Continued from page 1
HOW DO YOU TEACH ‘GUT INSTINCT’?
“Go back to when you were in an unfamiliar situation,” Lorna tells workers in high-hazard industries. “Think of how a dog or child behaves. When my dog runs down to
beach in morning and sees a rubbish bag, she’ll sniff, circle it, even bare her teeth until she’s sure it’s safe. Well that’s what these engineers need to learn how to do, to 'sense' when something has changed.”
“When you’re working in a high-hazard industry,” she says, “if you go into a work situation, and there’s something coming at you that makes you feel funny - an almost imperceptible smell, a feeling, in an explosive factory it could be a change in humidity - just some change that you sense, rather than see, don’t ignore it. If you get a gut feeling something isn’t right, pay attention to that, act on that. And intuition can be honed by just practising and noticing.”
HUMAN ERROR
Lorna says her major interest is what makes people ‘tick.’ This includes helping people understand themselves better, work together in groups and teams, and also human error - why do people have accidents and why some people more than others?
“I’m interested in helping companies understand their people in both normal working situations as well as in crises,” she says. “Clients everywhere - Thailand, Amsterdam, Germany, US, Australia, South Africa - people are interested in learning more about themselves and others, and how to work better together, how to work more safely, more harmoniously, more productively.”
Lorna met recently with two partners she’d introduced because they were so different. “The steam was rising,” she said. “One of them wanted details, figures. The intuitive partner kept forgetting to tell her partner two days in advance that something was coming up.”
“When you’re under stress,” Lorna says, “you fall into your hole,” and Lorna knows people under stress. “People aren’t just different,” she added, “They’re more different than you can ever imagine.”
But as with partners above, being reminded of their differences and how valuable these differences are to their business - having awareness raised - helps get back on track. At end of day, it's understanding people and helping them manage themselves which is key.
INNOVATING IN A TIME OF PERPETUAL CHANGE
“We help companies move forward and innovate in a time of perpetual change; TOP-SET® is specifically a thinking system, a key to investigating accidents, to solving that particular type of problem. But companies often ask us to assist them in thinking their way through other issues, to help them create, and to innovate.” Lorna says. “It’s very successful.
I would imagine a programme such as this one would have wide-ranging, positive effects in an organization, and Lorna confirmed that it does.
“We’ve found when a company is honestly investigating an incident, and regulatory bodies are aware of that, then they’re less likely to prosecute. The most important thing, though, is that employees feel valued and cared about when such attention is paid to their safety. And it works. It’s now safer to be on an oil rig than in your own home.”
Is it safe at your workplace, physically and emotionally?
©Susan Dunn, http://www.susandunn.cc , The EQ Coach. To learn more about Top-set®/Incident Investigation System, go here: http://www.top-set.com . For free incident/accident investigation advice, go here: http://www.top-set.com/freesadvice.shtml .
