This story appeared in Safeguard Update of 16 November.

Positive, immediate, certain

When people tell Dr Kyle McWilliams that their organisation has reached health and safety compliance, he invariably replies: “Well, that’s not very good is it?”

The reaction? “Their jaw drops,” he told delegates at the Conferenz inaugural Total Safety Culture conference in Auckland last month.

There are two types of job performance, he said, ‘just enough’ and ‘want to’. People who do just enough to keep their job are focused on compliance, the minimum level of performance. ‘Want to’ performance includes discretionary effort and is at a much higher level. “This is the one you want for safety.”

McWilliams, director of Christchurch-based consultancy Corporate Learning, said top performance will never be achieved if it is activated by the need for compliance. Instead, he advocated focusing on the consequences of behaviour, and on providing consequences that are positive, immediate, and certain.

Positive consequences are obviously beneficial, and consequences which are immediate and certain are much more powerful motivators than those which arrive in the future or are uncertain.

He asked delegates why they answered the phone. “Because it’s ringing,” came the response. No, he said, that is just the activator of the behaviour. The positive, immediate and certain outcome was that you get to speak to someone.

“Look towards the consequences rather than the activator. Activators have about 20% effect on behaviour. They kick-start it. Consequences have the other 80% effect.”

Health and safety policies, posters, emails, even training – these are all merely activators of behaviour. “If you want to improve behaviour, shift your focus to consequences.”

However, he cautioned that just because a consequence appeared to a worker to be positive, immediate and certain (PIC), didn’t mean it was a safe behaviour. Getting down from a large truck, for example, could be done unsafely by jumping, or safely by climbing down with three points of contact at all times. The trouble is, jumping takes less time and therefore appears to the driver to have PIC consequences.

“Safety is a constant struggle against human nature, because we are programmed to conserve energy. Lots of unsafe behaviours are PIC.”

McWilliams said we are good at identifying what we don’t want people to do. The key, he said, is to define the safe behaviours you want, then work out PIC consequences for them.

He advised looking at recent incidents and listing the behaviours associated with them, and then listing the alternative safe behaviours. “I practically guarantee you will find the unsafe behaviour was PIC because of the activator.”

If you want to change unsafe behaviours, he concluded, “you absolutely must focus on the behaviours you want, and you must provide positive, immediate and certain outcomes for this behaviour.”

 Was back at Eden Park last week. Take a look at the stand. What great progress they are making (compare to my earlier photos back in August) and look at how many cranes they have. I felt like a big kid in a sandpit full of toys. 

As of Friday 23 October, Millie and I are on the move. Decided it was time we needed a different view and a bit more space. The new address is 137 Clifton Terrace, Sumner, phone 03 326 4001. As part of the move, the accountant needed to do accounting "things" and so Corporate Learning will be no more. It will, however, be replaced with McWilliams Consulting. The only difference, as you can see, is the letterhead (and the new address). 

From this view ...

to this. 

My Westpac card is my secondary credit card, one which I use occasionally. The balance, as it has been for the last six months, is about $500 in credit. 

Yesterday, Westpac phoned me with a "courtesy" call asking if I would like payment insurance for my credit card (insurance which, should something happen, the bank would pay each month's minimum payment). I asked the Westpac person if anyone had bothered to actually look at the balance of the account, for if they did, they would have seen that the account has been in credit for several months. He said no one had. I asked why I would want insurance on an account which is always in credit. "Just in case,"  he replied. 

Value offered is only value if it is relevant. Irrelevant value is an oxymoron as it is not value at all, but rather an annoyance and a signal that you don't know your customer or client. 

What type of value are you offering to your clients?

To be an architect of a highly successful process, and to add value to a client is very satisfying. However, the client has to own and run with any process in which an external consultant helps set up and maintain. City Care (www.citycare.co.nz) have taken their behaviour-based safety process and made it their own, and in doing so they have improved safety (the important one!) and, as a result, they have also won a national award. 

"Increasing Safe Behaviours at City Care,"  an entry showcasing City Care's health and safety system, won the New Zealand Industry Best Practice - People category at the Roading Excellence Awards on Monday 7 September 2009.The Awards, run by Roading New Zealand, recognise excellence in the planning, design and construction of significant roading projects, as well as the development and implementation of best practice and collaboration in the roading industry.

"We are proud of our company-wide commitment to keeping ourselves and our team mates safe at work and we are delighted that the award judges have selected City Care," says Onno Mulder, City Care's Chief Executive. 

Congratulations City Care!

Millie and I were very fortunate to be invited by City Care to Cirque du Soleil: Dralion last week in Auckland. Unfortunately you couldn't take photos - guess the flash might be slightly off putting to someone doing high-risk acrobatics. In most organisations committees rule over teams (the difference being that in a committee a person can win or lose independent of the committee whereas in a team everyone either wins or loses). Cirque du Soleil demonstrated teamwork, where if one individual failed to achieve their result then everyone in that particular performance failed. On the flipside,  when everyone did their job to an extremely high level, everybody in the team achieved success to a very high level and the audience was treated to a truly inspirational performance. 

I have been observing Alan Gray, Project Director of the redevelopment of Eden Park, over the last couple of days. Alan is a superb leader and is a dictionary definition of being an exemplar. Here are some photos I took.

Here is some research stating that texting while driving is even more dangerous than previously thought, and that keeping your eyes on the road is a key to safe driving - revolutionary: who would have thought? I wonder if the F1 drivers of the cars in the post below considered this. 

Texts While Driving Even More Dangerous

Texting while driving increases the risk of a crash much more than previous studies have concluded with motorists taking their eyes off the road longer than they do when talking or listening on their cell phones.

The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute used cameras to continuously observe light vehicle drivers and truckers for more than 6 million miles (9.6 million kilometres). It found that when drivers of heavy trucks texted, their collision risk was 23 times greater than when not texting.

Dialing a cell phone and using or reaching for an electronic device increased risk of collision about 6 times in cars and trucks.

Recent research using driving simulators suggested that talking and listening were as dangerous as texting, but the "naturalistic driving studies clearly indicate that this is not the case," a news release from the institute said. The risks of texting generally applied to all drivers, not just truckers, the researchers said. Complete results were expected to be released Tuesday.

Right before a crash or near collision, drivers spent nearly five seconds looking at their devices, which was enough time at 55 mph (88.5kph) to cover more than the length of a football field.

"Talking/listening to a cell phone allowed drivers to maintain eyes on the road and were not associated with an increased safety risk to nearly the same degree," the institute said. "These results show conclusively that a real key to significantly improving safety is keeping your eyes on the road."

The institute recommended that texting should be banned for all drivers and all cell phone use should be prohibited for newly licensed teen drivers. Fourteen states do ban texting while driving.

The study also concluded that headset cell phone use is not substantially safer than hand-held because the primary risks associated with both are answering, dialing, and other tasks that take drivers' eyes off the road.

Voice activated systems are less risky if they are designed well enough so drivers do not have to take their eyes off the road often or for long periods.

A call to the institute was not immediately returned Monday night for more details.

Was in Wellington Friday so popped along to the Formula One: The Great Design Race display at Te Papa. If you have a spare hour (or half hour like me if you get bored easy) then this is well worth a look. Even a lay person like me can appreciate the engineering genius, and there are some interesting facts that you will find out too.

When trying to change my printer settings I received a message stating that I needed a username and password for the printer application. Now I knew I was in trouble given that I had never created a username or password for the printer. After spending 40 min of totally unproductive time reading the Brother printer manual and trying everything I could think of, I emailed the online Brother support. To be honest I had extremely low expectations (a) of a prompt reply (five days ago I had phoned Serengeti Eyewear International and am still waiting a reply) and/or (b) of actually solving my problem. Less then six hours after my email I received a reply. Through a series of short email correspondences over the next 30 minutes, my problem (totally unintuitive as I had to key in computer code) was solved. Well done Brother for the prompt reply and actually adding value to my day. Are you responding promptly to your customers, and what value are you adding?