Circus of Safety Episode 2

Circus of Safety Episode 2 Transcript:

Well, boys, we’ve done it! We said we’d be back and here we are – Episode two of the Circus of Safety. How are we, Dez? How you going today? We’re doing well, thank you. Looking forward to the long weekend? Fantastic, yeah. Matariki weekend. Today is effectively, well, it might be Thursday; today is Friday, which is pretty cool. What about you, Andy? How you going? Good, good. Taking a few days off out in Wellington at the moment spending a bit of time with the family, up to Zoolander this afternoon and wife and son to Papa as we speak. Thank you for joining us there, Andy.

Hey, listen, yeah, no, it’s great. Loads been happening here with the team and the Circus of Safety. You’ll notice up in the top right-hand corner there, we’ve got… I don’t know if you’d call that a logo or a mismatch, but, I kind of pulled that together when preparing us to go live. We’re going to be on Spotify soon, so, so been a lot going on in that space. We’re gonna be on Patreon soon, so, you know, for those of you that want a bit more and a bit extra, we’re going to be going a lot onto Patreon, and we’ll be sharing details with you shortly.

We’ve got the Circus of Safety LinkedIn page. Really keen for you to jump in and join on that, which would be really great – help us get some likes and some followers and all those good things and start a wee bit of a community there so we can chat a bit more about these.  

And the one thing that’s been really awesome, we’ve just been talking about merchandise, so we are going to be launching merchandise. We don’t have a date on this yet, do we boys? Not yet but we’ve been benching around some good ideas. We’re not going to share them with you now because if we share them, we’re worried that this is going to be so successful that people are going to steal them and run with them and make millions of dollars out of this – because I guess why wouldn’t you, hey?

Hey there, just before we get over to the spinning wheel of death, yeah mate, how’s the last two weeks been for you? What have you been up to? Well, did a talk earlier this afternoon at the ends at ISM construction for and that was good, some is, they’re a good bunch and some good engagement on that, that was exciting, but apart from that, the other two weeks, it’s just been business as usual, I think. Yeah, fantastic, saving lives one-two strike at a time, right? That’s it, nice.

Now this is gonna be the exciting one, Dez. This is you and me living vicariously through this man’s worldly exploits – Mr. Evans. How’s the last two weeks been for you? School holidays, so I’ve been taking it easy, hanging with the family. I guess the big thing was the public release of the fence report on Friday last week into the motorway fatalities. So, have some positive feedback around that, which is good – always nerve-wracking handing those reports in and waiting for the feedback, but I’m fairly proud of what we’ve done there. No, excellent, no. It’s, I was fairly proud for you.

I happened to be having lunch with a friend of mine – a volunteer firefighter based out of Kumeu – who knew the guys involved in that and actually was out there herself on the night in question, and I know that the community, the volunteer firefighting community, has been learning with anticipation for that report. So no doubt some light reading for all of us over the weekend. I can’t wait to have a read.

Last two weeks for me, already, don’t tell my boss this, but I don’t think I’ve been doing sweet fa, really. Been designing logos, adding to the spinning wheel of death. Yeah, it’d really just kind of working out how to take this to the next level, but the truth is I’ve been working as well. I’ve been quite good. We’re really looking to integrate the way we do safety just in the way we do business, which has been really cool, and been doing going through the last really two weeks have been annual reviews and engaging with over 50 of our staff face to face, having conversations about…

What’s working for them, what we can do to help them, and what we can do to improve them? And, uh, the cool thing for me is we didn’t talk about safety once, but we talked about safety the whole time, uh, which was really cool. So fantastic. Okay, gentlemen, well, hey, enough chit-chat. We don’t have a lot of time because we’re going to wrap this up at four o’clock because it’s a long weekend.

Deez wants to head off, no doubt. Andy, well, looks like you’ve got to go join your family at Te Papa. And, I gotta go to the spinning wheel of death team, and let’s see what the topic of the day is going to be. Oh, here we go, exciting times! There we go, there we go, and this is a fuss! We’re not supposed to get there till six months’ time. Oh, wow, what, why leave the hard stuff till later? Alright, so, if you didn’t see that, oh, actually really quickly, did you hear the music? Yes, loved it. Have we got a license for it? Does anyone know a good lawyer, a good one? No, looking for a good lawyer. Okay, I’ll take any lawyer, do I do any lawyers, getting desperate?

Okay, so, if you’re not sure what that just landed on, safety two or the new view. This is definitely not rigged. So, the whole concept with the spinning wheel of death, if you’re not familiar with it, and I don’t know why you would be because this is only episode two, but, over the time, over the two weeks that between shows, we are constantly messaging each other, updating each other, coming across things in the real world that we operate in, and we’re adding them as topics to the spinning wheel of death, also referred to as SWAD.

Now that is cool. So then what happens is, with the spinning wheel of death as we grow the sort of list of safety topics that we want to talk about within and go live with the spinning wheel of death, and we spin it, and whatever topic it lands on, we then spend the next 40 or so minutes discussing our thoughts or the like on onset topic. This is not rigged, we have not prepared any of this conversation that’s about to take place. So, Dez, can you just run through our legal term, please,   are a disclaimer, is that what you’re after?

Yes, constitutes legal advice. Fantastic. Act on it, you need to seek specific legal advice for your specific circumstances. That should do it. Awesome. Thank you, Dez. Appreciate that. So, there’s our disclaimer, we’re into it.

So, uh, do I have a raise of hands, who wants to have a crack at this first? What do we think, Safety Two, the new view? How about I start with the question? Do we think they’re the same thing? Are they the same thing? Can I start with a more fundamental question? Oh, yeah, oh, God, here we go. You know the whole point of this thing, Andy, is that we stick absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. So, as usual, so who’s read the book, Eric Hollnagel? Ah, okay, starting point to talk about it. Hey, let’s, well, let’s take it away, Andy. Take it away, but the answer is yes, I have read it. I’ve read it three times.

Well, it sounds like you’re an expert on the topic because I’ve not read it once. Dez, have you, have you even heard of the book Safety One, Safety Two? I have heard of it, I haven’t read it. I’m gonna take Andy’s read it three times, so I’ll take one of them. Cool. Okay, hey, can I take the other one? Yeah, here we go on everything. We’ve all read it once, but we all, I’m sure we’ve all heard of, Eric and the work that he’s doing in the space. And so, Andy, what are your thoughts on the book?

It’s like a lot of, I recall legal’s books, very interesting ideas, often a little bit convoluted, I find. But I think it’s where he’s going with this very interesting concept, and I don’t think it’s really about safety. And, I was fortunate enough a number of years ago to take Everett Nickel out for dinner, and,   as you do, and along with Money Hoggers, of course, you’ve both, no money.  You’re forgetting somebody else.

Oh, and Karen as well, Karen from,   yeah,   kids, yeah, she was cool. Yeah, so we had a lovely, uh, we had a lovely dinner. I actually paid for it, and it was such a great opportunity to talk to him about Safety Two and resilience engineering, and my favourite, and, one of the things that struck with me was that he was getting a little bit concerned, that’s about three years ago, just before COVID, and,   he was getting a little bit concerned that it becomes Safety One versus Safety Two when, in reality, that was never the intention of it, and he was more saying that at the time, calling it Safety Two was what he really meant, because it served a purpose, but with hindsight, you wish he’d sort of called it something a little bit different because it’s more to do with organizational

Learning and things like that, rather than safety per se, as we would if we would understand. So, I think that that’s an interesting, interesting aspect of it. And if you actually go on Eric Holnagel’s website, I think he’s called, and look at more of his recent work, he actually has a paper in there that reinforces that idea. But it’s not really about Safety I or Safety II; it’s about these two elements of safety working together to create this harmony. So, you know, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the work that he’s done. I think it’s quite good and quite insightful, but I think the way it’s been portrayed by certain elements is perhaps not helpful.

I think it looks like the connection in Wellington is running out, or is it my connection? To me, that last sentence by Andy was weird. Oh, okay, well maybe it’s time we kept them quiet. But yeah, listen, I got the gist of what he was saying there, and Andy, I tend to agree. I think that’s one of the things that’s really, really concerned me, and I know it’s been the basis of a number of our conversations along the way, is it seems to have become this tug of war between effectively, as you’ve identified, Safety I versus Safety II.

And I know something that we’ve been talking about, how about we just get on and do safety right? So, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s specifically one or the other, I guess, and that’s been the challenge and some confusion. Any thoughts from you to lead into this topic?”

Yeah, my thoughts kind of mirror Andy’s. Where Andy mentioned, because I’ve never really understood the tug of war between Safety I and Safety II. It doesn’t make sense to me because they’re just tools and, you know, sometimes you will direct a worker to follow steps in a procedure, and other times you’ll be asking your worker for their view on what’s the best course of action. And that just depends on the circumstance. It’s got nothing to do with whether one’s a better approach or not; it just depends on the circumstance.

So, you know, I see sometimes the debate on LinkedIn or in other forums where people describe themselves as a Safety II practitioner, and I don’t really understand it, and I would like to understand why they would describe themselves that way because, to me, it seems like to make an analogy, it would be like a carpenter describing themselves as a hammer and nails carpenter and they’re against drills and screws. Why? But they’re just tools that you talk it. Why would you use the best tool for the job at the time? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Yeah, no, no, fantastic. And I’m starting to think back to our conversation two weeks ago. Is this possibly something similar along the lines of how do you go, also, I guess one of my things that’s going through my mind is how do you get beyond compliance if you haven’t even necessarily got to compliance, right?

So, and does the same thing sort of apply here? I mean, if you’ve got a situation where individuals or workers, people that are doing, you know, at the end, if you haven’t actually managed to nail down the basic approach to safety and the processes around what effectively would be known as Safety I, how do you get to Safety II? I mean, it presents an interesting concept. Like at some stage, depending on where you are on your journey, I guess you’ve got to start somewhere, right?

And until we get that the concepts and the basic understanding and the education and the learning and some systems to start with, how do you then get to the next level? Do you think it’s as simple as that, like maybe, you know, how do you, how do you, I mean, can you go from nothing because there are still some organizations out there that I guess are doing nothing, that have got some really low levels of process or safety or whatever you want to call it, and go straight to Safety II? Or, it doesn’t have to be a journey for one, for a better description, from one to the other? Or any thoughts around that?”

Oh, again, it goes back to how you define things, and this is what I think a lot of debates happen around. This is that things aren’t clearly defined up front, so then you people end up talking across purposes or just having conversations, the conversation’s sake, ironically, which is quite interesting, but it doesn’t actually achieve you anything or get you anywhere. And I think that you need to do Safety I before Safety II.

I mean unless you’ve clearly quantified what Safety I and Safety II are, I think it’s, you know, it’s a nice conversation to have, but you need to be able to define it clearly before you can have a discussion about it.

Have, but it doesn’t really help the bigger picture, and you almost start addicted by calling them out separately or without defining them, you’re adding sort of fuel to that fire of that debate and that confrontation between the two. When in my mind, and again, there are lots of different definitions of this, but if we can define some basic terms up front, so for me, the management of hazards is what safety is all about.

Now, how you do that doesn’t really matter, but that’s fundamentally what safety is – the management of hazards to minimize harm and exposure to people. Now you can dress that up however you want, but fundamentally, you can’t do safety if you don’t know what your hazards are, and that’s what you’ve got to get back to. And whether you call that Safety I, Safety II, or Safety 10 doesn’t really matter, but you can’t do safety if you don’t know what your hazards are, you know, and that’s a fair call.

And then I guess it’s about keeping, you know, as I guess that’s another great question. Do we feel, and I guess, I’d love to get your thoughts on this, do we feel this whole different terminology around Safety I, Safety II (I know your thoughts around the toolbox, which again was a great analogy) but do you think its creating confusion?

Do you think it’s causing uncertainty out there amongst people that already think safety is over bureaucratic and a waste of time? And this whole rigmarole or whatever? Any do we think that maybe, yeah, the terms are causing confusion and frustration potentially even out there amongst the general user?”

Yes is my short answer, I think, and like what we spoke about last time we did this is I think it’s a distraction. I think this big debate around Safety I and Safety II, just get in there and figure out what your hazards are, use all the tools in your toolkit to make it work, and get on with the job. It doesn’t mean anything exactly, and I mean, no one, I guess we went back to, you know, when we spoke about it two weeks ago, we talked about how do we actually understand if we’ve even achieved compliance, and we spoke about going into the, you know, effectively having to go into a court and be judged by a judge as to whether we’ve done everything that’s reasonably practicable and we’ve met, you know, the letter of the law for a wanted a better description that nobody in their right mind is going to stand up and say, ‘Well, you know, hey, listen, it’s okay, we were practicing Safety I,’ or ‘Hey, it’s okay, we were practicing Safety II,’ right?

It’s about doing everything that we can to do that, and I guess like you said, there’s another great point, is for throwing out a whole bunch of analogies there as I’m writing and frantically updating the spinning wheel of death, I’m going to put out a thought there. Do we think then, and Andy, it’d be great to get your thoughts on this, is it creating as effectively the different terms, creating safety clutter, for one of a better term, let’s try that in the mix?”

I agree with Dez, it’s a distraction from the core principles of what we’re trying to achieve. So, I think that when we start, what we’re trying to achieve is these two aspects to it. There’s one about understanding the hazards and actually managing the hazards and reducing risk. The second part is how you do that in an organizational context because I think one’s quite easy. You know, you can look at the hazards, you can see we can put these controls in place. That’s what we would classify as risk management.

Relatively straightforward when it becomes complex is why you’re trying to maintain that within an organizational context. You know, that’s a harder thing to do than say when you work in a height, you need edge protection. That’s quite straightforward. And I think if we try and keep things as sort of simple as that, and you can call them whatever you want, but it’s much better to call them things that mean things to people because then you get that engagement and that buy-in. Like the problem we’ve got is that we work in safety day in day out, but unfortunately, most people that do safety aren’t safety people, if that makes sense. You know, safety is just a small part of that role, or they would perceive it to be a small part of that role, and therefore, that’s that really should be the audience of all this sort of stuff.

Safety 1, Safety 2, I don’t think would happen between the supervisor and a manager on a building site or a construction site, for example. So, you know, it becomes sort of that, I mean, I just got visions of sort of Parisian cafes and people smoking nasty cigarettes philosophizing about the world. You know, it’s The sort of, it’s that domain of the safety people that talk about this,   and the really, I think safety people will be much better off working within organizations to help simplify systems, processes, and build engagement, rather than making it potentially more complex or them sound cool.

And then, as did these alluded to, right? I guess when and they’re doing that and supporting those organizations and supporting those people out there doing the work, using their entire toolbox, right? I mean, it makes sense, though. I guess too, I really like Jesus and Andy, and maybe because we’re both in construction, I don’t know, but, you know, you, why would you only use half your toolkit when you’re trying to do something, right?

You wouldn’t. It doesn’t make sense. You’d use everything available to you. And now, again, maybe do we think possibly is it maybe our lack of understanding around this whole safety one, safety two conversation, and it’d be great to get a safety two practitioner on the show to maybe enlighten us around us.

Does anyone know what there’s a few of them bantering around on LinkedIn that are engaged? I mean, listen, they’re great people, right? Let’s say it’s all about learning. Let’s not take that away. We’d have a great herd out of Pub or something and have a yarn. But I mean, maybe, are we, do you think possibly there’s a chance that we are misunderstood?

Because the three of us seem to be on the same page around there appears to be this perception that it’s safety one versus safety two or safety one or safety two. Do you think that we’ve actually got it wrong, and we are misunderstanding what this is all about? Maybe, maybe it actually is about the whole lot. I don’t know. Is there a chance that we’ve got it wrong and almost understood it? Yeah, I’m open to the idea that I’ve misunderstood it.

I’m relying on what I’ve seen on LinkedIn. I haven’t read the book, but I’ll be interested in anything. I’ve got a copy. I’ve got a copy of the book. I can pass it over to you guys. Thank you. It’s got some notes in it. Well, hey, listen, I’m gonna put it out there. I’m gonna put the call out. I’m gonna put the shout out. The Eric Hollnagel himself, can we get Eric on the show? Like, it’ll be really cool. I mean, listen, why not? Let’s put it out there. Between the three of us, surely we know more than three others. You might be listening.

No, I’m linked in with him quite frankly. He very well could be. I mean, we don’t know. I mean, Eric, if you’re listening, shout out to you. Give us a like or something. But hey, listen, why don’t we try? I mean, listen, Andy, you’ve had dinner with the man. Fish, if you’re interested, let’s reach it out.

So listen, if anyone knows Eric, I don’t know where in the world he is right now, but listen, let’s reach out. Let’s try to get Eric on the show because it’d be great. It’d be really awesome because I think the concerning thing is, I’d like to think the three of us were relatively, let’s just go, the three of us are educated to some extent. Right?

We’ll stick with that. We’ll keep it simple. I’d like to think the three of us are relatively worldly and in our view around this topic. And I’d like to think the three of us were relatively practically based individuals. And in saying all that, if the three of us have possibly got the concept of what this all is and how this is all supposed to work, are wrong, then surely there’s a concern that the masses have got this wrong, right?

I mean, surely we can’t be the three stupidest people on the universe, right? So yeah, I reckon let’s reach out to the stars. I’ve thrown your boys under the bus. Yeah, I’m dragging you down with me. We’re going to go hunting and stalking Eric. And let’s see if we can get him on the show.  And if we can’t get Eric because, we don’t have enough pulling powerless and we’ll take anybody, really.

So, if there’s any safety two practitioners out there that would like to join us, maybe in a fortnight’s time, we can relive the same topic and have that conversation around enlightening us into how the concept works.

Because I’ve got another question for you guys, and we, we sort of started touching on this a couple of weeks ago when we actually chucked this topic up on the spinning wheel of death, and that was safety two, slash the new view. Are they the same thing? Are they different things?

Any thoughts around that? Can I just, say for anybody that’s interested, if you, there’s a website, see if it’s called Safety Synthesis.com, it’s part of Eric Hollnagel’s websites and just as part of that, he says the term safety one and safety two have been useful to make a point that it is possible to look at safety from a different perspective.

 The problem, however, is that the meaning of the word ‘safety’ in safety two has little to do with the traditional interpretation of safety. It would, therefore, be useful to find a term that on one hand represents the safety two perspective, but I think that avoids the use of the six letters. If, luckily, such a term exists, it’s ‘sinus.’

So he talks about ‘sinus.’ Now, he’s from 2019, so from the 11th of November 2019, Eric Hollnagel, who authored safety two, safety 162, is actually pushing to cease using the term ‘safety two’ and move towards using the term ‘safety sinuses,’ which I thought was interesting. Wow, I don’t think I could say that. Probably ‘sinuses,’ okay.

Now I’m even more confused. I’ve got something for you that might throw us a spanner in the works, not on that point, but on the whole safety two, new view safety. And that is a recent decision from the New South Wales District Court.

It was Safe Work New South Wales v. Southern Meats 2023, New South Wales District Court 204, and the court emphasized in that the importance of taking disciplinary action when workers do not conform to the established procedures. Now we talk about compliance and moving beyond compliance, but there’s a clear indication from the court in Australia, which will be influential in New Zealand in a big way, that taking disciplinary action against employees when they fail to follow the correct process is an important step in meeting your duty and doing everything reasonably practicable.

So what does that mean for safety two and new view safety? Well, I guess it depends. And that’s where, like, it’ll be great to get a practitioner of this concept to help us understand. Is it all in or is it actually really a combination of the two that they are applying? Because I guess that would indicate you’d have to have those sort of, you know, those rules and those procedures in place.

Yeah, so maybe we need, that’s, I guess, highlights even more so the importance of maybe getting whatever getting somebody on that could enlighten us as to the actual back-end workings of how these concepts work. So again, if someone is listening, it’d be great to get Eric’s view on this, but also any other practitioners, if you want to jump on in a fortnight, it’ll be back to our Friday morning slot in two weeks’ time, uh, let us know.

We’d love to have you on the show, and you could enlighten us more. Because you raise a valid point there, there’s a week is that then the legal requirements, I guess, fighting the application of how we’re trying to manage it, right, and how we’re trying to support our people, which becomes a real interesting dilemma when you’re trying to, you know, when you’ve had the unfortunate experience of having something happen and trying to defend yourself from a legal context, right, which is not what we want to be doing, but unfortunately sometimes if that’s what happens, then we’ve got to go and… So then how do you blend those two things together, right?

How do you, can you go down that road of having to discipline workers for not following procedures, regardless of how they’ve been developed, and still maintain a concept of using learning and working safety New View approach, or can you not? Yeah, that’d be really interesting to get somebody to enlighten us, I guess, a bit more. It was, I think, again, I go back to my usual drawing on it will be cleaned off some very clear definition. It’d be good to have some clear definitions of what these terms actually mean because, you know, if Mr. Hollnegel or Professor Hollnagel, as they’re saying, that he doesn’t really like the term safety two that he invented anymore, then it begs the question why we’re still using it if the inventor of it doesn’t like it anymore. Good point.

And I don’t know if we’re going to have enough time today to discuss in detail, and maybe again, we can wait for that next show where we managed to get either Eric himself or a safety two practitioner on board about the difference between safety two and the new view safety. I’m really interested to understand this new view. Is it actually, is it actually new? Is what we’re trying to apply here maybe it’s new in a safety context?

I don’t know, but is it new to the world, you know? I’ve got some more questions. I’m fascinated to like you’re in a bus terminal, mate? No, I’ve, I’ve, and I was in a quiet part of a hotel. Oh, okay, well, it’s suddenly not so quiet, fair enough, fair enough. The other,   uh, yeah, because I’ve got a, uh, yeah, I had a whole bunch of fascinating questions that I still would like to explore on this topic, but we’ve been going now for about 30 odd, odd minutes’ time, and I think it’s time to sort of draw it to a close.

And maybe I’ll leave this topic on the spinning wheel of death, just give it one more go around if it so chooses, and we feel the need to,   but yeah, be great to get somebody from the safety two practitioner aspect of it to help us understand this concept a bit more and help us educate ourselves as well as the hundreds of thousands of people, no doubt tuning into this live stream on the eve of our Matariki weekend.

So is there anything exciting planned for the weekend? Well, we know what Andy’s up to, so what are you up to for the weekend, Des? Gripping life I lead. I might have the opportunity to mow the lawn with a bit of dry weather, and I think only those people living in New Zealand would understand how valuable that would be right now, right? That’s another hard problem, it’s just, yeah.

So I’m looking forward to some nice weather, the forecast is looking good. Oh, fantastic. I’d love to talk about that to understand where all this water is coming from. I tell you what, it’s phenomenal.   Andy, how long are you in Wellington for, and anything else exciting planned? Flying out at 6:30 tonight back up to Auckland, and I’m gonna do some work tomorrow, oh, that’s a public holiday, but I’ve got to do some marking, some of my diploma, may be diploma students are getting a bit impatient.

Oh, fair enough, fair enough. Uh, yeah, I’m looking forward to, I’m going to be kind of continuing to maybe spend some time with the family, which will be great, and build continues to build on the safety, might look to produce some show notes and some learnings to take away, and keep updating the LinkedIn page, so no doubt an invigorating weekend, and also need to get into my lawns and give them a low, so look forward to that, maybe a Sunday afternoon job as we go along.

So, as always, guys, it’s been a pleasure. Hopefully you found the conversation insightful, hopefully everyone else has found the conversation insightful and yeah, we’ll post that link up there’s in the chat, too, on the LinkedIn page, so we can get people talking about it and get their thoughts. So, as always, please leave us messages, let us know what you’d like to add to the spinning wheel of death, otherwise, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you in a fortnight. Thank you, see you then.