Anyone who has attended one of my talks or training courses will know that courageous leadership is something I feel very passionate about. I learned a very valuable lesson many years ago about the influence I have as a Leader and how, with very little effort (and absolutely no intention or...
Outcomes are sexy and attractive...
In the mid-1980s, there was a flight safety film produced which showed a Royal Air Force pilot walking out to his single-seat Jaguar fighter aircraft for a training sortie. He prepares the aircraft, starts it up and takes-off down the runway. Unfortunately, the aircraft has an engine failure...
Integration of HOP and Reliability Principles
Recently Teresa Swinton, the Founder and Owner of Paradigm Human Performance, gave a presentation to her neighbours in the Plymouth Science Park, Plymouth, UK, and titled it Managing Operational Performance During COVID-19. There are many gems and valuable nuggets in the...
How safe is your workplace?
What does safe mean to you? The dictionary defines safe as “protected from or not exposed to danger or risk; not likely to be harmed or lost” and in the context of many workplaces, we often think about the physical risks. These can include slips,...
How to help correct the biases which lead to poor decision making
Research conducted in 1989 by Deborah J. Mitchell, of the Wharton School; Jay Russo, of Cornell; and Nancy Pennington, of the University of Colorado, found that prospective hindsight—imagining that an event has already occurred—increases the ability to correctly identify reasons for...
When the holes line up...but the model has holes in it too!
Many of our readers will have heard about Professor James Reason's Swiss Cheese Model and how it can be used to show how incidents are developed because of holes in the barriers and defences which are put in place to maximise safety.
Professor Reason's research showed that at different levels...
Human Error – does it exist?
Recently at a course, there was a very interesting debate, which challenged the basic premise of human performance and whether there was any such thing as “Human Error”. The traditional view is of course, that we can predict failure rates of technical systems, if we know the component...
"To err is human, but to be human is not necessarily to err”
Human Error… Often talked about, written about, and used to close out accident and incident investigations. What is meant by human error? I have learned over the past few days that my perception contrasts to that used by others working in the safety field, and I wanted to...
What is Human and Organisational Performance Improvement About?
Human Performance is a well-established performance improvement method which has been used in high hazard industries such as Aviation, Nuclear Power Generation and Space Exploration for many years to try to manage the issue of 'Human Error'. The theory and original concept were developed in...
