Does philosophy really have a place in work health and safety? Here’s what I discovered.   My earlier rejection of philosophy taught me how important philosophy actually is a conscious way of living and a competent approach to professional practice.   I might be wrong, but one thing philosophy does teach us, is that it’s worth getting curious about.  I certainly have become a better professional because of it.

Ep179 What I learned after rejecting philosophy, with Andrew Barrett

The Safety on Tap podcast is for leaders (yes, that's you!) wanting to grow themselves and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  We bring you free-flowing ideas, perspectives and stories from interviews with only the most interesting people - to help you take positive, effective and rewarding action.  Nice!

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Have you ever had an idea, or heard an idea, thinking it was brilliant, only to realise that the idea is not that new, and didn't come from where you thought it did? Welcome to the discipline of organisational psychology.    Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.    Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Welcome to you, you're in the right place.  If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.   Industrial and organisational psychology, or IO psych as it is often called, is well over 100 years old.  It was labelled as the exploration of 'real life' psychology. It's official birth is suggested to be 1913, with the publication of the first text on the subject called Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, by Hugo Munsterberg.   How is it that such a field, with 100 years of history and research and development, is not that familiar to most of us working in health and safety?   Well today I hope that will change just a little, as I dialogue with Diya Dey, an organisational psychologist based in Melbourne Australia. Diya has experience in both consulting and working in-house, and is currently in a organisational psychology role focussed on organisational wellbeing in the Victorian State Government.   When I first met Diya, I found her curious, and generous. A great combination in my book, so it was only natural that I would invite her into a conversation with the Safety on Tap community about how industrial and organisation psychology relates to, and can enhance, work health and safety.   Here's my conversation with Diya Dey:

Ep219: Aligned goals, broader approach - Organisational psychology, with Diya Dey

Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep218 You seem to have answers for everything, he said to me.  He was 100% right and 100% wrong at the same time.  This is a podcast about how that can be, and how you can engage with better answers. Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.  Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Welcome to you, you're in the right place.  If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.   Before you think that this episode will be a gratuitous brag about how good I think I am wrapped up in some parable of a story, stay with me for a few minutes.  When he said to me, 'you seem to have answers for everything', he WAS both right and wrong at the same time.                                                              He was right because to him, it did seem that I had answers for lots of the things we were talking about and working through in our coaching together.  He was wrong, because I wasn't really giving him answers in the way that questions are usually asked, or problems are usually solved with solutions.  What I was giving him was responses.  Responses to his question, to his story, to his context.  Responses aren't answers.  Responses are what we do when it's our turn, in a dialogue two or more people engage in a turn-taking exchange. Dialogue is an ancient word, very central to modern human experience, which comes from two Greek words put together: dia- translates to through, and logos translated to meaning, dialogos, or dialogue, the movement of flow of meaning through the people involved.  You can see turn taking all the time, which isn’t dialogue. It's more like tennis.  One person serves, another receives and returns the ball.  The object of tennis, and the object of a huge proportion of our interactions with other people, is to get to the end, to resolve the point, usually in favour of one person or the other.

Ep218: An answer for everything with Andrew Barrett

Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep217 What does it sound like, to have permission to not focus on certain things in health and safety? What one concept are we missing from risk management that makes a massive difference? Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.  Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Welcome to you, you're in the right place.  If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners. My guest today is Tim Lie.  Is he a safety professional? I ask him that, so you'll have to wait and see what he says.  What I can tell you is that his roles have included group HSE responsibilities, lifecycle alignment, culture, and capability.  You don't often hear those things in people's job titles, do you? I met Tim a while back when I was invited along to a national health and safety team workshop.  It took all of 2 minutes for me to be really curious about Tim.  He is broadly read, he has both a practitioner and academic background, he is an engineer who loves solving problems but is hyper tuned into the messy people side of business, and he talks in a way that gives you a deep insight into how his brain works, which is fascinating.  So that's why I wanted to introduce him to you! We had a wide ranging chat, dove deep on a few things but still covered a fair bit of ground.  I hope you enjoy, here's my chat with Tim Lie:

Ep217: Some nuances to safety professional practice with Tim Lie

Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep216 Radio, television, and the content we consume have changed enormously since I was a kid. This is a podcast about the physics, and the metaphor of this change and how we can change too, but only if we want to remain resonant.   Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.   Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Welcome to you, you're in the right place.  If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners. There used to be just a handful of TV stations, and a handful of radio stations. It was kind of easy as a kid, because the TV guide fit onto a single page in the newspaper, and the discussion about what to watch was easier because there were only a few options to choose from. Cartoons on Channel 7 on the afternoons we were allowed to watch TV, then Channel 2 at 6pm for the ABC news, on Wednesdays the highlight of the TV week was a bit of police drama with Blue Heelers on Channel 7 at 8.30, and Friday night football on Channel 9 kicked off the sporting entertainment of the weekend.  Bandwidth used to be a constraint.  On the radiomagnetic spectrum, there are only a limited number of frequencies which TV or radio could use to broadcast their content to you.  Even if you have a digital radio in your car or at home, you can still see the remnants of this bandwidth constraint, when a radio station includes a number in the name - Mix 106.5, 104.1 Today FM.  The number is the actual frequency (measured in Mega Hz for FM stations), the actual number of times the wave goes up and down per second.  That number meant it was easy for you to tune into the right station, to listen to what they had to offer, loud and clear.  If you were one point off, one tweak of the dial, and not only did you have the wrong frequency, you had garbled, snowy, or no radio content to listen to.   There is no doubt that the use of the radiomagnetic spectrum for communication, and its associated constraint of a limited number of frequencies, shaped our culture enormously.  Until the constraint disappeared.  With the internet we went from limited bandwidth to broadband - because we jumped off the radiomagnetic spectrum and entered a world of limitless channels to choose from, unlimited space for broadcast, and people who were more than happy to no longer be constrained to the 3 or 5 channels they used to have to choose from.

Ep216 Resonance and understanding, with Andrew Barrett

 Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep215   Are the ideas of science at odds with a humanist approach? Can we solve all the big problems with big data and analytics? Can you really succeed with tools and practices and not understand the philosophy behind them?   Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.    Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Welcome to you, you're in the right place.  If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.   The healthcare industry is one of the biggest growing in many economies around the world as population growth continues, more people are living longer, and advances in medical care and pharmaceuticals are preventing more and more illness and death than ever before.    Dr Satyan Chari has been hard at work in this sector for many years, and I've been trying to get him on the podcast for ages.  He is a great communicator, has done some cool collaborative improvement projects, and has always struck me as someone who knows his stuff but is anything but a know-it-all.    It's been a long time coming, and a little longer than usual, I hope you enjoy, here's Satyan: 

Ep179 What I learned after rejecting philosophy, with Andrew Barrett

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