Episode 18 - Performance Modes and Mitigation Defenses
November 22, 2023
Andy starts with a story around how we respond to an incident without considering what performance mode(s) the people executing the task are in. From there, we discuss why we should shift our energy and resources into adding mitigation defenses rather than something like "retraining" post-incident.
[00:00:00] spk_0: This is Andy and this is Matt and you're listening to
[00:00:03] spk_1: the Hop podcast with no name.
[00:00:06] spk_0: What a dumb name. So stupid.
[00:00:23] spk_1: And we are off episode 18. That's it. That's it. That is how many there have been? Thank you for acknowledging
[00:00:35] spk_0: you are
[00:00:36] spk_1: accurate. I've done the math. I can count that high. Just if we're getting close, getting real close,
[00:00:42] spk_0: we're gonna have to stop doing
[00:00:43] spk_1: this all of a sudden. It's like episode a number. So, all right, homework. We know where to start. Let's get to it.
[00:00:52] spk_0: All right. Do you remember what it was?
[00:00:54] spk_1: I do at the end of last episode, we said, um, to think about an area where we have a mismatched solution set. So where the solution to something happening, a problem, an issue, an upset wouldn't be right for the performance mode that the person doing the task would be in at the time something could occur. And you have a very good, which is, I don't know, are you giving
[00:01:22] spk_0: me credit for something
[00:01:23] spk_1: that I don't actually can I start over? You have a serviceable story for this topic. Um, that it's actually one of my favorites, so no pressure, but don't make me look like a fool. God,
[00:01:40] spk_0: it's actually, it's not my story. So um I'm gonna, I'm gonna do my best to get all of the details, right? But this was actually a story that Bob Edwards experienced and then uh told when we trained together many times. So I feel like I was there but I actually wasn't there. Um But it is one of the first times that I started to understand um kind of a bigger picture narrative in how performance modes fit into, at least how I see these hop concepts. So story time, we
[00:02:11] spk_1: ready, story time. And also, yeah, I, I, I feel bad giving you any credit. I want to give it all to Bob. Thanks for talking it away. We appreciate it. But no good.
[00:02:21] spk_0: Ok. So Bob was doing a learning team at a location where um they were working on like picture, picture like motherboards are like, that's the right term for something inside of a computer.
[00:02:35] spk_1: That's the thing that is a thing that goes in the computer.
[00:02:38] spk_0: OK. So let's just picture a motherboard, like something electronic inside of a computer. And um in order to do the work, they, the folks that were doing the work were using um Exacto knives to do things like like lift traces and like cut tiny pieces of tape in this assembly process. And um one day one of the folks that was using an Exacto knife went to the restroom and, uh, didn't realize that he had carried the Exacto knife with him to the restroom. He didn't want to put it down anywhere because he didn't want to get it dirty. And so the solution that seemed to make sense at the time was that he sort of carefully tucked it into his pants pocket with the knife blade, like sticking out away from his pants, right to make sure that it didn't touch anything. Um, and then he went about his business, but he also happened to be a first responder. And while he was in the bathroom, he got a call on the radio that somebody was having chest pains. And in that moment he forgot that the knife was in his pocket. So when he grabbed his pants to pull them up, the knife went straight into his hand. Um, and they ended up doing a learning team around, I guess the response to that event and how the site had handled the solution sets that came
[00:04:11] spk_1: after that. I'm sure it was really well handled.
[00:04:15] spk_0: I mean, well, we'll let people decide because honestly the solutions that were put in place. I myself had done this many times. And so it was a point of very poignant self reflection. For me, the first time I had heard this story, I'll
[00:04:34] spk_1: just add that. Now, I think we've told the story a couple of times fairly recently. Every time we've told it a couple of people minimum in the room are like, yeah, we've been, we've done the same and they have examples of the exact same thing that they've done.
[00:04:46] spk_0: So, as you can probably imagine, as the response, the idea and the push right in the safety space is always to make sure that we are eliminating exposure to hazard or the hazard itself if possible. Right. And so the thought process that made sense to the leadership team at the time was to reduce the opportunities to be exposed to something sharp like the Exacto knife. And in order to do that, what they decided um was that that most of the work could probably be done with a tweaker screwdriver, tweaker screwdriver. So if you're picturing like adjusting your glasses, like the little flathead screwdriver that you would do to use that. Um So picture this, right? You got a leadership team sort of sitting in a room who have not done the work before and their general understanding of how the process is done. This seems like a, a good idea, right? Most of the work they think could be done, but they acknowledge that perhaps there are some activities that you would need something sharper than that. And so the thought process was that you should take a small group of exactor knives and put them in the tool crib. Um And if an operator needed an exactor knife, they'd go to the tool crib and like sign one out and bring it back, use it for whatever the process was and then bring it back to the tool crib so that you didn't have a bunch of knives laying out. And the first time I heard this story, I was like, oh, that's a great, that's a great solution set like that. I've removed knives in many places like I like you and you can get them right. So, um, yeah, so moment of self reflection for me, because when Bob went to go do the learning team, the first thing he did was to learn about the work, right? In learning about the work, you quickly realize that you need something sharp for a lot of it that the tweaker screwdriver solution set is not going to work for much of what folks have to do. So that's the first part that's very important is to be on the same page as to how the work is done and what you would need in terms of a tool. And so because that was true, Bob asked a lot of questions like about how work was getting done now. And it became really, really, really clear that this new set of rules had actually created a, a black market of Exacto knives. So people were bringing knives in from home because they didn't want to have to keep signing it out and there weren't enough knives even to go around if everybody needed them at the same time. So people were bringing things from home and then we went from people openly using knives to now people hiding the fact that they were using knives to get their work done. Um And folks were taking those tiny tweaker screwdrivers and sharpening them so that they could do the work with something sharper that looked like a tweaker screwdriver.
[00:07:37] spk_1: I'm not sure if anyone else is thinking about this. I'm thinking about it, but I imagine a situation where leadership finds a black market knife and they pull people one by one into a room. Like what is this? And people are saying I've never seen in my life in my life. I don't know, I don't know. Where did you find that? What does this thing even do? I never,
[00:07:57] spk_0: and so I started to think when I heard the story for the first time of, right, how many times I had taken away knives and whether or not I had created a black market of Exacto knives myself. And I can tell you with confidence I had actually in three different locations. I had, I had personally taken away knives, given people some sort of replacement for it, whether it be a safety knife or like a small ceramic knife and then never actually learned whether or not that was a suitable replacement, right? I I had made the decision. Um and, and just sort of said that this is what we were doing going forward and didn't leave conversation open to figure out whether or not that was actually a good solution set. And so this is my favorite part of the story because after Bob learned, hey, we need this sharp thing to do our job and we don't have enough of the sharp things and the process to get the sharp thing is tedious. And so we have created our own way of getting sharp things. Um He asked whether or not somebody had a, a better solution than that, right? Rather than us all having to pretend, could we come up with a good solution we can all live with. And somebody who is fairly quiet in the learning team pulled an Exacto knife out of her pocket.
[00:09:11] spk_1: I'm sure it wasn't the only one that was in the room to
[00:09:13] spk_0: be clear. I just, but I just pulled it like that's pulled an Exacto knife out of her pocket. Which if we recall the whole reason why this started was because somebody had an Exacto knife in their pocket, she pulled and it happened to be a retractable Exacto knife. Like like how um like a clicky ballpoint pen would work like you click it and it opens and then you can use it and stays open and then you click it again and it retracts and she was like, can't we just use these, right? Because then you might have knives sitting out but you don't necessarily have blades sitting out. Right? And if you happen to be bringing one of them somewhere where you didn't intend to have it, you would just retract it and put it in your pocket. Um And so the site agreed to do that, the leadership said, you know, it doesn't eliminate all risk. We acknowledge that, right? But it is better than what we had before. And it's a workable solution for the folks close to the work.
[00:10:14] spk_1: I mean, that, that's two things that I'm hearing on top of performance modes and we can talk more about that. But, um, one, a mark of good leadership, we didn't get it right. And we're going to change it. That's, I mean, we've seen the opposite tons of times and two, who do you try to keep knives away from? Who do you block access of knives to a group of
[00:10:39] spk_0: people in your life? Yeah. And that's, that's actually the thing that kind of broke my brain in this situation is because I recognized that the people that we try to keep knives away from in our lives or that we would monitor their use of knives are Children. And the reason that's true,
[00:11:01] spk_1: you don't give Penelope
[00:11:03] spk_0: that just exact her knives and let her run around the house with
[00:11:05] spk_1: knives or at knee height level for adults. They just free. I mean, they want to play do.
[00:11:14] spk_0: Yeah. So, and it's important for us to understand why we don't give knives to Children.
[00:11:22] spk_1: Yeah, that's what this podcast has really been about 18 episodes in, we finally got to the heart of the subject. Don't give knives to kids.
[00:11:30] spk_0: But the, but it's important, it's important in the context of performance mode. So the reason we don't give Children knives is because they don't have enough habit loops on how to deal with knives.
[00:11:42] spk_1: Hopefully not go make a song.
[00:11:45] spk_0: That's fair enough. Fair enough. My Children don't have enough habit loops built up at three, almost four years old on how to deal with really sharp knives. I mean, I remember very distinctly growing up, I had taken my father's pocket knife without him knowing and I cut myself on it because I didn't think the knife looked sharp. And so I decided the way to test it was to put my thumb on it.
[00:12:12] spk_1: Do I know something else? I did the exact same thing. Not kidding. We have never shared the word. I did the exact same thing with my thumb
[00:12:22] spk_0: there. It is found it, it's sharp. Um And so Children when it comes to knives are in knowledge based performance mode, meaning one out of every two decisions or actions are probably going to be wrong and they need fast feedback and correction in order to be able to learn how to use a knife so that you don't cut yourself. And it became very obvious to me after being told this story. And after being taught performance modes that we had treated the employees that were using knives as though they were in knowledge based performance mode with the knife, which by other words is saying as though they are Children that don't know how to use knives. And when that happens, you tend to see that people figure out a way around the rule because it doesn't feel good to be treated like a child when you're not, these are probably the world's leading experts in how to use exact exacto knives for that job and they use them all the time. And because of a strange circumstance, suddenly the access to the tool that they needed for their job was taken away
[00:13:31] spk_1: without any input from that group.
[00:13:34] spk_0: Yeah. Or with, I mean, if there was, it was minimal without a lot of circling back, right? Because
[00:13:38] spk_1: that's how we'll just show up and say, ok, thanks, decisions already made. You can't get these anymore.
[00:13:44] spk_0: Um So that became my focus on how I would speak to performance modes in general. Was this idea of we should be double checking whether or not we're using the right frame of mind to be even suggesting ways of making improvements. Certainly, we should be working with people that are doing the job to come up with the ways. But in a circumstance where we have something in place already or for whatever reason, a decision has been made by a leadership team. We should absolutely be bumping that decision up against who, who would this work for. Are we assuming that people don't know how to do things? Like, are we assuming they really don't know how to use a knife? Because that's, that's an incorrect assumption. Um,
[00:14:27] spk_1: and the rule doesn't have operational fidelity. It doesn't make sense once you're doing the job, you need that. Yeah. Tool.
[00:14:33] spk_0: Yeah. And that's when it started to become really clear to me how often we were doing things like retraining people that had done the job for years or rewriting something in a procedure that most likely people weren't looking at anymore because they had been doing the job for a fairly long period of time or they were newer to it and people were teaching them like on the job without having the training in front of them. Right. So they were either in, in skill based performance mode doing it for a long time or they were in knowledge based performance mode in which you do need fast feedback and correction. When you're learning how to drive for the very first time in a car, you're not just sitting and analyzing the rules of the road in a booklet. You give me a look, I gave you a look
[00:15:17] spk_1: because that is exactly how I imagine you learning how to drive is that you were like, I got to learn every rule, every
[00:15:23] spk_0: rule first and then,
[00:15:26] spk_1: and then watch what everyone's doing and then try
[00:15:29] spk_0: because what's interesting is that written instruction doesn't really make a lot of sense to you until you have some knowledge of what, what a task is or what a process is. And then sometimes written instruction is incredibly helpful to help augment that or remind you of things that would be difficult to remember without it.
[00:15:47] spk_1: It's tough too. And, and you as a leadership team, you want to do something like, OK, I want to help. So the, but the only thing I really know that I can do is the, is kind of remind you what good looks like by showing you the rules again. And that's just kind of feels what I can do. And that's the best solution with what I know that I actually have to give you
[00:16:13] spk_0: a lot of this hop space is um just being able to look ourselves in the mirror and recognize that what we historically may have been doing probably wasn't as beneficial as we were hoping. And then by removing that as an option, meaning like, hey, I now acknowledge that retraining somebody who's been doing, you know, this job for X number of years is probably not an adequate solution set. Then it starts to push us to try to do something different. Um because we've mentioned this before, but a lot of the things that we would need in this hop space like in terms of even mitigation defenses, they just haven't been invented yet. Um, and it's because in many places we've held on to an easy button thinking that we're doing something well by rewriting a procedure or retraining people. Um, and in some cases that does work, like depending upon the performance mode or the experience or what the problem is, but in a lot of cases that we have been using that as a solution set, it doesn't work well. Um And that's where we want to be able to admit it to ourselves and uh get more creative.
[00:17:20] spk_1: But there's, I think you made a good point about a reality check because we hear from organizations all the time that will spend resources to help and they'll help, try to control behavior. And I'll give you an example, they'll put in speed monitors to their cars, but they won't spend the money to add automatic braking. And that's the reality check that we're talking about is, is what we're doing focused on controlling or creating necessary mitigation for when something has gone wrong. And a human is in a position that they shouldn't be in, don't want to be in, didn't intend to be in and they cannot help themselves. What's there to help them. Yeah.
[00:18:04] spk_0: Yeah. And that's where performance modes. That's probably one of the main reasons why I stopped talking about performance modes a lot. And, and this is it here is that the truth is that different types of controls work well for different performance modes. But also the truth is that we have people in all performance modes in many tasks all the time. And also one task, one person can be up and down the scale of performance modes very easily. I mean, just even if something seemingly as simple in our mind as uh someone doing maintenance, work on a piece of equipment, you might be in skill based performance mode, meaning you can you talking and having a conversation, not even paying attention to what you're doing while you're taking the panel off, right? So you're, you know, using a screwdriver, taking a panel off, um then you get into the machine and maybe you've done whatever this process is before, maybe it's a preventive maintenance process. You've done it before. You're in rule based performance mode where you're actually looking at some of the written documentation to remind yourself of like how everything is working on the innards of this piece of equipment. Um And in that process, you end up finding out something abnormal that you haven't seen before. And now suddenly you are in the edge of your rule based performance mode, if not a knowledge based performance mode, just trying to figure something out that you've never seen before. And that's just one task and you are up and down that scale all the time. We've done some training in lots of different places. And I just remember um a fighter jet pilot once telling us, yeah, we are up and down that scale. Like every time we get in the fighter jet, like we are all over that performance mode scale. It's not like you're in one, in one performance mode all the time, even in driving. Right?
[00:19:50] spk_1: I just want to add like from the outside perspective, I don't think that we typically view someone accomplishing a task as sliding up and down that scale. If I put someone, if I, if someone's been doing the maintenance work for 30 years, and you say, hey, go, go do this thing, you know, like they've got it, they've done this 100 times, 1000 times, they know what they're doing. I just assume that they're automatically in skill
[00:20:14] spk_0: based. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that sort of oversimplification of like this human is going to fall into this discrete category of performance mode for, you know, all of the tasks that they have done routinely. I, I think that's where um I started to see my brain oversimplifying things and other people oversimplifying things. What I did take away from teaching performance modes for a while though, that I think is really, really important. And actually the whole point of why I wanted to do some sessions or some discussions on this is the fact that mitigation defenses don't care what performance mode you're in meaning like, although when you're brand new to something fast feedback and correction is needed, right? Or when you are, you know, done something for a while, you need written documentation. Like those things are discreetly dependent upon how familiar you are with a task. There is one type of defense that doesn't care and that's the mitigation defense. That's the one where independent of how experienced you are with something you would have never intentionally put yourself in the position that you're in. And as a person with a response time that we have our reaction times and our ability to process information, we're probably not gonna get ourselves out of that position without some external help. So that's like automatic braking in your
[00:21:36] spk_1: car, which we love to use because it is such a good example. It's, it's almost superhuman in nature, right? It's taking over when the human can't react and it doesn't care whether you are a new driver or whether you've been driving for 30 years and someone cut you off to a slam on their brakes right at the wrong time and you weren't able to do it yourself.
[00:21:54] spk_0: Correct? Doesn't matter, doesn't matter. Uh really well designed fall protection doesn't do. It doesn't care why you fell, right? It works independent of whether part of the reason you fell is because you were brand new to something or you've been doing it for a bunch of times and you were not afraid of any. It doesn't care. It's agnostic to how you got there. Um, tear away gloves. Doesn't care whether or not similar to the putting our thumb on a pocket knife. Right? Did somebody who is brand new to something? Not see that there was a potential for some risk and put their finger in a place that somebody else who has more experience would never do. It doesn't care if that's the reason that you got into that position or you've been doing this for whatever task for a million years and you just, you know, were called and distracted for a second and put your hand in a place that you didn't intend it. It works either way. Um
[00:22:47] spk_1: Can I say something when you were describing that last part? I was in my head trying to guess whether you were going to say the phrase plum forgot, which is one of your favorite phrases. And I lost a bet to myself. I don't know what that means, but I'm going to have to pay myself something at some point.
[00:23:04] spk_0: It doesn't matter if you plumb forgot. It is. OK?
[00:23:07] spk_1: No much better.
[00:23:10] spk_0: And, and that was my personal sort of biggest takeaway of the recognition of how powerful that type of, of controller defenses. Um And yet we don't think to design them as often as I hope in the future we think to design them, which is why we're going do some homework on it.
[00:23:37] spk_1: Yay homework. What is it?
[00:23:41] spk_0: Are you so excited about that? So, homework is uh is to design a mitigation defense that doesn't exist yet and you can bend the laws of reality, right. So we just want to get our, yeah. So you can, you can design something that, like by physics, you're not sure if it's going to work or not or would be like astronomically, like infeasible financially to do or uses technology that doesn't exist yet. We just want to get our, our brains thinking in this space and
[00:24:16] spk_1: what's one that you invented?
[00:24:18] spk_0: Yeah, I think about this a lot and the one that comes to mind is actually really, really boring and maybe exists in someplace which I hope somebody tells me it does. But um when we drop off a rental car, like you return a rental car, there's signs everywhere that say, you know, did you forget your keys or did you leave the keys in the car and in my mind, right. I'm thinking that that's not a great mitigation defense for things, right? So if I happen to see that sign, great. Um if I'm looking for it, if I'm newer to it and I'm like, what do I do with my, with my keys? Right though. That, that, that is very informative and very helpful. But I've done this a thank you signs. But if I've done this a million times, right, that if I'm going to forget my keys, it's because I'm doing a bazillion other things at the same time and I'm not going to see those signs or maybe I do by chance, but I want to put in the mitigation defense of, you know, when you leave a store and you get the little like, hey, you accidentally stole this, that's what it's for, right? Like if you have, hey, you forgot to pay for this thing and it makes a noise,
[00:25:24] spk_1: the polite way to say this is, hey, someone may have forgotten to
[00:25:27] spk_0: take it off, you may have forgotten to take off your tag. My thought is that why wouldn't we have one of those attached to the keys? And as you're leaving, if you had the keys on your person somewhere, you would have an attention activator, which is very useful for skill based performance mode that told you, hey, you, you forgot the keys and then there would be a location right there by the exits going into the terminal for you to put your keys in.
[00:25:54] spk_1: I did see something interesting. I think it was Houston or Phoenix Airport where the bus, yeah, the shuttle shuttle bus that takes you from the rental car back to the terminal says that they can take your key, which
[00:26:06] spk_0: was interesting if you have it on you. But if you don't know you have it on you,
[00:26:10] spk_1: that's, you need to be alerted to it. You need to be alerted to it, not charge. I think it's like $500 or more.
[00:26:15] spk_0: Well, they're solving for a different problem. Right. They're not solving, they're solving for the financial difficulty of somebody taking your keys. But anyway, so that's just one sort of simple example. So that's the homework. Invent something that doesn't exist, simple, easy.
[00:26:30] spk_1: Do it just whenever you want, just invent something
[00:26:35] spk_0: for when you never intended for. That's the definition that we want to use for this mitigation. You never intended to be in that position. I never intended to have the keys on my person and now I need something to help me. Help, help.
[00:26:48] spk_1: Ok, cool. That's it. We're done. Thank you. Everyone. Have a good couple of weeks and we'll talk to you soon.
[00:27:02] spk_0: Well, that's
[00:27:04] spk_1: it. Yep. Another one in the books we did it.
[00:27:08] spk_0: If you uh wanna send us any of your thoughts, actually fling us any of your thoughts you can do. So at the website www dot hop podcast.com.
[00:27:21] spk_1: That's Hoppo DC A st.com. It's still
[00:27:27] spk_0: such a stupid name. A stupid,
[00:27:29] spk_1: we look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for listening.
[00:00:03] spk_1: the Hop podcast with no name.
[00:00:06] spk_0: What a dumb name. So stupid.
[00:00:23] spk_1: And we are off episode 18. That's it. That's it. That is how many there have been? Thank you for acknowledging
[00:00:35] spk_0: you are
[00:00:36] spk_1: accurate. I've done the math. I can count that high. Just if we're getting close, getting real close,
[00:00:42] spk_0: we're gonna have to stop doing
[00:00:43] spk_1: this all of a sudden. It's like episode a number. So, all right, homework. We know where to start. Let's get to it.
[00:00:52] spk_0: All right. Do you remember what it was?
[00:00:54] spk_1: I do at the end of last episode, we said, um, to think about an area where we have a mismatched solution set. So where the solution to something happening, a problem, an issue, an upset wouldn't be right for the performance mode that the person doing the task would be in at the time something could occur. And you have a very good, which is, I don't know, are you giving
[00:01:22] spk_0: me credit for something
[00:01:23] spk_1: that I don't actually can I start over? You have a serviceable story for this topic. Um, that it's actually one of my favorites, so no pressure, but don't make me look like a fool. God,
[00:01:40] spk_0: it's actually, it's not my story. So um I'm gonna, I'm gonna do my best to get all of the details, right? But this was actually a story that Bob Edwards experienced and then uh told when we trained together many times. So I feel like I was there but I actually wasn't there. Um But it is one of the first times that I started to understand um kind of a bigger picture narrative in how performance modes fit into, at least how I see these hop concepts. So story time, we
[00:02:11] spk_1: ready, story time. And also, yeah, I, I, I feel bad giving you any credit. I want to give it all to Bob. Thanks for talking it away. We appreciate it. But no good.
[00:02:21] spk_0: Ok. So Bob was doing a learning team at a location where um they were working on like picture, picture like motherboards are like, that's the right term for something inside of a computer.
[00:02:35] spk_1: That's the thing that is a thing that goes in the computer.
[00:02:38] spk_0: OK. So let's just picture a motherboard, like something electronic inside of a computer. And um in order to do the work, they, the folks that were doing the work were using um Exacto knives to do things like like lift traces and like cut tiny pieces of tape in this assembly process. And um one day one of the folks that was using an Exacto knife went to the restroom and, uh, didn't realize that he had carried the Exacto knife with him to the restroom. He didn't want to put it down anywhere because he didn't want to get it dirty. And so the solution that seemed to make sense at the time was that he sort of carefully tucked it into his pants pocket with the knife blade, like sticking out away from his pants, right to make sure that it didn't touch anything. Um, and then he went about his business, but he also happened to be a first responder. And while he was in the bathroom, he got a call on the radio that somebody was having chest pains. And in that moment he forgot that the knife was in his pocket. So when he grabbed his pants to pull them up, the knife went straight into his hand. Um, and they ended up doing a learning team around, I guess the response to that event and how the site had handled the solution sets that came
[00:04:11] spk_1: after that. I'm sure it was really well handled.
[00:04:15] spk_0: I mean, well, we'll let people decide because honestly the solutions that were put in place. I myself had done this many times. And so it was a point of very poignant self reflection. For me, the first time I had heard this story, I'll
[00:04:34] spk_1: just add that. Now, I think we've told the story a couple of times fairly recently. Every time we've told it a couple of people minimum in the room are like, yeah, we've been, we've done the same and they have examples of the exact same thing that they've done.
[00:04:46] spk_0: So, as you can probably imagine, as the response, the idea and the push right in the safety space is always to make sure that we are eliminating exposure to hazard or the hazard itself if possible. Right. And so the thought process that made sense to the leadership team at the time was to reduce the opportunities to be exposed to something sharp like the Exacto knife. And in order to do that, what they decided um was that that most of the work could probably be done with a tweaker screwdriver, tweaker screwdriver. So if you're picturing like adjusting your glasses, like the little flathead screwdriver that you would do to use that. Um So picture this, right? You got a leadership team sort of sitting in a room who have not done the work before and their general understanding of how the process is done. This seems like a, a good idea, right? Most of the work they think could be done, but they acknowledge that perhaps there are some activities that you would need something sharper than that. And so the thought process was that you should take a small group of exactor knives and put them in the tool crib. Um And if an operator needed an exactor knife, they'd go to the tool crib and like sign one out and bring it back, use it for whatever the process was and then bring it back to the tool crib so that you didn't have a bunch of knives laying out. And the first time I heard this story, I was like, oh, that's a great, that's a great solution set like that. I've removed knives in many places like I like you and you can get them right. So, um, yeah, so moment of self reflection for me, because when Bob went to go do the learning team, the first thing he did was to learn about the work, right? In learning about the work, you quickly realize that you need something sharp for a lot of it that the tweaker screwdriver solution set is not going to work for much of what folks have to do. So that's the first part that's very important is to be on the same page as to how the work is done and what you would need in terms of a tool. And so because that was true, Bob asked a lot of questions like about how work was getting done now. And it became really, really, really clear that this new set of rules had actually created a, a black market of Exacto knives. So people were bringing knives in from home because they didn't want to have to keep signing it out and there weren't enough knives even to go around if everybody needed them at the same time. So people were bringing things from home and then we went from people openly using knives to now people hiding the fact that they were using knives to get their work done. Um And folks were taking those tiny tweaker screwdrivers and sharpening them so that they could do the work with something sharper that looked like a tweaker screwdriver.
[00:07:37] spk_1: I'm not sure if anyone else is thinking about this. I'm thinking about it, but I imagine a situation where leadership finds a black market knife and they pull people one by one into a room. Like what is this? And people are saying I've never seen in my life in my life. I don't know, I don't know. Where did you find that? What does this thing even do? I never,
[00:07:57] spk_0: and so I started to think when I heard the story for the first time of, right, how many times I had taken away knives and whether or not I had created a black market of Exacto knives myself. And I can tell you with confidence I had actually in three different locations. I had, I had personally taken away knives, given people some sort of replacement for it, whether it be a safety knife or like a small ceramic knife and then never actually learned whether or not that was a suitable replacement, right? I I had made the decision. Um and, and just sort of said that this is what we were doing going forward and didn't leave conversation open to figure out whether or not that was actually a good solution set. And so this is my favorite part of the story because after Bob learned, hey, we need this sharp thing to do our job and we don't have enough of the sharp things and the process to get the sharp thing is tedious. And so we have created our own way of getting sharp things. Um He asked whether or not somebody had a, a better solution than that, right? Rather than us all having to pretend, could we come up with a good solution we can all live with. And somebody who is fairly quiet in the learning team pulled an Exacto knife out of her pocket.
[00:09:11] spk_1: I'm sure it wasn't the only one that was in the room to
[00:09:13] spk_0: be clear. I just, but I just pulled it like that's pulled an Exacto knife out of her pocket. Which if we recall the whole reason why this started was because somebody had an Exacto knife in their pocket, she pulled and it happened to be a retractable Exacto knife. Like like how um like a clicky ballpoint pen would work like you click it and it opens and then you can use it and stays open and then you click it again and it retracts and she was like, can't we just use these, right? Because then you might have knives sitting out but you don't necessarily have blades sitting out. Right? And if you happen to be bringing one of them somewhere where you didn't intend to have it, you would just retract it and put it in your pocket. Um And so the site agreed to do that, the leadership said, you know, it doesn't eliminate all risk. We acknowledge that, right? But it is better than what we had before. And it's a workable solution for the folks close to the work.
[00:10:14] spk_1: I mean, that, that's two things that I'm hearing on top of performance modes and we can talk more about that. But, um, one, a mark of good leadership, we didn't get it right. And we're going to change it. That's, I mean, we've seen the opposite tons of times and two, who do you try to keep knives away from? Who do you block access of knives to a group of
[00:10:39] spk_0: people in your life? Yeah. And that's, that's actually the thing that kind of broke my brain in this situation is because I recognized that the people that we try to keep knives away from in our lives or that we would monitor their use of knives are Children. And the reason that's true,
[00:11:01] spk_1: you don't give Penelope
[00:11:03] spk_0: that just exact her knives and let her run around the house with
[00:11:05] spk_1: knives or at knee height level for adults. They just free. I mean, they want to play do.
[00:11:14] spk_0: Yeah. So, and it's important for us to understand why we don't give knives to Children.
[00:11:22] spk_1: Yeah, that's what this podcast has really been about 18 episodes in, we finally got to the heart of the subject. Don't give knives to kids.
[00:11:30] spk_0: But the, but it's important, it's important in the context of performance mode. So the reason we don't give Children knives is because they don't have enough habit loops on how to deal with knives.
[00:11:42] spk_1: Hopefully not go make a song.
[00:11:45] spk_0: That's fair enough. Fair enough. My Children don't have enough habit loops built up at three, almost four years old on how to deal with really sharp knives. I mean, I remember very distinctly growing up, I had taken my father's pocket knife without him knowing and I cut myself on it because I didn't think the knife looked sharp. And so I decided the way to test it was to put my thumb on it.
[00:12:12] spk_1: Do I know something else? I did the exact same thing. Not kidding. We have never shared the word. I did the exact same thing with my thumb
[00:12:22] spk_0: there. It is found it, it's sharp. Um And so Children when it comes to knives are in knowledge based performance mode, meaning one out of every two decisions or actions are probably going to be wrong and they need fast feedback and correction in order to be able to learn how to use a knife so that you don't cut yourself. And it became very obvious to me after being told this story. And after being taught performance modes that we had treated the employees that were using knives as though they were in knowledge based performance mode with the knife, which by other words is saying as though they are Children that don't know how to use knives. And when that happens, you tend to see that people figure out a way around the rule because it doesn't feel good to be treated like a child when you're not, these are probably the world's leading experts in how to use exact exacto knives for that job and they use them all the time. And because of a strange circumstance, suddenly the access to the tool that they needed for their job was taken away
[00:13:31] spk_1: without any input from that group.
[00:13:34] spk_0: Yeah. Or with, I mean, if there was, it was minimal without a lot of circling back, right? Because
[00:13:38] spk_1: that's how we'll just show up and say, ok, thanks, decisions already made. You can't get these anymore.
[00:13:44] spk_0: Um So that became my focus on how I would speak to performance modes in general. Was this idea of we should be double checking whether or not we're using the right frame of mind to be even suggesting ways of making improvements. Certainly, we should be working with people that are doing the job to come up with the ways. But in a circumstance where we have something in place already or for whatever reason, a decision has been made by a leadership team. We should absolutely be bumping that decision up against who, who would this work for. Are we assuming that people don't know how to do things? Like, are we assuming they really don't know how to use a knife? Because that's, that's an incorrect assumption. Um,
[00:14:27] spk_1: and the rule doesn't have operational fidelity. It doesn't make sense once you're doing the job, you need that. Yeah. Tool.
[00:14:33] spk_0: Yeah. And that's when it started to become really clear to me how often we were doing things like retraining people that had done the job for years or rewriting something in a procedure that most likely people weren't looking at anymore because they had been doing the job for a fairly long period of time or they were newer to it and people were teaching them like on the job without having the training in front of them. Right. So they were either in, in skill based performance mode doing it for a long time or they were in knowledge based performance mode in which you do need fast feedback and correction. When you're learning how to drive for the very first time in a car, you're not just sitting and analyzing the rules of the road in a booklet. You give me a look, I gave you a look
[00:15:17] spk_1: because that is exactly how I imagine you learning how to drive is that you were like, I got to learn every rule, every
[00:15:23] spk_0: rule first and then,
[00:15:26] spk_1: and then watch what everyone's doing and then try
[00:15:29] spk_0: because what's interesting is that written instruction doesn't really make a lot of sense to you until you have some knowledge of what, what a task is or what a process is. And then sometimes written instruction is incredibly helpful to help augment that or remind you of things that would be difficult to remember without it.
[00:15:47] spk_1: It's tough too. And, and you as a leadership team, you want to do something like, OK, I want to help. So the, but the only thing I really know that I can do is the, is kind of remind you what good looks like by showing you the rules again. And that's just kind of feels what I can do. And that's the best solution with what I know that I actually have to give you
[00:16:13] spk_0: a lot of this hop space is um just being able to look ourselves in the mirror and recognize that what we historically may have been doing probably wasn't as beneficial as we were hoping. And then by removing that as an option, meaning like, hey, I now acknowledge that retraining somebody who's been doing, you know, this job for X number of years is probably not an adequate solution set. Then it starts to push us to try to do something different. Um because we've mentioned this before, but a lot of the things that we would need in this hop space like in terms of even mitigation defenses, they just haven't been invented yet. Um, and it's because in many places we've held on to an easy button thinking that we're doing something well by rewriting a procedure or retraining people. Um, and in some cases that does work, like depending upon the performance mode or the experience or what the problem is, but in a lot of cases that we have been using that as a solution set, it doesn't work well. Um And that's where we want to be able to admit it to ourselves and uh get more creative.
[00:17:20] spk_1: But there's, I think you made a good point about a reality check because we hear from organizations all the time that will spend resources to help and they'll help, try to control behavior. And I'll give you an example, they'll put in speed monitors to their cars, but they won't spend the money to add automatic braking. And that's the reality check that we're talking about is, is what we're doing focused on controlling or creating necessary mitigation for when something has gone wrong. And a human is in a position that they shouldn't be in, don't want to be in, didn't intend to be in and they cannot help themselves. What's there to help them. Yeah.
[00:18:04] spk_0: Yeah. And that's where performance modes. That's probably one of the main reasons why I stopped talking about performance modes a lot. And, and this is it here is that the truth is that different types of controls work well for different performance modes. But also the truth is that we have people in all performance modes in many tasks all the time. And also one task, one person can be up and down the scale of performance modes very easily. I mean, just even if something seemingly as simple in our mind as uh someone doing maintenance, work on a piece of equipment, you might be in skill based performance mode, meaning you can you talking and having a conversation, not even paying attention to what you're doing while you're taking the panel off, right? So you're, you know, using a screwdriver, taking a panel off, um then you get into the machine and maybe you've done whatever this process is before, maybe it's a preventive maintenance process. You've done it before. You're in rule based performance mode where you're actually looking at some of the written documentation to remind yourself of like how everything is working on the innards of this piece of equipment. Um And in that process, you end up finding out something abnormal that you haven't seen before. And now suddenly you are in the edge of your rule based performance mode, if not a knowledge based performance mode, just trying to figure something out that you've never seen before. And that's just one task and you are up and down that scale all the time. We've done some training in lots of different places. And I just remember um a fighter jet pilot once telling us, yeah, we are up and down that scale. Like every time we get in the fighter jet, like we are all over that performance mode scale. It's not like you're in one, in one performance mode all the time, even in driving. Right?
[00:19:50] spk_1: I just want to add like from the outside perspective, I don't think that we typically view someone accomplishing a task as sliding up and down that scale. If I put someone, if I, if someone's been doing the maintenance work for 30 years, and you say, hey, go, go do this thing, you know, like they've got it, they've done this 100 times, 1000 times, they know what they're doing. I just assume that they're automatically in skill
[00:20:14] spk_0: based. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that sort of oversimplification of like this human is going to fall into this discrete category of performance mode for, you know, all of the tasks that they have done routinely. I, I think that's where um I started to see my brain oversimplifying things and other people oversimplifying things. What I did take away from teaching performance modes for a while though, that I think is really, really important. And actually the whole point of why I wanted to do some sessions or some discussions on this is the fact that mitigation defenses don't care what performance mode you're in meaning like, although when you're brand new to something fast feedback and correction is needed, right? Or when you are, you know, done something for a while, you need written documentation. Like those things are discreetly dependent upon how familiar you are with a task. There is one type of defense that doesn't care and that's the mitigation defense. That's the one where independent of how experienced you are with something you would have never intentionally put yourself in the position that you're in. And as a person with a response time that we have our reaction times and our ability to process information, we're probably not gonna get ourselves out of that position without some external help. So that's like automatic braking in your
[00:21:36] spk_1: car, which we love to use because it is such a good example. It's, it's almost superhuman in nature, right? It's taking over when the human can't react and it doesn't care whether you are a new driver or whether you've been driving for 30 years and someone cut you off to a slam on their brakes right at the wrong time and you weren't able to do it yourself.
[00:21:54] spk_0: Correct? Doesn't matter, doesn't matter. Uh really well designed fall protection doesn't do. It doesn't care why you fell, right? It works independent of whether part of the reason you fell is because you were brand new to something or you've been doing it for a bunch of times and you were not afraid of any. It doesn't care. It's agnostic to how you got there. Um, tear away gloves. Doesn't care whether or not similar to the putting our thumb on a pocket knife. Right? Did somebody who is brand new to something? Not see that there was a potential for some risk and put their finger in a place that somebody else who has more experience would never do. It doesn't care if that's the reason that you got into that position or you've been doing this for whatever task for a million years and you just, you know, were called and distracted for a second and put your hand in a place that you didn't intend it. It works either way. Um
[00:22:47] spk_1: Can I say something when you were describing that last part? I was in my head trying to guess whether you were going to say the phrase plum forgot, which is one of your favorite phrases. And I lost a bet to myself. I don't know what that means, but I'm going to have to pay myself something at some point.
[00:23:04] spk_0: It doesn't matter if you plumb forgot. It is. OK?
[00:23:07] spk_1: No much better.
[00:23:10] spk_0: And, and that was my personal sort of biggest takeaway of the recognition of how powerful that type of, of controller defenses. Um And yet we don't think to design them as often as I hope in the future we think to design them, which is why we're going do some homework on it.
[00:23:37] spk_1: Yay homework. What is it?
[00:23:41] spk_0: Are you so excited about that? So, homework is uh is to design a mitigation defense that doesn't exist yet and you can bend the laws of reality, right. So we just want to get our, yeah. So you can, you can design something that, like by physics, you're not sure if it's going to work or not or would be like astronomically, like infeasible financially to do or uses technology that doesn't exist yet. We just want to get our, our brains thinking in this space and
[00:24:16] spk_1: what's one that you invented?
[00:24:18] spk_0: Yeah, I think about this a lot and the one that comes to mind is actually really, really boring and maybe exists in someplace which I hope somebody tells me it does. But um when we drop off a rental car, like you return a rental car, there's signs everywhere that say, you know, did you forget your keys or did you leave the keys in the car and in my mind, right. I'm thinking that that's not a great mitigation defense for things, right? So if I happen to see that sign, great. Um if I'm looking for it, if I'm newer to it and I'm like, what do I do with my, with my keys? Right though. That, that, that is very informative and very helpful. But I've done this a thank you signs. But if I've done this a million times, right, that if I'm going to forget my keys, it's because I'm doing a bazillion other things at the same time and I'm not going to see those signs or maybe I do by chance, but I want to put in the mitigation defense of, you know, when you leave a store and you get the little like, hey, you accidentally stole this, that's what it's for, right? Like if you have, hey, you forgot to pay for this thing and it makes a noise,
[00:25:24] spk_1: the polite way to say this is, hey, someone may have forgotten to
[00:25:27] spk_0: take it off, you may have forgotten to take off your tag. My thought is that why wouldn't we have one of those attached to the keys? And as you're leaving, if you had the keys on your person somewhere, you would have an attention activator, which is very useful for skill based performance mode that told you, hey, you, you forgot the keys and then there would be a location right there by the exits going into the terminal for you to put your keys in.
[00:25:54] spk_1: I did see something interesting. I think it was Houston or Phoenix Airport where the bus, yeah, the shuttle shuttle bus that takes you from the rental car back to the terminal says that they can take your key, which
[00:26:06] spk_0: was interesting if you have it on you. But if you don't know you have it on you,
[00:26:10] spk_1: that's, you need to be alerted to it. You need to be alerted to it, not charge. I think it's like $500 or more.
[00:26:15] spk_0: Well, they're solving for a different problem. Right. They're not solving, they're solving for the financial difficulty of somebody taking your keys. But anyway, so that's just one sort of simple example. So that's the homework. Invent something that doesn't exist, simple, easy.
[00:26:30] spk_1: Do it just whenever you want, just invent something
[00:26:35] spk_0: for when you never intended for. That's the definition that we want to use for this mitigation. You never intended to be in that position. I never intended to have the keys on my person and now I need something to help me. Help, help.
[00:26:48] spk_1: Ok, cool. That's it. We're done. Thank you. Everyone. Have a good couple of weeks and we'll talk to you soon.
[00:27:02] spk_0: Well, that's
[00:27:04] spk_1: it. Yep. Another one in the books we did it.
[00:27:08] spk_0: If you uh wanna send us any of your thoughts, actually fling us any of your thoughts you can do. So at the website www dot hop podcast.com.
[00:27:21] spk_1: That's Hoppo DC A st.com. It's still
[00:27:27] spk_0: such a stupid name. A stupid,
[00:27:29] spk_1: we look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for listening.