KPIs OKRs or whatever they are called in your organization are about good data. This week we talk about data and how it is used to guide leadership
KPIs OKRs or whatever they are called in your organization are about good data. This week we talk about data and how it is used to guide leadership
Welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. Your host is Dr. Mark French marks passion is helping organizations motivate their teams. This podcast is focused on bringing out the best in leadership through creating strong values, learning opportunities, teamwork, and safety. Nothing is more important than protecting your people. Safety creates an environment for empathy, innovation, and empowerment. Together, we'll discover meaning and purpose through shaping our safety culture. Thanks for joining us this episode. And now, here is Dr. Mark French. Welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast, I am your host, Dr. Mark French. And wow, I'm so happy you've joined me welcome. And hope you're doing well. So today, I'm gonna start with just something that I find funny and obvious. And I'm this podcast is on in October, and it's on Friday the 13th. Not that I'm superstitious, but I just I think I just want to commemorate that officially by saying it out loud is Happy Friday. And it's Friday the 13th Would you may be downloading that's at any point at any time, because I know it's perpetual, out there in my, in my world in the podcast realm. But if you're listening to this anytime later, just remember that in October of 2023, we had Friday the 13th. Welcome to the podcast. You know, I've usually I'll use some news stories and take that to bring out some things to learn about. Whatever this time, I actually was having a really good discussion with a good friend of mine co worker, about metrics about measurements. And I love that I am a data person. And I have struggled with the idea and I have blogged about this and talked about this before, where safety data is more than data, it's people, every piece, every dot, every bar, every notch that you put into a chart, when it comes to safety is a human being. And we cannot forget that we absolutely and I can get lost in that I have gotten lost in that many times in my career. When you're looking at the data and you're looking at these aggregates and you're getting bigger and bigger. It's easy to lose it to metrics, because we're so metrics driven, oh, you talk about continuous improvement. It uses data to drive what you're doing. It also uses other things, I understand that. But data is my primary focus. So we were talking about data, we were talking about measurements of a safety program, proactive, reactive, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. One of the data metrics that we came across was, I was actually in the HR realm, looking at HR data. And part of the HR function that I have is learning and development. So I love learning and development. So I'm really happy. It's part of what I do for my day job. And my other job, and anytime I love learning and development, I love teaching, I love learning, I love the whole the whole kit there. If there's learning to be done or teaching, I just like being a part of it. So we were talking about learning and development data. And one of the targets that I had that we needed to accomplish for the year was 100%, completion and all regulatory required training. That sounds normal. That sounds natural when I say it, and as a safety person. If you're a safety person listening to this, you get what I'm saying that there is no such thing as non compliance with training. You just can't have it. Because the way I well let me step back. He's a really strong engineer data guy. Brilliant. I love I love talking to him. And he said, Isn't that 100% is not achievable like that. That's truly like, up in the stratosphere like 99.9 How about 99.999? Let's go for like the true Six Sigma quality metrics. Like if you're at the top of the top of the tarp, it still it approaches a 100. But it never actually gets there. And when you, when you think about 99%, out of 100, that's one out of 100, you may miss you go an extra nine is one out of 1000, you go another one, it's one out of 10,000. And so you think about larger, like many organizations, not huge. So one person missing is a big percent, or could be a partial piece of a percent. In a larger company, someone missing a piece of training, I mean, literally 10,000 people, one person misses. And you've got that, that 99.99% Completion, it's not 100. Now let's let me explain what I had to walk through in this is where I get it. And I also struggle, because from a data standpoint, I get it. There's always an opportunity for improvement. That's what data if you're at 100%, there's no room for improvement, you're perfect. You'd never have to do anything. But let's take a walk through an OSHA inspection. And I've been there, I have been there and they come in, they're doing their job as they're supposed to. They're doing their inspection, wall to wall in doing their their work. They're talking to employees. They're asking questions, they're pulling people aside and doing interviews, they're, they're collecting people data now, not that you can stand in there and listen to what they're asking, they have the right to have those questions, private. But you want to take a note of who the OSHA inspector is talking to, like they talked to Mark French, during their walk around, you want to know who it was why? Because when you get back to the office, they're going to ask for their training records, they're going to ask basically, that person becomes the data point. So they randomly bump into someone, and they start chatting during the interview about safety, then you will come back, and they will say hey, all right, I've talked to these people, I'm going to need their training records, or if they're looking for anything else, they're going to use that person or those people as the reference points. So let's say if you had an organization of 1000 people, and you that was the 1/10 of a percent, that one guy, that one person, that one, that one human being in your plant, or facility is that one person that 1/10 of a percent that you missed, and you bring up the you know, I don't have his I don't have their training records for let's pick something mundane. Let's let's say that they've been around for a long time I'm trying to play this up is like, I guess best case scenario for the safety person. Let's say they've been a 10 year employee, and for nine of 10 years, you have that they have done has come training every year spot on but something happened that other year vacation, something happened. And for some reason, you don't have training record for this year. And they're the 1/10 of a percent. Depending on that inspector, you may see a fine, it'll be other than serious, you'll have to bring that person in and train you might lose $500. But it's going to show up that you had an other than serious incident. And it was draining related HazCom training related. Now is that in Yes. I'm not saying it's not important. It you need to have a system in place that if someone is sick, if someone is out if someone is not available during your training times do you need a methodology that says I'm going to make sure I document that they are not here that I'm going to document that they're not here. And then I'm going to catch up? I'm going to make sure that I find them later when they are back or around in some systemic way and catch them up. Absolutely, you should do that. You need that, that that's so so important. And I cannot under I am again, I am a training. I love training. I love good training. I'll step back on that one. I like good training. Not all of it is I get it. That's a struggle in the safety world because there's so much we cover and some of it's repetitive and annual and cetera, et cetera. We need that methodology. But yet is there still the chance that you will be less than perfect? Oh, yeah. And that was such a great, interesting idea that he and I were having about the real, like real life expectations in the real of life in data and human beings in the cycle of an organization. I want to talk more about that because I have a whole lot more than saw running around and I think we it's a great topic. So let's talk more about that coming up. On the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. D is D consulting, learn you lead others, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator is an amazing tool. The problem is that it can be easily misinterpreted. Dr. Mark French is MBTI certified and ready to help you discover your inner strengths. The MBTI assessment can help with team building stress management, communication, conflict management, and so much more. Individual and group sessions are available to help you discover what makes you great. For more information, visit us on the web at T SDA consulting.com. And welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. So we this week, we're talking about on this Friday, the 13th of October. We're talking about metrics. And my friend and I were talking about how like in the world of quality of D PMO. And six sigma, you approach 100%, you never get there. from a regulatory standpoint, from an OSHA standpoint. And something as basic as safety training. The expectation is 100%. It's either it's either yes or no, it's very binary, either you've done it, or you haven't. And that's for everybody, every single person because the person they talk to, in Murphy's Law, if it can go wrong will go wrong. They're going to talk to the person who fell through the cracks. I've been there. And I've seen it firsthand, and it frustrated me. And I learned from it. And I tried to get better. But I also know perfection is tough, especially when you have a lot of moving pieces. And a lot of human beings and a lot of human things going on and training is inherently human, and is an important, I will Yes, one of the most important things we do is set the stage through good training. Now then after that it's all about following through. But we set the stage with good training. So I want to talk more about these, these numbers, these numbers that we collect every day with safety. And some of this is going to sound very simple. And I get that. Because I have to sometimes rationalize I'm walking my way through it. But there's so many letters now out there. For metrics. There's your KPIs, key performance indicators, there's your OKRs. And there's just metrics. And then there's goals and on and on and on. There's these letters. When I look at what we do in the safety world for leadership, and we lead with these metrics is we use the same ones for everything. Whether it be our our key opportunities, or whether it be what we're reporting out, the data vastly remains the same. And we look at it from all the way from exceptionally reactive to hopefully what we would consider exceptionally proactive. And the whole range. And usually you would like if collecting anything if you're collecting reactive data, and you're actually using it, and you're reacting to it good. And then you can build and but this data stays the same. You look at your last time incidents, how many do we have How severe were they recordable incidents, first eight incidents, then you move into like more proactive where it's near hits or near misses. And even that is a little scary because you're not treating them with a lot of focus. And you're not treating them as really how bad they could have been. And not from a blaming the human standpoint, but from a risk mitigation standpoint. So let me let me take one more step back before I move into metrics and talk one more thing about training that I can't let go until I say it. Training is not a punishment. You do not blame someone for doing something wrong and they go What you need is more training. Sometimes that helps, sometimes. Other times, maybe it's more mentorship, maybe it's more guidance. Maybe it's some hands on approaches, it may be considered learning but it shouldn't be just sitting in front of another PowerPoint or reassigning you something in the system. Sometimes it has to be where you do it for everybody. If it's something you want to extend system wide, but don't rely on it as the one and only thing that we use. When someone has something happen. It shouldn't be. People shouldn't think of training as a punishment. They should think of it as Like, you know, okay, I do need to refresh my skills. And maybe there should be other things too. Anyway, let's go back to metrics, metrics. When we look at those metrics, and we start pushing into the proactive metrics, it's really up to us to define what is good, and what isn't. And here is the interesting part. And I've had so many debates, and I would love to have your opinion on it. If you want to comment on any of my social media, if you want to email me, whatever I would love to have other opinions on this is how do you effectively decide how much proactive data is good data. Because I've been in places where you set the quota, and you say, everybody is going to do so many walk arounds, and, and things every week or every day. And you start getting some really interesting data. And sometimes it's humorous data, because they're running out of things to do, or they don't have time, and it gets your typical pencil on paper, data into the web. And it's just junk. And, for me, that's the guy go principle, if it's garbage in, its garbage out, we're not learning from it anymore. It's just creating these inflated numbers that we know are not real. And we are just waving a flag and going look at all this amazing data. That means absolutely nothing. But suddenly, on the other hand, how do you get it to be good data, but also enough quantity? Because if you don't set the target, ultimately, if it's not measured, it's not managed? If you don't set the target, then you're going to have some people go? Well, I don't have to do it. You didn't give me a target. So why should I do it? Where do you get that fine in between of making sure you're getting good data of proactive data? And the just garbage data, there's just huge quantities of data. Where is that breaking point where in I know, it's very cultural? It changes over time, it probably has to be very adaptive, it has to be dynamic in a living. How do we do that? I still struggle with that one myself, because I know that we need to set a goal. But I also want that I want them looking for real things that can hurt people and finding solutions there and system wide to fix it. That's the goal is that we find stuff before it hurts people. And we fix it. That's ultimately what we're trying to do through that data. But are we? How do we get it good? That's terrible English. That grammar was awful. But how do we make it in a way that there's enough of it? But it's also meaningful, and it's relevant? And it's real? Yeah, and that's where us that's where I stopped. Like, I really don't usually I can come to a solution or conclusion at the end of these podcasts. Not this time. I'm, I'm reaching out. How do we do that? The great mystery. We'll keep working on it though. We'll keep talking about it right here on the podcast. So hope you enjoy this Friday the 13th and until next time we chat stay safe. Thank you for listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast. More content is available online@www.ts da consulting.com. All the opinions expressed on the podcast are solely attributed to the individual and not affiliated with any business entity. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes. It is not a substitute for proper policy, appropriate training or legal advice. This has been the leading and learning through safety podcast