Safety on Tap

I know her personally, we were part of a business group a few years ago.

Having gotten far more focussed and proactive with my overall financial goals and position in recent years, I asked this Financial Planner to come over and help us plan our finances.

We prepared a lot, laid it all out - mortgage situation, credit, assets, a business, a family trust, a farming partnership, superannuation (401k), insurances, cash position, investments.....it was all there.

I wanted the Financial Planner to help challenge and refine our Financial Plans.

I was confused when she kept suggesting that we really should buy more shares, and certainly move our insurances somewhere else. I just wanted a few hours of planning help I would gladly pay for.

She left saying she would send some info, and I actually didn't hear from her.

It turns out the Financial Planner isn't interested in helping people with their financial planning, but to push them towards products and services for which they get a commission.

Call me naive, I was still surprised. And I didn't get what I wanted.

So I laughed when today's email said 'We've got solutions for all your finance needs' - EXCEPT THE ACTUAL PLANNING PART OF FINANCIAL PLANNING.

My guest today is Antony Malmo.

Antony is a self described Wellbeing Smuggler, Jargon Cutter, Systems Wrangler, and C-suite Whisperer. He's a director at Allos Australia, an organisation that approaches workplace mental health systemically; from EAP support and Psych Health and Safety, to Leadership & Strategy. He studied ecosystem science and psychology at University, and then abandoned both those career paths to spend almost a decade working with businesses in Colombia (South America), in the late 2000s, as it emerged from the world's long-running civil war. Ever since, he's been trying to understand how communities build resilience, how businesses can flourish amid uncertainty, and what the future of mental health will look like.

I like the way Antony thinks, how he connects the dots between ideas, and love how generous he is and really wanted to have a deep-dive conversation with him. Instead of keeping that to myself, I wanted you to be part of it too, so here it is, my chat with Antony Malmo:

So what's the beliefs, assumptions, and images we have that make sense of our thoughts and behaviour here? Is it that war is bad? That military aggression is unacceptable? Maybe, but it doesn't explain our blindness to so many other things equally as objectionable and far more prolonged.

No, we have different kinds of assumptions and beliefs and images about how the world works, and when those get violated. And we often don't even know about them ourselves.

We'll call these mental models.

What if you could better guide your organisation on what's most important, and be more confident about the results you can deliver? That's what today's guest is asking of all of us, assuming that's the kind of professional we want to be.

My guest today is Professor Rob Briner, and he has had a bee in his bonnet about what people like us do, in part because of what people like Rob do. He'll explain more in a minute.

Rob is Professor of Organisational Psychology at Queen Mary University of London and at Bjørknes University College Olso Nye Høyskole, Visiting Professor Birkbeck University of London, and Cofounder & Scientific Director Center for Evidence-Based Management.

Rob's been working at bridging the sometimes enormous chasm between the actual decisions and priorities and programs people like us bring into organisations, and the evidence-based things that actually work to make things better inside organisations.

That's what he and his colleagues call evidence-based management.

And as I quickly found out, this is not about finding the 'right' answer quicker, it's about a mindset and a discipline of professional practice which I think is very well-aimed at people like us.

What words do you know people use to describe you, or your team? Not words you'd like them to say, but words they have actually said and you've heard directly or second hand?

Gandhi did it with walking and without food. Michael Pollan did it with food and a book. Al Gore did it with a film. Dave Grohl did it with Youtube in 2020, and Dave Provan did it with words in 2018. Each of them, in defence of something important. And so must you.

The word defence usually conjures up three different things for people. Either, synonyms to do with the armed forces, war, and conflict, OR, playing defence in a sporting sense where there is an attacking side (again, very military-Esque), OR, being or feeling or acting defensively in the face of a personal attack. Like a conflict.

Do any of those resonate with you as a part of your professional practice? Unfortunately, probably.

But that's not what I'm talking about today.

Today, I want you to begin to think about yourself as a defender. But not any old defender, not like the images we talked about a moment ago. No, You must be in defence, you must be a defender, like these people.

There is an enormous amount of talk about new safety approaches, in theory, compared to implementation in practice. But implementation does exist, it does show promise, and it can be done at scale.

My guests today are First Officer Bogomir Glavan and First Officer Nicholas Peterson from American Airlines Learning and Improvement Team.

This team is hyper-generous, part of their DNA is to write papers, do presentations, and speak at conferences to share their work, in the hope that it does two things: first that it helps other people, and second that it helps them improve what they are doing through that collaborative process of learning, getting feedback, and reflecting.

This conversation was pretty wide-ranging, we talk about the historical beginnings of this Safety II-informed approach to learning and improvement, and how it both differs from and compliments conventional approaches to safety.

The bottom line is this: these people are doing some of the most advanced operational learning and Safety-II in practice in the world. And just because you don't work for an airline, doesn't mean you can't either.

I'll talk you through the best way to take these amazing insights into action after the conversation, so stick around for that.

All forward-thinking leaders are interested in strategy. But what, exactly, is the purpose of strategy?

This is the first podcast out for 2022 so for new-release listeners, happy new year!

This year I'm getting far more focussed and intentional to bring you insights from the coaching work I do with health and safety professionals, and I'll tell you why that's like gold: it's bloody lonely doing our work. It doesn't matter whether you are the frontline safety supervisor or the head of safety, I have been gobsmacked to see this theme emerge from our work - we feel alone, often unsupported like we don't have others on our side, and certainly, we rarely have people to talk with who understand..

Let's talk about Linkedin, humanity, and being salesy.

I am connected with tens of thousands of people, in some direct way. Whether that's someone who was seen me speak, been in a workshop, listened to my podcast, or connected on social media.

All of those are one-degree of separation, there is a direct link between me and them, between me and you.

Jerry Muller wrote a phenomenal book called the Tyranny of Metrics, which he opens by saying "the title is not meant to convey the message that metrics are intrinsically tyrannical, but rather that they are frequently used in ways that are dysfunctional and oppressive". And that, by friends, is a fitting way to begin this awesome dialogue about safety indicators and metrics. Let's begin.