Intro to Learning Teams
March 22, 2022
In this episode Jim discusses Learning Teams and "The Practice of Learning Teams" by Brent Sutton, Glynis McCarthy, and Brent Robinson.
Note: Not a perfect transcript.
[00:00:00] : this show is brought to you by safety Warning. The following broadcast contains adult language, adult content, frank safety discussions and stories that might sound unbelievable. But believe me, every one of those stories is true. We didn't start the safety war, but we are going to fight to win it for our families, for our communities, for our workplaces and for our lives. Hi, this is jim proposal. Happy Spring. We're enjoying the first day of spring here, first full day. And what what are we gonna talk about today? We're going to talk about learning teams. Over the last couple of days here, actually past two weeks, I've been reading the practice of Learning Teams by Brent Sutton, our friend here on the podcasts and several other authors. It's friend Sutton, Glennis, McCarthy and Brent Robinson. And when you read a book like this, you need a little bit of Soak time. I've read this book one time before, but it's always worth a reread because you're always gonna pick out things that are going to be new. Even if you're reading things three or four times, you always pick on something that's new. And what did we go into with learning teams. So we're working right now on our leadership program, we're gonna be releasing more information on that. Hopefully in the next week or so. And one of the things of being a leader is learning your craft. Learning the work and what this whole idea of learning teams is that you're going to make everything systemic. The value of this book, The practice of learning teams is that it makes everything very systemic and we all know that if you have a system of doing things that's explainable, repeatable and all that, all that good stuff, it's going to be more likely you're going to have success. So having a systemic way of approaching something automatically almost equal some type of success or at least you're in a better place than where you started. There are three different learning teams, you have what is called the everyday learning team, the event learning team and the management of change learning team. Three of them, what's the everyday learning team, you actually go out and you see what the work is. You talk to people, you coached people along and so essentially the plan, do act check modeling things, the way that we always do things with safety. Why is this important? You guys trying to learn what the work is, what the hazards are, what the gaps are between the procedures and what's actually going on in the field and why and maybe improve your procedures, coach people along getting to learn the job, all that stuff that's, and, and again, this is just a very short podcast here, but this is essentially you learn what's going on. Then you have what is called the event learning teams and that's usually where I get called in on things where I get a call a call from a client or a call from a new client or something like that. Hey, we had an event, we had an accident, we had a fatality and we have to go through and try to talk to everybody and find out what happened. Get everybody on the team and what's our thing? Our thing is not to go out and start shame lame accused, yell, scream intimidating everything else. That's the traditional way of doing an investigation team. Well, what happened? Well, we already know what happened. Somebody got hurt. That's really not interesting. As uh Todd Conklin says, OK, the guy got hurt, The girl got hurt. Somebody got hurt. Alright, guess what? Okay, They got hurt. Your worker got hurt. What happened immediately before this? What's the context of this? I had a client a couple of days ago that had had an issue and his comment back to me in an email was okay. We're not concerned that this happened. What happened on the job site in the last couple of weeks, three weeks that set the stage for this. Let's go back and see what set the stage for this. That's going in the right direction. What was the context? Why? Because we what's our thing? Is it shame or blame and then shame, blame retrain or is that we're going to go and to have some type of learning and moving on learning and improving. That's where our focus needs to be because I tell you what if you're getting this event type of learning team and it's a little bit hard to manage sometimes. And the third one, the third learning team that he lists is the front certain management of change learning teams. What is the management of change learning teams? That means that you're changing process. I had a meeting with a client about two or three weeks ago where they were going to be doing some non routine work on a project where the last time it was done at this facility, I was about 15 years ago and nobody at that facility that did this job to begin with that one that's in charge today, was there when this happened before. They were much lower on the lower end of the feeding scale scale, if at all there at all, no one knew how to do this. So what did we end up doing? Well, how would we do this? Well, no, don't worry about what happened 15 years ago. How would we do this today? How was it done before? But let's see how we would do this today because things have changed in the last 15 years and let's go with that in a non confrontational way and we're all gonna get together, we're going to examine what the changes, right? And it can also be in another way where hey, we have some things that are coming out, We're having a problem with this, uh, process, let's have a meeting, see how this is done. Let's have a study a learning team going out and seeing what's going on here. So we can actually maybe improve this process. That's the sort of thing that you want to have is some type of nonconfrontational getting to the bottom of things. Alright, open discussion and everything like this. Now. One of the pitfalls that I see with these learning teams and I've been doing them unknowingly for the last 30 years before we even call them learning teams, at least at least with me calling them learning teams. Is that when you have too many cooks in the kitchen, So you want to limit the amount of people you have on a learning team To maybe six or 7. And if you have more people, maybe you break down the learning team into different teams, looking at different parts because you don't want to have everybody in there. Uh, no too many voices. It's not a good thing all the time. So what else do you want to do? You want to go And your endpoint has got to be learning and improving versus shame, blame. And of course to retrain asking workers to be safer and to work safer isn't going to get new to where you need to go in this safety war that we're always fighting here, which is safe workplaces, safe communities, safe homes for safety wars. This is jim proposal is your safety training old stale and Hackney is your safety trainer still preaching a warped version of behavior based safety? How about safety training that actually addresses your hazards in your workplace? Is and it's not standardized bologna from 25 years ago. Contact the safety ward's team at safety words dot com or call jim proposal at 845 269577. To remember if you're receiving this message, you are the solution to unsafe workplaces. 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. It 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, 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
[00:00:00] : this show is brought to you by safety Warning. The following broadcast contains adult language, adult content, frank safety discussions and stories that might sound unbelievable. But believe me, every one of those stories is true. We didn't start the safety war, but we are going to fight to win it for our families, for our communities, for our workplaces and for our lives. Hi, this is jim proposal. Happy Spring. We're enjoying the first day of spring here, first full day. And what what are we gonna talk about today? We're going to talk about learning teams. Over the last couple of days here, actually past two weeks, I've been reading the practice of Learning Teams by Brent Sutton, our friend here on the podcasts and several other authors. It's friend Sutton, Glennis, McCarthy and Brent Robinson. And when you read a book like this, you need a little bit of Soak time. I've read this book one time before, but it's always worth a reread because you're always gonna pick out things that are going to be new. Even if you're reading things three or four times, you always pick on something that's new. And what did we go into with learning teams. So we're working right now on our leadership program, we're gonna be releasing more information on that. Hopefully in the next week or so. And one of the things of being a leader is learning your craft. Learning the work and what this whole idea of learning teams is that you're going to make everything systemic. The value of this book, The practice of learning teams is that it makes everything very systemic and we all know that if you have a system of doing things that's explainable, repeatable and all that, all that good stuff, it's going to be more likely you're going to have success. So having a systemic way of approaching something automatically almost equal some type of success or at least you're in a better place than where you started. There are three different learning teams, you have what is called the everyday learning team, the event learning team and the management of change learning team. Three of them, what's the everyday learning team, you actually go out and you see what the work is. You talk to people, you coached people along and so essentially the plan, do act check modeling things, the way that we always do things with safety. Why is this important? You guys trying to learn what the work is, what the hazards are, what the gaps are between the procedures and what's actually going on in the field and why and maybe improve your procedures, coach people along getting to learn the job, all that stuff that's, and, and again, this is just a very short podcast here, but this is essentially you learn what's going on. Then you have what is called the event learning teams and that's usually where I get called in on things where I get a call a call from a client or a call from a new client or something like that. Hey, we had an event, we had an accident, we had a fatality and we have to go through and try to talk to everybody and find out what happened. Get everybody on the team and what's our thing? Our thing is not to go out and start shame lame accused, yell, scream intimidating everything else. That's the traditional way of doing an investigation team. Well, what happened? Well, we already know what happened. Somebody got hurt. That's really not interesting. As uh Todd Conklin says, OK, the guy got hurt, The girl got hurt. Somebody got hurt. Alright, guess what? Okay, They got hurt. Your worker got hurt. What happened immediately before this? What's the context of this? I had a client a couple of days ago that had had an issue and his comment back to me in an email was okay. We're not concerned that this happened. What happened on the job site in the last couple of weeks, three weeks that set the stage for this. Let's go back and see what set the stage for this. That's going in the right direction. What was the context? Why? Because we what's our thing? Is it shame or blame and then shame, blame retrain or is that we're going to go and to have some type of learning and moving on learning and improving. That's where our focus needs to be because I tell you what if you're getting this event type of learning team and it's a little bit hard to manage sometimes. And the third one, the third learning team that he lists is the front certain management of change learning teams. What is the management of change learning teams? That means that you're changing process. I had a meeting with a client about two or three weeks ago where they were going to be doing some non routine work on a project where the last time it was done at this facility, I was about 15 years ago and nobody at that facility that did this job to begin with that one that's in charge today, was there when this happened before. They were much lower on the lower end of the feeding scale scale, if at all there at all, no one knew how to do this. So what did we end up doing? Well, how would we do this? Well, no, don't worry about what happened 15 years ago. How would we do this today? How was it done before? But let's see how we would do this today because things have changed in the last 15 years and let's go with that in a non confrontational way and we're all gonna get together, we're going to examine what the changes, right? And it can also be in another way where hey, we have some things that are coming out, We're having a problem with this, uh, process, let's have a meeting, see how this is done. Let's have a study a learning team going out and seeing what's going on here. So we can actually maybe improve this process. That's the sort of thing that you want to have is some type of nonconfrontational getting to the bottom of things. Alright, open discussion and everything like this. Now. One of the pitfalls that I see with these learning teams and I've been doing them unknowingly for the last 30 years before we even call them learning teams, at least at least with me calling them learning teams. Is that when you have too many cooks in the kitchen, So you want to limit the amount of people you have on a learning team To maybe six or 7. And if you have more people, maybe you break down the learning team into different teams, looking at different parts because you don't want to have everybody in there. Uh, no too many voices. It's not a good thing all the time. So what else do you want to do? You want to go And your endpoint has got to be learning and improving versus shame, blame. And of course to retrain asking workers to be safer and to work safer isn't going to get new to where you need to go in this safety war that we're always fighting here, which is safe workplaces, safe communities, safe homes for safety wars. This is jim proposal is your safety training old stale and Hackney is your safety trainer still preaching a warped version of behavior based safety? How about safety training that actually addresses your hazards in your workplace? Is and it's not standardized bologna from 25 years ago. Contact the safety ward's team at safety words dot com or call jim proposal at 845 269577. To remember if you're receiving this message, you are the solution to unsafe workplaces. 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. It 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, 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