste operations in the eastern United States, having in-house waste-to-energy, single-stream recycling, full waste collection, composting, landfill, and construction/yard-waste recycling systems. The system is consistently rated in the top five in recycling and sustainability in Florida, with the best–in–class return on investment for its citizens. Doug directed the collection of over six million cubic yards of hurricane debris after Hurricane Ian, a $145 million project. Doug has served in the solid waste and recycling industry for twenty-seven years with Waste Management and Republic Services, where he managed landfills, waste collection, renewable energy, and recycling facilities across the eastern US and Puerto Rico. Doug is a United States Military Academy graduate who has served in Iraq, Germany, and the United States, including as a company commander in Baghdad and as an instructor at West Point. Doug ended service as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve. Doug is married to Meredith Whitehead, a former Army Intelligence officer. She is a Director of the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service. They have three adult children, living in Florida and Virginia.
Forcing Functions
Commercial aviation has steadily increased the amount of passengers safely carried year after year. How has human performance helped the aviation community achieve such amazing safety records? Andrew will introduce why aviation style checklists are so effective at trapping errors.
Andrew Dingee graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in Economics. Upon graduation, Andrew was commissioned into the United States Marine Corps as a Second Lieutenant. Two years later, Andrew earned his “wings of golds” and flew fighters for 27 years. While in the Marines, he earned numerous awards including the Joe Foss award for aerial combat maneuvers – dog fighting. In 1999, he was hired at United Airlines as a pilot and promoted into a variety of safety leadership positions and was on the safety management system team for United. For his accomplishments, he was nominated for the Flight Safety Foundation Brownlow award. As a qualified NTSB accident investigator and incident reporting expert, he implemented changes to United’s safety system that increased safety and efficiency to the world’s largest airline. In 2010, Andrew successfully implemented aviation style checklists and procedures into the oil and gas industry that reduced risk and increased efficiency - saving hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2018, Andrew completed his book titled, “Delivering the Right Stuff”. His book highlights the journey on how the airline industry migrated away from blaming the individual to understanding why people make mistakes. Recently, Andrew retired as the Chief Standards Officer for bpx energy. In this position, Andrew established the industry’s first standardization department charged with developing and maintaining execution excellence which drastically reduced HSE lagging indicators by 50% or more. Within this position, he developed HSE leading indicators that allowed the organization to analyze routinely collected safety related data to prevent incidents.
Understanding Arc Flash Hazards & Analysis
The goal of this week's presentation is to help all individuals better understand arc flash hazards and how they are calculated regardless of previous technical and engineering knowledge. David will provide visual representations to better explain arc flash hazards, how they are calculated, the importance of PPE, and real-world examples of incidents. After attending this session, one should have a better overall understanding of key factors that determine arc flash hazard incident energy levels and PPE requirements.
Neuroscience and Culture
"Culture eats strategy for breakfast" - Peter Drucker
"Culture is not an initiative. Culture is the enabler of all initiatives" - Larry Senn
As we spend so much of our time and energy at work, we often talk about culture to understand the environments we work in, how happy we are, and our perceptions about our safety, value, and contributions. But at a fundamental level, what is culture, and how do we, as complex individuals, come together to form these complex organizations?
Please join Mike for a discussion of our brains at work, and what we know about the brain can offer us insights into how we transform our cultures and workplaces.
Enhancing the Effectiveness of Job Briefings (Part 2)
Focusing on the Form: In the world of utility line work, 'The Form' – be it a Job Brief Form, JSA, JHA, or any other title – has undergone a subtle but significant transformation. Originally designed as a record of conversation, it's now often the starting point, overshadowing the crucial discussions it was meant to document.
KnowledgeVine studied over 100,000 OSHA incidents and discovered that more than 25% of accidents occurred because individuals were unclear about their responsibilities or those meant to ensure their safety were unaware of their duties. Surprisingly, less than 10% of Job Safety Analyses (JSAs) emphasize the importance of knowing your role, indicating a significant gap in our current practices. Join us for a discussion about enhancing the effectiveness of job briefings in a two-part series this month and next, including the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).
Enhancing the Effectiveness of Job Briefings (Part 1)
Focusing on the Form: In the world of utility line work, 'The Form' – be it a Job Brief Form, JSA, JHA, or any other title – has undergone a subtle but significant transformation. Originally designed as a record of conversation, it's now often the starting point, overshadowing the crucial discussions it was meant to document.
KnowledgeVine studied over 100,000 OSHA incidents and discovered that more than 25% of accidents occurred because individuals were unclear about their responsibilities or those meant to ensure their safety were unaware of their duties. Surprisingly, less than 10% of Job Safety Analyses (JSAs) emphasize the importance of knowing your role, indicating a significant gap in our current practices. Join us for a discussion about enhancing the effectiveness of job briefings in a two-part series this month and next, including the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).
Workforce Development and Creating a Solid Talent Pipeline
Workforce development and creating a solid talent pipeline are critical needs for large companies, and the need to educate students faster and better continues to grow. Many organizations use new technologies, such as e-books, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality, in an attempt to accelerate this educational effort. Index AR will discuss what they've learned through building and deploying these technologies into a community college classroom, teaching advanced line worker skills and human performance.
Year in Review, New Year's Resolutions, and a Holiday Get-Together
Please join us for a brief year in review, a discussion of the psychology of New Year's Resolutions, and a holiday get-together! We will try and keep this one short and sweet as we know we are competing for limited time as we all close out the year.
Human Performance R&D and the Cyber-Physical Nexus
Mike and Dr. Mark Rice, Group Leader in Electricity Security at Pacific Northwest National Labs, will discuss a multi-year research project they've collaborated on, looking at the interactions across an organization during a cyber event (system operators, EMS support personnel, IT/Cyber analysts, trainers, management, etc.) In addition to talking about the project and what we've learned, we'll also discuss how we've had to adapt and update the project to changing work conditions, such as the COVID-19 Pandemic. Our goal is not only to talk about human performance research being done in energy but also about the resilience and adaptive capacity of researchers.
Using AI and Data Analytics to Explain, Predict, and Change Human Behavior
Dr. Warren Hearnes, Chief Data Scientist at Best Buy, will be discussing an emerging trend in human performance: the use of Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning to better understand and predict human behavior. As an expert and leader in the field, we'll learn how to (and not to) use these advanced technologies, and how these tools can support continuous improvement.
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Human Performance
It's impossible to read the news these days without some mention of Artificial Intelligence. As the complexity of our world increases, we see more and more technology playing roles in our daily lives, generating images and essays, and finding patterns that we humans would struggle to find. While these technologies have incredible promise, human performance concerns in how we build, use, and trust these systems are growing.
Join us for a discussion on Artificial Intelligence, how it's affected our work and personal lives, and how we can use human performance practices to ensure these technologies strengthen our work and lives, not just shifting risk from one domain to another.
200 Years of Maritime Safety Leadership (or the Lack of it)
Jim Morrison will discuss the human performance aspects of ten maritime disasters – two you likely know and others you have probably never heard about -- keying on significant events that illustrate the evolution of a culture of safety in the maritime industry. Human performance considerations range from power distance aboard the Titanic, over-reliance on technology aboard Royal Majesty, to condoned deviance aboard the Costa Concordia, and complacency aboard the Aegean.
Building Exceptional Organizations Through Exceptional Workspaces
Chris Lazzaro, Chief Information Officer at Associated Electric Co-Operative, will talk about designing the physical space of Associated Electric's IT organization, to increase collaboration, enjoyment of work, and reduce risks and efficiencies in the organization.
After Action Review (AAR) from the Human Performance in Action Conference
MIke and James will conduct a review and summary of the Human Performance in Action Conference in Houston. They will still be on the conference site and any attendees on-site are welcome to join in person. We, along with some of the Knowledge Vine staff will be together for a thorough hot wash and review. We would love for you to come and hear some of the fresh insights and lessons learned as they come out of this week's events.
Humans Collaborating During Cyber Events
Sam Chanoski of INL and Mike will discuss our growing understanding of what happens in the real world when a cyber attack occurs; how groups of people have to collaborate (maybe for the first time), crossing teams, departments, organizations, knowledge bases, and vocabularies. Bringing together Resilience Engineering research and real-world stories, we look forward to discussing how people and organizations can ensure they, and their organizations, are increasingly resilient to these new challenges.
Reducing Worker Burden to Improve Focus During High-Risk Tasks
L.D. Holland of Duke Energy will be talking about a critical challenge facing today's workers in high-risk, cognitively-intense tasks. L.D. will explore how workers have to manage high-risk work while many other distractions, burdens, and challenges compete for their limited cognitive resources. L.D.'s discussion will highlight the importance of reducing those things actively interfering with the worker's attention to improve their safety and set them up for success in that critical work.
Selecting Excellent Leaders
Dr. David Dubin will talk about how to pick out the superstar candidates from those who aren’t going to make it.
Some of the topics we'll cover:
The common biases we battle against during an interview
Defining what good looks like in your organization through competency modeling
How to develop interview questions that map onto these competencies
The art of probing for relevant information during the interview
Scoring an interview, so it’s valuable and legally defensible.
Special considerations when these interviews are for your leaders
Commander's Intent and Imparting Presence
Commander's Intent and Imparting Presence: The Psychology of setting goals, imparting values, and relaying expectations in the workplace.
In today's meeting, Mike and James are going to discuss the military doctrine and concept of Commander's Intent. They will expand this ideology into the concept of Imparting Presence, which is just as important in the everyday workspace for safe, efficient, and productive organizations. If you're interested in learning more about how these messages and conversations develop, tune in and listen this afternoon, December 15th.
Want to read more about these concepts? See this article written by Dr. Larry Shattuck.