this show is brought to you by safety Safety FM Dot Live with Lohan will go to the GL in June. I am glad that you have decided to make a return once again to take you Listen to the show here. I hope things are going extremely well in your neck of the woods. I know in these times of uncertainty, we're not 100% sure what to do next. So let's just take a moment, sit back and relax and take a listen to what we have to offer to you today.  Today I have a conversation with Ronald Ferris. He is a business partner of Hope Consulting. Ronald says that he's a dynamic problem solver who utilizes human performance skills and knowledge to solve complex problems. Expert in high reliability, operation principles and practices on effective communicator who has the ability to work with all levels of the organization to resolve identified issues with creative solutions over 38 years of experience in human performance, nuclear operations, maintenance, industrial safety and human factors. Research. Please take a moment to welcome to the show with me, Ronald Ferris.  What we can start from, How did how did you get started with the whole with a whole area of hop. Okay, Well, um, I spent most of my our 19 eighties in the United States Navy nuclear program, and ah, with that, I, of course, was introduced with the, uh, the formality and regular that comes with running and nuclear propulsion system on a aircraft carrier and training folks for the last three years that I was in. And when I get out, I went to work for Argonne National Laboratories, a research reactor operator at a fast sodium reactor which is similar to what Bill Gates is building in China Right now.  It's interesting design, and, ah, eventually that reactor was shut down and I went into safety. I've been working on Ah, my first degree program, which was waste management. And, ah, the introduction to safety was interesting. I spent a few years doing that, and ah, Argonne National Lab was rolled into what is now the Idaho National Laboratory, the largest nuclear research lab in the world. And, ah, as part of that roll out, um, I was the person chosen to help support the training for human performance and our observation program, so I worked with a gentleman named Shane Bush.  You may know him. I'm not sure if you do. Shane's been around ideo. Yeah, Shane's been around quite a while and I'm entered under him and, um, ended up training and putting in place training for folks everywhere. From, you know, the security force clear up to our PhD scientists and working with folks across the lab to roll that program out. We trained approximately 5500 people, took quite a while, as you can imagine, but I helped lead that effort and then eventually we stood up a him for months organization.  I was the first person they hired that eventually became the manager of that group. Spent a few years doing that, picked up my master's degree in industrial safety, and I was asked if I was interested in going over to the Human Factors research. And I thought, you know, I haven't done that yet, so ah, that was an interesting endeavor. I spent about eight years doing research. Most of that work was with helping our current fleet of commercial nuclear power plants extend their life so that they could go from the state 25 years to 50 to 75 maybe even 100 years.  And one of the areas that I was tasked with is how to address human performance with modern technology road. Quite a few papers did some interesting research. Definite, Uh, Duke Energy at the top and nuclear station had a lot of fix from the Nuclear Energy Institute there, Um, uh, the folks from the instant new compare operations. And then, uh, I went on to do another project to improve performance with outage management and commercial nuclear power plants, which they're big issue. At the time I was supporting, that effort was dealing with what we call emerging issues.  And the work I was doing was in support of standing up some software to capture that data and the performance of the control room operators to evaluate how they did under various scenarios and to actually collect actual, uh, human failure rates. Nobody had been doing that. Most of that work associate it with HR. A. Had been pretty much what we call expert based and fairly conservative, and that database is still in use today. It was the last project I was working on was actually in Taiwan training all the nuclear trainers at therefore nuclear power plant sites.  Very interesting work spent about two weeks over there doing that. And I had gotten a second call from Hope consulting a general named Reagan's All issues my business partner and asking me if I was interested in coming to work for them. And I thought, Well, I eventually plan to get in back to human performance and H O. P. And look at how to ah, how to step back into that. And here it seemed to be put in my lap, and the timing seemed to be right. From a personal standpoint, I've been at Daido National Lab 27 years total eight years in the Navy nuclear program, and I thought, 35 years experience about time to be a consultant while I still got the energy and ah and ah, some wisdom and education, maybe to take it, Teoh folks and present.  It may be a slightly different way than they've been here in it. So so was that a difficult transition from going from being, I guess, instead of the actual national laboratory inside of Idaho, and then I'll listen going into, we'll say quote unquote the private sector. It was Ah, it was an interesting transition. I don't I wouldn't call it difficult. It was just a different challenge, for sure. Changes stress, obviously, being a consultant, You know, you only work when there is working. When you don't have work, you're looking for work.  And when you are working your looking for other work so that that always made it interesting wasn't used to doing that. But to be honest, um, all my time and I don't national lab or at least the last 15 years, I was actually kind of an internal consultant. I am. I was asked by all the nuclear research community to be their their lead assessor and cause an analyst. And I also taught human performance and cause analysis at the University of Idaho. Is that adjunct professor? As soon as I finished my master's degree, so it was a good fit.  I, uh I would get asked to come in and evaluate any kind of event anywhere from, uh, experimental fuels work to an actual accident. Out where we're making our tank armor to, uh, anything. Essentially with plutonium. Uranium fuels a lot of a lot of interesting work there. So to me, they as a okay, as a consultant, I've got to tell you that that internal work doing assessments and cause analysis is probably the most informative out of all my career. Because when you got a delve deep into something to try to understand why there's less than adequate performance or actual failure, you learn a lot about evaluating human behavior.  So, uh, that was probably the most interesting work I did, I would say Thank Jay Allen Show. Unite and Support Employed with Mission iCal Solutions from Work Human that replace isolation with recognition, connections and celebration. Try life events, conversations and social recognition. Free through March 2021. Life events provides a way for isolated employees to share joy from wherever they're working without the in person. 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Now is your opportunity to try life events, conversations and social recognition Free through March 2021. Visit welcome dot work human dot com. For more information, that's welcome dot work human dot com for more information way are back on the J. Allen Show on safety FM. So let me ask the question right there. So then you said the gentleman's name was Ray Gonzalez. What was the appeal of all of a sudden for you to jump over?  I know that you said you wanted to go back, but why did you decide to why was this the correct choice? Were you at the time? Yes, So I mean, there's a variety of factors. Obviously you just your personal life. Where works taking you? I was that kind of Ah, probably the peak of where I could probably go without a PhD at the national lab. You know, if you're a researcher and you haven't, ah, reached the PhD level at some point, you're gonna You're going to reach a plateau, if you would.  And I was already 50 when they asked me to go into a PhD program. And I'm a big outdoorsman and spent a lot of time in the great outdoors of Idaho. And I thought, you know, I can't picture all my free time and we can studying to be hip Ph. D. And Ah, and I decided not to. And I knew that would be career limiting. And, uh, that was kind of the the choice. But it's such a great thing to Dio. I mean, wanting to get a PhD and being locked up in a loud for a long period.  Yeah, exactly. I had aspirations, to be honest. Ah, one of my colleagues and good friends was Dr Robert Richards, who work for me when I was the manager, and he always promoted me going down that path as well. I would have been a rarity to be one of those guys that started at the bottom as a ah as a new cans on operator mechanic without a degree working my way up through. But ah ah, I just decided it just too many other things in my personal life.  We have grandchildren now, and I put family as a priority and decided toe, not pursue it. You know, it's it's interesting in the world of, ah, human performance and to look at how to take on organization. That's really, really good and make them great. And one other things I brought to those folks up in ah, in Canada. I was asked if I would come in into, ah risk analysis course. Um and and I said, Well, let's Who's the audience? What's what's the intent? And it was basically management in front line managers and supervisors.  And so I based my work on a nun. Ah, Dr Eric Whole Nagel and Ah and Tony Macherano. If you know both their spokes, I assume you probably do. And, uh yeah, and ah. So my focus was on, uh, risk, important actions in critical steps and what I had found I had found everywhere in the nuke industry or any almost anywhere where put folks had actually, um, adopted human performance and was doing the full blown. You know, everybody gets trained, we're gonna have an observation program. We're gonna make sure using him form its tools.  But what I found almost across the board and I think you might find this interesting. It wasn't eye opener to me. Everywhere from national labs, toe commercial, new power plants, toe waste facilities They didn't understand their own term and definition of, ah, critical step. And, um, they conflated it with what Tony now describes as a risk, important action. And, ah, the differentiation is extremely important. And we're actually co writing a book. Tony and I, along with a gentleman named Jim Marina's, um, the three of us are actually writing a book.  Totally, um, committed to critical steps and risk. Important actions were actually have a rough draft in process. And I hope to have ah have something in print, maybe by the fall, so pretty exciting stuff, but been teaching that quite a bit around the country. Let me ask you something real quick before you continue that. So your concept and toning concept is a little bit different because Tony's big on human and organisational performance. Yes, you mentioned hot you mentioned Hop without the pause. So that's how you look at it.  And then you come from Shane Bush area where he also calls it human and organisational performance so wide. Have you just how why did you decide to go slightly different than them to actually, that the difference actually is is even different than when I mentioned um h r O and H o P 2 may or really, um, where we're at today. I do believe that all right, quite often. Ah, fall back to using the words human performance just because it's quicker and shorter to say but and I don't like to use abbreviations, but h r O R H o P. I think is where it's at.  I I don't see a lot of difference between the two, and I know there's been many articles and and, ah, some pretty important papers written on this subject. Most recently, I read an article on HR owes compared Teoh Resiliency or Resilience Engineering and ah, and the same thing that baked continues. You know, what's the what's the real difference? And so when folks asked, May I basically say to me, Hi my body organizations more. At the strategic level, it's our high level component that evaluates the system more at a macro scale.  And h h and Opie, to me, gets down at them the micro scale of dealing with the human, the human system interfaces and the human fallibility. Um, I think they're a good marriage. And, ah, I I don't necessarily always like to argue the differences, but ah, fundamentally, I think they work hand in glove to bring both a strategic and tactical approach to addressing performance in high risk, high consequence work environments. So let me ask a strange question here. So you reference that you you aren't you go into the hope consulting.  And so does the hope stand for something in particular because it's almost like hop with me. Oh, yeah, well, it's a human and organisational performance. Improvement are I will shoot. I apologize, and but anyways, it's That's basically so it's top H and o p its's that they were looking for an abbreviation. I'm quite sure when Ray stood up the company to say, and you know what's the what's? What should this say, you know? And so of h h o p e basically is H and O. P just a good abbreviation for their company.  So right now, with some of the concepts that you go out and do is consulting, how do you think that would apply with everything that's going unrelated? Teoh course grown a virus would 19. How could actually leaders and people that are actually doing the work inside of organizations you some of these concepts currently, Yeah. So I think to me the number one defense and I mentioned this in the videos have been posted on LinkedIn recently. The number one defense against Human Aaron human fallibility is is to build in systems and processes that engage your workers, get them engaged and get him thinking prior to work.  Execution J. Allen Show. As your business continues to change, so does the support and help that your business needs. Here it safety focus Moment. We want to be able to continue to meet the needs that you have as an organization. Just because the world around us has changed does not mean that were not there for you. We are currently running a special offer to the safety FM listeners, all speaking engagements cross industry workshops, transportation and logistics workshops in audio services, including commercials such as this one, are available at a special price of 50% off.  If you go to safety, focus moment dot com that safety focused moment dot com and use code virtual B i r T u A l That's virtual V i r T u A. L you'll get 50% off your order. Please be aware that safety focus moment is here for you. Meeting all of your business needs during this unique time in the world way are back on the J. Allen Show on Safety FM. So it looks like over the last three weeks, you've been posting quite significantly on social media.  But there was kind of like a piece that you were dormant for a period of time. Why? I always said in the engagement so much on social media. Well, it started with a conversation we had it started a while back recognizing that ah, you know, media is changing way had already started looking at doing this in the corona virus. Ah, pandemic Basically put us in and high gear, if you would. But we were looking at, you know, How do we make a bigger presidents? How do we reach some of these organizations?  Maybe that ah are non nuclear or maybe not as high risk, but they could benefit from some of the things that we've learned and have them adopted in a way that makes it a better if you would. So most recently, Ray Gonzales and I have been trying to put out basically a video day, and I started last Thursday, Miss Friday, because basically, when I move my phone around in the ah, the adapter to, ah to adjust that it helped three buttons down and totally wiped my phone.  So I got a good one. Yeah, that's that's fun. And so I said, You know what? If I'm gonna get a new phone, I'm gonna get the latest greatest technologies. It's the latest android phone, anyways, the best camera on the market. It's ah helpfully creating some better quality videos than my very 1st 1 So I kind of stepped back, redid one that I had shot, and we're trying to get better at him. One of the things we really hope folks will do is let us know what they're interested in Now, let me ask a question.  Look, I know that you were able to actually 20 apps summited. This is a now been rescheduled. It looks like they're shooting for the beginning of next year. We Are you still going to be presenting what? Tony Massaro? Uh, yeah, we're co presenting on the ah critical steps and risk important actions and and an H and O. P in general. So with a focus on critical steps. So one of the things I think we'll have done by then, I hope is that well, I actually have the book in print and we'll generate some interest in that particular book.  As you know, these books, you know, that they become very important parts of our our our library to continually reference, I quite often go back and read seat some of James Reasons books or Sidney Dekker's and and find myself, after all these years, re reading those and then finding some nuance in their way. Yeah, I never thought about it. Now you know, this is a great time to adopt this or address it or whatever that might be. And I think that's that's the important part about getting this down in writing not so much that Ah, you know that you get this book and print So you're selling books.  That's that's really not the important part out of this at all. Is that add to that body of knowledge with H N o. P. And help folks see things? Maybe in a slightly different light. Tony, Tony was when he first went into, um, consulting. Hey, got hold of me at Idaho National Lab when I was the manager of human performance and he said, Hey, if you guys got anything going on out there, I just started with consulting. I'm coming out to see Shane Bush and and talked him about the nuances of it and, ah, love to get together at dinner above a blonde.  I said, Sure, Tony of love to see you haven't seen you in a while And, um So we, uh, we met up and ah, and and I'll tell you I had a paradigm shift in my my thoughts around critical steps. Tony came and we had some of those end up discussions. You you get on occasion with some folks that just change the whole way, view things and Well, that was probably 12 15 years ago, and I haven't seen critical steps the same way ever since. He's really changed my life and thoughts about it.  Well, I'm gonna tell you, you're mentioning a lot of names that I want to ask you questions about Just to see if you're familiar with any of their work, if you don't mind. So you've mentioned quite people that I've had on the show. There's a couple other people I'd like to bring up. Probably more than just a couple of things that are coming off in my head. Are you familiar with any of the work from Todd Conklin? Yeah, I'd like Teoh. I like to listen to his podcasts when I get a chance. See?  But somebody out. I'm finding myself way by I've met him, Uh, several different times. That human performance. A root cause and trending hbr C t. Hey, was the keynote speaker actually up in Ah, Toronto When we had it up there about three years ago. I think it was now and, um, he set me back on my heels. And I'll tell you my my nugget from Todd Conklin cause I think it's an important one. I was hoping we would get there today. And he says you needed building the capacity to fail safe.  And I thought, Huh, Are we talking about nucular here? Because that seems like an odd thing to say. So you gotta have the capacity to feel safe, and so I really didn't get a handle on it then. But I spent some time re looking at my notes that I took while he was speaking. And here's what I found in how to apply it. So I'm a practitioner by nature. I love reading theory, but what I really like has taken that theory from the spokes and considering myself that the translator of that information into something practical because I come from the world of turning wrenches and valves Well, let me let me ask you a couple more of a couple other people real quick if you don't mind, because we're almost out of time.  Um, when I mentioned the name Earl Kearns, what comes to mind so early on, I worked, of course, with the Department of Energy and our role. I met oh, many years ago, back when he worked for the department of energy. It was the human performance lead. If you look for the department and I really like girl, I think you said he's a brilliant man and one of the smart things he did give it kudos to him is he make sure that he worked with the Institute for Operations and got them to help and let us basically adopt.  Um, all the different, um, writings and books that they had are really it calling books. But, ah, documents that they had written on the subject. And basically, we polished him off and put the Department of energy heading on it, which then made it public public, um, publicly available, if you would. Yeah. So to me, that's that was what the great things heralded right around Christmas from what I've been told. What about the name Rob picture? Yeah, I've known Rob. Probably for about as long as I'm known. Tony.  Many met H p. R C. Town in, uh, Florida many years ago, and the first time I saw him, he was doing karaoke. A. But Rob's a great singer, by the way, finding very interesting, funny guy very entertaining and brings a perspective that I think in light inspects, All right, I think the ability to to entertain, to bring joy when you're teaching makes the challenge of teaching much easier folks or more open toe learning. And that's one of the things I love about Robin. His approach is that that he does that any and much like many of us in this business, he's always looking to find a new way to consider.  How do we address this human element in the process of work and then last but not least, Lamar Palmer? To be honest, I know the name. I have never met him. So okay, I would be ignorant in that area. When the did a lot of the polishing of the books of the documents, that's that was his role, his name showing a lot. I just never had an interface. So if people want to Nome or information about you or hope consulting work, they get more information. Eso won.  Of course, you can always connect with me on linked, and I've got almost 5000 connections across world safety, human, former changing Opie, human Factors and then the other places. And that's Ronald Ferris, F A R R I s and the other is to go Teoh www h o p e d consulting LLC dot com Hope consulting. I'll see all one word dot com and you can find our website. There's a lot of different hopes out there, which I find interesting. They all use as some variety Teoh make it usable so they can have their, uh, their name out there as a business.  But, um, ours is spelled all capital new. Ah, no, no periods in between. So it's not an abbreviation. It's one word. So, Ron, I really do appreciate you coming on to the ship today. Yeah, fantastic job. I've enjoyed it. Glad I got opportunity to talk to you. And let's definitely stay in touch. Well, this brings another episode of the J. Allen show to an end. Thank you for taking the time and taking a listen to what we have going on. If you're interested in finding out some or information about the show and what we have going on its safety, FM police come to safety FM dot com.  Also, as you might have heard, we are actually currently on patriotic if you're interested in hearing on some of the things that were not on the episode. You can listen to the unedited version of my interview with Ronald Ferris. We go to patriot dot com ford slash safety FM. Thank you for always being the best part of safety FM, and that's the listener. We'll be back with another episode before you know it. Goodbye for now, the views and opinions expressed on this podcast or those of the host and its guest and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company.  Examples of analysis discussed within this podcast are only example. It's not be utilized in the real world at the only solution available as they're based only on very limited in dated open source information assumptions made within this analysis or 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