For these next few podcasts, I want to share the six principles of human performance. I’ll cover each one, but they all go together. If HP is really part of our culture, then all six of them are required for deep understanding and a successful cultural shift. Some are harder than others, and we will address those issues. But combined, they are philosophies we must live by to truly implement human performance into our safety culture.A side benefit is that HP is not just a safety thing. It’s an operational philosophy. Many of our clients who travel the HP path find it benefits all areas of performance in an organization. Since we often have to sell safety culture improvement efforts to management, this should be communicated frequently. HP is not a safety thing, it’s an operational philosophy designed to improve all areas of organizational performance. When looking for management buy-in, it’s of great importance to speak their language. This is not insinuating that management doesn’t care about safety, it’s about speaking in a language that they speak often. How can we improve our organizational systems to increase performance? That is the main concept of HP.So here are the six principles:People are fallible and even the best make mistakesError-likely situations are predictableIndividual behaviors are influenced by culture and leadershipOrganizations and people driftEvents can be avoided by learningPeople achieve high levels of performance, based on encouragement and reinforcement.Today, I’m going to focus on the first principle:1.      People are fallible and even the best make mistakes.Here’s my favorite quote regarding this principle from Norman Cousins:“To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species”This is usually where education on human performance begins. We must start by generating awareness to all levels of the organization how the brain works. We need to educate our team on how external things influence our brains to determine the right path to follow. The old view seems to look at employee behavior as a moral decision that someone makes or doesn’t make. But it’s much more complex than that. When we gain awareness into how our brains are wired, we can see that the choices between right and wrong are heavily influenced by a multitude of things. Often, at-risk behavior is actually perceived as a good idea in the mind of the worker. Other times, the brain was overloaded to the point it just couldn’t make a good decision, or at least the decision management would prefer the worker make. Understanding the brain is imperative for HP to work. We can start with our brain. We must move away from the judgement mode inherent to our brain and move over to the knowledge mode of learning these concepts to ultimately enhance our performance.There are many voices in the construction industry that believe people can choose not to be complacent and pay attention at all times. There are loud voices that believe not paying attention is an individual problem that can be trained or disciplined out of people. The reality is it’s just not possible for humans to pay attention all the time. Attention is a finite resource. In the context of a jobsite, it’s even worse. There is so much going on within the typical jobsite that what a human can pay attention to is usually limited to right in front of them. Even then, the resource quickly runs out of fuel.Our brain is equipped with the reticular activating system. Its purpose is to help us focus. The paradox is that it narrows our focus. It can be viewed as a positive thing so you can focus on the task at hand. The tradeoff is that it blurs out everything else around you.In the context of a jobsite, your brain can do amazing work at focusing on what is directly in front of you. The tradeoff is you miss all these other things going on, other subcontractors, other components of your work that your brain has deemed less critical. You can’t train this out of your brain. You can’t train your brain to be aware of everything going on around you, at every second of every day. Attention is a finite resource. You can train your brain to be more aware, to an extent, but you can’t train it to pay attention to everything at all times.People struggle with this concept. There are loud voices saying that people can successfully multi-task. It’s actually more common that attention is jumping quickly from one task to another in mere seconds. Try to juggle and sing a song at the same time. Often, the perception of someone saying they are excellent at multi-tasking, is in reality their ability to quickly jump back and forth from one thing to another. In the context of a jobsite, are people really calculating fall clearance distance and installing the shear connectors on the decking at the same time? Or are they focusing on installing the shear connector one second, and then adjusting their harness the next? There is a common misperception that people often do two tasks at the exact same time, when they are actually jumping back and forth from different responsibilities at high speed. Am I hammering a nail at the exact same time I ensure my d-ring is between my shoulders? Or is my attention devoted to different things at different times. Maybe some people can do both at the same time. Most people jump back and forth.Sometimes I teach how when you drive down the road, your brain helps you focus on the white and yellow lines to focus on the task at hand. But we can’t focus on every single tree we pass, every car about to pass us, and all the things flying by our eyes at a fast rate. If we did, our brain would overload. Some people get this with the example of missing their own exit. They were driving, focusing on the white and yellow lines, and inadvertently drove by their own exit. Sometimes you do focus on all the trees going by. And then you look down and realize you are outside the lines, or going 85 in a 65mph zone.We are not focused on everything when we drive down the road. We are diverting our attention to different things, constantly moving back and forth with our attention.The point is, our brain is designed to focus on one thing at a time. In the dynamic work of construction, focusing on scaffold components, tool inspections, personal fall arrest systems, rigging, safety paperwork and the actual job to do, all at the same time, is impossible to do without losing attention to something.With the speed example I gave, the auto industry understands the science of this. Cruise control is an error reduction tool based on how our brains work. A human just can’t go the exact speed limit for long periods of time without becoming complacent. So, the car is designed with a tool to keep you in a specific range. It wasn’t designed based on the concept that people are lazy and stupid. It was based on the scientific understanding of how human brains are designed.Let’s break that down a little deeper. Cruise control was not created out of the belief that some people are superior and some people are inferior. Cruise control came from the study of the human brain. When we look at people like they are inferior because they didn’t pay attention to something, we are miss...

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