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John Boyd and The OODA Loop

John Boyd and The OODA Loop John Boyd’s OODA loops are more than just an esoteric strategic concept; they’ve earned a huge following online and around the world. In this article, I highlight key points about OODA loops along with a glimpse into […]

January 18, 2024

In The Workplace · Newsletter · Psychological Safety

Telling the boss bad news twice.

Telling the boss bad news twice. Soon after I graduated from university with my degree in ecology, I got a job as an Experimentalist at Jealott’s Hill Research Station, Berkshire. I worked in a department called “Weed Science” (yes, it does […]

January 12, 2024

Create and Maintain · In The Workplace · Newsletter · Psychological Safety · Theory and Research

Can Workplaces Have Too Much Psychological Safety?

Team performance isn’t the only reason that we foster psychological safety. We also do it because we want people to feel fulfilled in their jobs, we don’t want people to leave a team because they don’t feel included, we want people to experience less unnecessary stress and have greater mental wellbeing, we want to foster greater diversity and inclusion. Ultimately, we foster psychological safety because it’s fundamentally the right thing to do.

January 5, 2024

Human Organisational Performance (HOP) · Psychological Safety · Theory and Research

Crew Resource Management and Psychological Safety

Crew Resource Management (CRM) and the Centrality of Psychological Safety Crew Resource Management (CRM) is widely lauded as one of the great breakthroughs in aviation safety. Before its inception, many accidents stemmed not from technical failures alone but from flawed […]

January 5, 2024

Create and Maintain · In Technology · In The Workplace · Learning and Development · Measure · Newsletter · Psychological Safety · Theory and Research

Psychological Safety in 2023: unwrapped!

Psychological Safety in 2023 Thanks so much for all your support, feedback, encouragement, ideas, insights and collaboration over 2023! It’s genuinely a privilege to be able to do this work, and I appreciate every single one of you. I recently […]

December 22, 2023

Human Organisational Performance (HOP) · In The Workplace · Newsletter · Psychological Safety · Theory and Research

The Theory of Constraints

The Theory of Constraints (ToC) A long time ago, I read a book that profoundly changed the way I think about work. That book was The Goal, written by Eli Goldratt in 1984, The story revolves around Alex Rogo, a […]

December 15, 2023

In The Workplace

The importance of safe-to-fail wargames

Guest post by Nick Drage, Strategy Lead and Game Designer at Path Dependence Limited, co-author of “The Handbook of Cyber Wargames: Wargaming the 21st Century”. At its most abstract level a wargame is a “representation of conflict or competition in […]

December 11, 2023

Create and Maintain · Human Organisational Performance (HOP) · In Technology · In The Workplace · Psychological Safety · Theory and Research

Retrospectives

Learning From Work In the spirit of looking back and learning, I thought it’d be nice to dive into a few different practices of learning from the work we do. In this issue, we’re going to have a look at […]

December 1, 2023

Newsletter · Psychological Safety

Selection Pressure and Psychological Safety

Selection Pressure and Psychological Safety Why has it taken so long for some industries to recognise the importance of psychological safety, whilst others have been doing it for decades? One possible answer: selection pressure. Over the past few decades, the […]

December 1, 2023

In The Workplace · Newsletter · Psychological Safety

The Adaptive Cycle and Self-Organised Criticality

The Adaptive Cycle This is a great paper for the ecological and complexity geeks, like me. The adaptive cycle: More than a metaphor. Thanks to Christina Bowen for sharing. The adaptive cycle is a conceptual framework used to understand the dynamics […]

November 24, 2023

Human Organisational Performance (HOP) · Newsletter · Psychological Safety

Normalisation of Deviance

The Normalisation of Deviance In previous articles we’ve differentiated error into three types: slips and lapses, mistakes, and violations. This time, we’re exploring a certain type of violation called the “normalisation of deviance”, a term coined by Diane Vaughan. We […]

November 24, 2023

Guide: Understand team effectiveness - project aristotle

Create and Maintain · In The Workplace · Psychological Safety

Project Aristotle: Guide to Team Effectiveness

Tool: Foster psychological safety We realised recently that the Google Project Aristotle page for their guide on team effectiveness and building psychological safety was 404’ing, so for anyone looking for it, we went over to the Way Back Machine and […]

November 21, 2023

Human Organisational Performance (HOP) · In The Workplace · Newsletter · Psychological Safety

Good Management Saves Lives

The Whitehall Studies and The Social Gradient of Health The relationship between seniority/status and psychological safety is strong. In general, we know that people holding more senior and higher status roles often feel safer speaking up in groups, and those […]

November 17, 2023

In The Workplace · Measure · Newsletter · Theory and Research

The State of Psychological Safety

Survey holding page

November 11, 2023

Human Organisational Performance (HOP) · In The Workplace · Newsletter · Psychological Safety

Queuing Theory, Slack and Utilisation.

We cannot adequately respond to changes, incidents or threats if we’re operating at capacity. And it applies to people, machines, computers, traffic and more – whether you’re running a factory floor, a busy kitchen, a software development team, or a hospital ER, percentage utilisation is impacting how well your team can adapt to a changing environment.

November 2, 2023

In The Workplace · Psychological Safety

(Don’t) Look me in the Eye: The Challenge of Eye Contact

Guest post by Navya Adhikarla, graduate student in the Master of Engineering Management program at Duke University (Don’t) Look me in the Eye: The Challenge of Eye Contact “Look me in the eye and tell me you are not lying,” […]

October 30, 2023

Human Organisational Performance (HOP) · In The Workplace · Newsletter

15/5 Reports

15/5 Reports To manage teams in a way that fosters psychological safety requires clear communication and feedback channels. Team members should have well-defined platforms to share achievements, voice concerns, and seek assistance. Ideally, these feedback mechanisms will be consistent, high-cadence and […]

October 27, 2023

In The Workplace · Newsletter · Psychological Safety · Theory and Research

Stuttering and Stammering

Stutters and Stammers I’ve written previously about my experience growing up with dyspraxia, which I was diagnosed with at an early age. My dyspraxia made it difficult for me to pronounce and articulate certain sounds (called phonemes), and meant that I […]

October 19, 2023

Human Organisational Performance (HOP) · In The Workplace · Newsletter · Psychological Safety

Deming’s 14 Points of Management

Deming’s 14 Points of Management I’m a Deming fan, and sad that I never got to meet him or attend any of his lectures. W. E. Deming is possibly most well known for his “PDCA” (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle, which is actually […]

October 13, 2023

In The Workplace · Newsletter · Psychological Safety

Bad Management

Bad Management It’s important that we learn from our own mistakes and failures, and self-reflect in order to improve. However, there’s also a lot we can learn from things others get wrong. That, after all, is partly why psychological safety is such […]

October 6, 2023

Human Organisational Performance (HOP) · In The Workplace · Newsletter · Psychological Safety

Psychological Safety #129: Crew Resource Management, Diversity of Thought, PSIRF and more.

Crew Resource Management In preparing for my conference talk this week, I was reading up further on the 1977 Tenerife disaster and the history of Crew Resource Management (CRM), and came across this excellent paper: The Evolution of Crew Resource Management Training […]

September 29, 2023

In The Workplace · Newsletter

Verbally Speaking Up at Work

Verbally Speaking Up at Work Speaking with a client this week, we surfaced an interesting organisational antipattern to psychological safety. Sometimes, within an organisation, there exists an unwritten rule: voice your concerns, but only do it verbally in a call or meeting where […]

September 22, 2023

In The Workplace · Psychological Safety · Theory and Research

“The limits of psychological safety: Nonlinear relationships with performance”

A Critique of “The limits of psychological safety: Nonlinear relationships with performance” Abstract:This critique examines the theoretical underpinnings, methodological design, measurement practices, and practical implications of “The limits of psychological safety: Nonlinear relationships with performance.” Drawing on insights from contributors […]

September 17, 2023