Ep. 40: Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width

Another listener question. How good, right?  The question? "I am still learning how to apply HOP principles. Can you talk about how they can be used to help us see and respond to risks that never show up in incident data?"It's sort of a version of asking how we know what's happening when nothing is happening, and how the five principles of HOP, if you're into that sort of thing, support that. What five principles, you ask? The ones from Todd Conklin are: 1) Error is normal; 2) Blame fixes nothing; 3) Context drives behavior; 4) Learning and improving are vital; 5) Leadership response matters.Ron starts by answering the question he wishes we were asked, and inadvertently points to some really cool info from the ICAO Human Performance Manual, Document 10151. It's not part of the actual answer, but you should still check it out.Back to the matter at hand, trying to find problems isn't the same as trying to apply principles. Incident data can’t tell you everything, but maybe leaning on the intent of the HOP principles can help uncover weak signals hiding in plain sight. No principles will do the work for us, though, and it’s not about finding broken procedures, either. It’s about finding brittle systems, understanding everyday trade-offs, and asking way better questions.Dave's recipe for success? Give up the 80% of "face-to-screen" time a lot of safety folks waste and get face-to-work (or face-to-face, or whatever else you want to put your face on). There's more to it, but the boys suggest we all stop looking through the rearview mirror and start paying attention to what’s just up ahead. Also: yes, there’s a glory hole analogy, and no, we’re not sorry.The only thing that makes this episode better? A quote from a superfan posted a little while ago on LinkedIn. Fully out of context and in all its glory: "...never mind the quality, feel the width!"  Want to learn more? Listen to the episode!  DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

We're finally back to a NOFX song title, so things are looking up. A lot of the time, when we decide someone did something dumb, we say things like "dude, how'd you fuck that up, it should just be common sense." It's a good way to distance ourselves, blame someone, and be fucking lazy all at the same time. But what is "common sense" anyway?Sometimes it seems like what we're trying to do is take credit for good luck and call it common sense. Taking credit for something you didn't create sounds like some big record label behavior, doesn't it? And maybe that's it. Maybe common sense is just a label used to feel powerful.The boys kick around a few ideas, trying to decide whether common sense is something innate, taught, or based on experience - or all three. That sort of opens the door to wondering about where expertise comes from. If common sense is just a catalog of knowledge, you'd never cover it all, so maybe the intention is about knowing how to think or reason through uncertainty. Like when the Ceschi from the Codefendants' amp quit working at Punk in Drublic. They still put on one of their best shows by figuring it out as they went along. That kind of response seems to be what we mean a lot of times.After the normal rambling discussion, the conversation takes a surprising turn toward relevance, with some ideas about acceleration of expertise and some of the generational gaps that seem to make discussions about common sense a little more rowdy.You should probably just listen to the episode and see if you can figure out the answer. Why? It's common sense, dumbass.  DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

Fine, Simple Plan is only sort of punk. Or punk adjacent. They're about as pop punk as pop punk gets. But it makes for a decent episode name.Why, because safety strategy gets oversimplified a lot. Or really, the idea of it gets oversimplified.Most safety strategy is a lot of BS anyway that ends up not being strategic at all.The boys talk about whether or not a safety strategy is even useful. Ron says yes, which is a little surprising given his stance in Episode 2 that safety people aren't really that necessary. Ben and Dave (and probably Ron, too) instead argue that what we call strategy is mostly just a PowerPoint-flavored attempt at looking busy and useful.  Safety isn't the business. It's a support function (a really important one, but it's still support, not the product) like accounting and HR. Those folks are rocking out 3-year strategy plans with big ideas about how Accounts Payable will be reinventing finance.The organization has a strategic view - a big one - that other departments and divisions are meant to support.  So maybe the best safety strategy is how we draw connections to support the broader strategy. You value innovation? Cool. We'd better get confident in how we understand risk and build systems that allow us to experiment without things turning into chaos. What'd you say about profitability? If we're working hard to understand work and get rid of dumb stuff, we're increasing efficiency.Aside from those discussions, a whole lot of safety is tactical, right? That's where adaptability lives, and that's usually a part of what we want. Drawing out a three-year plan doesn't really scream adaptability - at least in the way it's often done.The principles we're trying to achieve in safety don't really change, do they? It's the day-to-day management of risk and adaptation that does, and that means it isn't strategy. So, instead of creating problems to solve and putting them on a slide deck, maybe it's better to identify the top one or two things that really need our attention and go solve for those.That's how experts work - not that the boys are experts - but it's a good indicator that your teams aren't checking in on the mission and vision posters as they make safety decisions.Cool. Carry on, punks.  DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

This episode dives into what it really means to “do safety” when your job is inherently dangerous, like military, police, or even things like aviation.The strategy has to be at least a little better than Live Fast, Die Young (that's the title of this episode, and for once it's not NOFX, but if you're cool, you know this one, too).Ben, Ron, David, and their guest James Kolozsi (who’s got cred from his time in the military, police, municipal, and oil & gas) kick things off with the usual eight minutes of bullshit or so, but eventually get into the meat of the topic: in some jobs, you can’t pretend risk doesn’t exist. Instead, you have to own it, plan for it, and train like hell to deal with it.James shares how, in the military, you don’t get to hit pause and fill out a risk assessment when things go sideways. Instead, it’s all about situational awareness, understanding threats (not just risks), and being ready to adapt on the fly. It's sort of about doing what you signed up for, too, but not applying that same logic to folks who aren't willing participants.The boys talk about how, in these high-risk worlds, safety isn’t just a checklist or a pile of paperwork—it’s baked into the core of operations.  Training is relentless, and the focus is on building real capability, not just compliance. There’s a lot of talk about how this mindset is different from what you see in most industries, where safety can sometimes feel like a box-ticking exercise.The conversation also hits on the limits of procedures and the importance of sharing practical know-how; those “rules of thumb” that only come from experience. In the end, the takeaway is that in jobs where danger is part of the deal, you can’t eliminate risk, but you can give people the tools, training, and support to successfully adapt to it. And maybe the rest of the safety world could learn a thing or two from that approach.  DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

Ian Madison rolls in with a background of ethically hunted animals (that's what he told us), evidence of like eight million Bad Religion shows, and some serious desire to talk about how traditional safety measurements are about as useful as a broken guitar string. Not a bass string, because a broken bass string is about as useful as the rest of them anyway.Seriously, though. Check out the video on YouTube to see what Ian has going on behind him.The episode title is one of the best punk albums of all time, The Process of Belief, from Bad Religion. It's a shoutout to Ian, and it's also a reference to the way we get hung up on our beliefs about what makes us safer and how we know. More on that in a minute.We've already had an episode on metrics, but Ian was driving this one, and even though it sounds like a lot of measurement talk and bashing on TRIR, it's really an episode about the things that take attention away from what matters. And bashing TRIR. Weirdly, Ian can get away with a lot more than Ron on that topic.Matt Hollowell and the CSRA get name-dropped for actually making sense, too. Not sure this podcast was the publicity they want, but you get what you get sometimes.The boys cover a lot of ground on this one: spiders, tailgate-to-person ratio, donuts and cheeseburgers, and whiskey. It moves almost as fast as Smelly's foot during Linoleum. And that's pretty fast.Back to the episode. It's seriously good. Like, just some dudes in a bar talking about safety stuff good. Ian has a way of simplifying concepts, smashing them into a story, and bringing people along in a way that makes a lot of sense. This episode has got a lot of exactly that.And the boys may have talked him into joining the Second Annual Punk Rock Safety Field Trip in LA this October.    DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

Even though they're not really into punk rock, Michael and Taylor from Imperial Oil are pretty badass (and the title of this episode is a NOFX song that Michael somehow remembered, so we'll take it). And they're movie stars in a video from Energy Safety Canada about the 4Ds from Learning Teams, Inc.The Imperial boys are the first to tell you they aren't safety people - they're field ops guys just trying to solve some problems. Pretty fucking punk, right? Shit wasn't going the way it should, so they just figured out what would work. Not perfection, but progress. "If you just go in and do it, and you do it from a place of caring," people are going to be on board.What the hell are the 4Ds Michael and Taylor are talking about (5 if you count Provan, because he's a D for sure)? They're questions about what folks see at work that are dumb, difficult, different, or dangerous.Turns out talking to people about work does some other stuff too: like a 53% reduction in absenteeism and massive increases in time-on-tool productivity. Weird, right? Figuring out how work gets done and addressing it like an adult helps make work suck less.For a lot of people, punk rock is a catalyst for being heard, for building family, and for expressing how they feel. For the teams at Imperial, using something like the 4Ds was a catalyst, too. Sometimes, it identified some problems that looked a whole lot like the supervisors and leaders in the organization. Those are tough conversations (like how bass players and ska bands are the problem a lot of times, too), but the boys took the conversations on and did the hard yards to figure out how to make leadership better.Asking questions isn't the solution, though, and that's why you should check out the rest of the episode. Michael and Taylor have got a lot more to share about how they started learning about performance, labels, and leadership. They're pretty punk without even trying, and that's "The punkest mother fucker I ever did see. Ah hell, he's even more punk than me." Got a NOFX quote in there after all, punks. Shoulda gone for Propaghandi, since they're a Canadian band, but whatever. The Energy Safety Canada video on the 4DsThe Learning Teams, Inc. folks, home of the 4Ds, are here  DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

"Sometimes work just fucking sucks"That's what David Strano said back on the Decline episode, and if you're not careful, saying smart things gets you volun-told for a guest appearance on the pod. David's a former touring roadie turned HSE director. That basically means he knows a lot about both parts of the PRS podcast, so the boys are considering just handing over the reins. Shit, he even knows what episode number we're on.It's a rare episode when there's not a NOFX song title involved, but this one goes way back in time with The Clash's "Career Opportunities" as a reference to shit jobs, success, and just getting things done in the face of a lot of competing goals.Since David has a real job (even closer to the actual work than Ron), we had a cool opportunity to talk about workplace safety as it's seen and lived with by folks doing work, especially those at the front line.David did 20 years of touring before Covid, and that's pretty rad. Except for the safety part. Nobody actually does that, apparently. It's the wild west, as David says, and shit happens as you might expect.There's a big difference between compliance and looking for high-performance safety, but the reality is that compliance is still important, even if it isn't the complete answer. The boys talk a little bit about the difference between awareness and something mattering, too. And tolerability - like the idea that if you choose to work here in a high-risk industry, you've basically said you accept some level of risk.Later in the discussion, all of those ideas tie together in a conversation about where expectations from customers fit in. Priorities - like getting a facility opened on time - mean safety drifts back to the old school view of production vs. protection, even when we're focused on more contemporary ideas. FSMM isn't meant to be the real deal, but there are times when it sure looks and feels like it is.Anyway, it's an episode focused on how tradeoffs materialize at work, how having multiple folks with checkbooks shapes safety, and where compliance fits into discussions about front-line work grappling with safety as an academic abstraction.Have fun, punkers!   DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

This week, the boys are talking about theory and practice, because, as the listener who submitted the question says, "fuck you, that's why."It's true, there's a lot of safety literature out there that's gotten more head-up-its-own-ass. Moralizing about safety is cool until it isn't, and the question is a good one (it was something like wanting to hear more about decision-making and doing things instead of recycling ideas as a career by itself).It can feel like things get way too academic and maybe even elite. That said, the boys argue that people don't need things "dumbed down" for them, either.The whole point of this little podcast is to be able to question things about safety. It seems like an awful lot of discussion, sometimes a little rowdy, is about whether something is "just theory" or if it's actually useful.Being useful is important, but asking who something is useful for is just as important. And being useful isn't something that just happens. It's based on theory, too.  So there's the thing. Dave brings up playing bass with only 2 or 3 strings, which means that even though the guitar company thinks they're important, Dave doesn't. The boys talk about making sure front-line folks have tools that work - but people work in other places, too. That gets back to the "Who is it useful for?" questions.Solid quote from Dave on this one, by the way: "Theory isn't just pontification, like people sitting around on whiteboards just making shit up, proposing stuff."Theory is observing patterns that actually happen in the world, and then trying to come up with models about why those patterns play out, and in what situations it matters. Otherwise, how do we build tools and predict those patterns in a way that's connected directly to work.So principles aren't theory. They're underlying values and guides for understanding.Does theory matter? Do principles matter? Yup.But as important as they are, theories and principles aren't solutions by themselves.Maybe that's the disconnect: treating principles as solutions. If you're into the whole work-as-imagined thing, that's pretty close to describing theory. There's some disagreement between the boys about starting with the theory vs. starting with observations in the organization. Here's where you probably ought to listen in to see how the conversation pans out.Arguing about what punk rock is can sometimes just get in the way of the music. The whole answer is never in the book. It's probably not only at the point of work either. Like the description of this stupid podcast says, do shit that works.  DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

"I think the context was kind of like, how do you go about trying to maybe introduce or convince your organization on some of the more contemporary ideas, when your organization is deeply rooted in zero harm and... Well, I think that's mostly it. Or something like that."  It's our first *official* episode dedicated to a listener question, and Dave totally nailed the summary with the leadoff quote.So what happens when people in authority are focused on zero? Well, for one, you name the episode after the band Authority Zero.It's not super constructive to come out and say that zero harm is stupid. Feel free to give it a go, but the boys wrestled with where it's okay to agree on the big ideas - like don't kill people at work - and have an adult conversation about differences in how we get there.To our listener's question, though, the boys had a pretty solid discussion on introducing some punk rock in a Backstreet Boy safety world. Making the cost of trying something new low is important. We don't need to burn all the boss's shitty records just to have them listen to something new.Focusing on deep discussions of principles is pretty lazy stuff, and then you get folks worried that we're saying harm is okay. It isn't, but maybe we should be focusing on asking leaders how, if it's zero harm or it's not zero harm, what does that mean for what's actually going to change in my organization? Are there unintended consequences of having aspirations of zero? And if there are (and there are), then what should we do differently to sort that out?  Getting to a discussion that's somewhere between shifting an entire worldview and being too far down in the weeds is a tricky balance, but we're trying to get to a middle ground. At least a little bit.The consensus seems to revolve around the idea that we don't have to lure leaders into the van with candy. It might just be that they haven't heard different ideas, and building from what they know to what they need is probably just fine. Maybe it isn't very punk rock, but not thrashing into a leader's office like we're in the mosh pit of contemporary safety is a better move.  DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

It was sort of like a NOFX show. People had the wrong time, Ron rolled in when he felt like it, a lot of friends were there, and a few hooligans showed up to make sure we actually did something.Seriously, though, thanks to the gang for ideas and discussion. It wasn't quite as messy as inviting Fletcher on stage, but we've got time to work up to it.With the faithful there (and Ron later on), the discussion started out by asking: "Is any of this actually new?" There is a sense sometimes that there's just a bunch of rebranding going on. Maybe that's something the people with real jobs see a little bit more of.Speaking of real jobs, David Strano wins the quote of the day with "Work fucking sucks sometimes." Amen.All of this talk about safety can get lost without acknowledging that not everybody thinks about safety like we do. They probably shouldn't, because it would be weird. That means what we do in the name of safety has to actually change the work for the better. It probably also means that if you're doing safety, you should also spend some time actually doing work if you can. Not just a simple shadow for a day. Actual real work, at as many levels and departments as you can.The boys - really the guests on stage - talked a bit about middle managers, too, and how they can maintain a connection to work while trying to support innovative ideas. Safety can seem like the opposite of innovation sometimes, right? Innovation is risky, so there was some talk about how we set people up for successfully testing new ideas, especially ones that affect the safety of work.Anyway, give it a listen. It's a nice break from Ron, Dave, and Ben all the time.  DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com