Are you at the Sharp End or the Blunt End? Most people who’ve been to school (and many who haven’t!) have strong opinions about education. Understandably so – education speaks to how we raise our children, what we value as […]
Human Organisational Performance (HOP)
Human and Organisational Performance (or Potential) is based on five principles, originally defined by Dr Todd Conklin, in his book, “The Five Principles of Human Performance“.
These five principles shape and influence the way organisations think, act, view success and respond to failure. These five principles are integrative and work together to change the way we think about work and how to improve it.
1. People make mistakes
2. Blame fixes nothing
3. Context drives behaviour
4. Learning is vital
5. Response matters
The Amagasaki Derailment In our workshops and training, we often use real-world stories as a way to explore the dynamics of both failure and success. Stories are a powerful tool to help us reflect on our own experiences, and sometimes […]
How you respond matters. “Everything you do is important to your organization. People are watching you. The people in your organization determine how to move forward after both successful work and how to recover after failure by watching how you […]
By Jade Garratt In our experience, the most effective lever for increasing psychological safety within a team is flattening the power gradient – the gap between those with the most power and those with the least. In practice, this usually […]
The Speaking up Myth By Jade Garratt In the world of psychological safety, we focus a lot, maybe even too much, on the speaking up side of the equation. How do we make sure people speak up with their ideas, […]
Typologies of Power In a few previous newsletters, we’ve gotten into power dynamics, power gradients, “power over” vs “power for” and “power to” (see Mary Parker Follett). Steep power gradients are the number one inhibitor of psychological safety, and addressing […]
The Fundamental Attribution Error We address the Fundamental Attribution Error in most of our workshops, particularly our Feedback ones, because it’s such a common bias and it causes so many problems. Essentially, the Fundamental Attribution Error occurs when we attribute […]
By Jade Garratt When was the last time someone told you something you already knew? How did it make you feel? Edgar Schein opens his book “Humble Inquiry” with a story about his own experiences of this while out walking. […]
Ten Ways to Foster Psychological Safety in the Workplace We’ve been reflecting on our last few years of experience delivering psychological safety workshops, training and consultancy in organisations around the world. Based on all those wonderful experiences, working with industries […]
Human and Organisational Performance (or Potential) is based on five principles, originally defined by Dr Todd Conklin, in his book, “The Five Principles of Human Performance“. These five principles shape and influence the way organisations think, act, view success and […]
Non-Violent Communication (or “Giraffe Language”) I saw this great post by Robin Weinick on LinkedIn about her bowl of tiny giraffes, and it reminded me to share a photo of our own “Speak Up Giraffe”! This giraffe is passed around […]
Types of Silence The authors of this literature review “Silence in organizations and psychological safety” from 2015, describe a number of group dynamics that can lead to silence, and more interestingly, describe a few different types of silence, drawn from […]
Psychological safety is about creating a climate in which we feel able to take interpersonal risks in order to communicate our ideas, concerns and issues – and we want to be able to speak up in a way that we […]
How psychological safety captured the world’s attention For a while, from around 1999 to 2014, the term ‘psychological safety‘ was relatively well known in academia, but barely mentioned, let alone understood in the world of practice, the world of work […]
Introduction As a result of the ever-increasing scale and complexity of healthcare systems, hierarchies and layers of management have become increasingly necessary (Kumar, 2021). These facilitate operational capability, both in terms of scale and complexity, but also lead to sometimes […]
A few issues ago, we covered various kinds of retrospective – the practice of looking back and learning from work, as well as some of the conditions and requirements for effective retrospectives. One of those points was about the “weak […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
AKA: The Normalisation of Risk 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. […]
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 […]
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.
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 […]
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