Archive for the ‘Archive’ Category

I have been observing Alan Gray, Project Director of the redevelopment of Eden Park, over the last couple of days. Alan is a superb leader and is a dictionary definition of being an exemplar. Here are some photos I took.

Millie and I were very fortunate to be invited by City Care to Cirque du Soleil: Dralion last week in Auckland. Unfortunately you couldn’t take photos – guess the flash might be slightly off putting to someone doing high-risk acrobatics. In most organisations committees rule over teams (the difference being that in a committee a person can win or lose independent of the committee whereas in a team everyone either wins or loses). Cirque du Soleil demonstrated teamwork, where if one individual failed to achieve their result then everyone in that particular performance failed. On the flipside,  when everyone did their job to an extremely high level, everybody in the team achieved success to a very high level and the audience was treated to a truly inspirational performance.

As of Friday 23 October, Millie and I are on the move. Decided it was time we needed a different view and a bit more space. The new address is 137 Clifton Terrace, Sumner, phone 03 326 4001. As part of the move, the accountant needed to do accounting “things” and so Corporate Learning will be no more. It will, however, be replaced with McWilliams Consulting. The only difference, as you can see, is the letterhead (and the new address).

From this view …

to this.

I am just back from the World Stickfighting Championships which were held in the Philippines. Here is a sample of some photos I took from my hotel.

Each day, as I walked to the tournament venue, I had to walk between two construction sites. I walked a zig zag and, as you can see from these photos, I needed to look up and was constantly scanning for falling objects. Complacency, even walking on the street, was literally life threatening.

Was back at Eden Park last week. Take a look at the stand. What great progress they are making (compare to my earlier photos back in August) and look at how many cranes they have. I felt like a big kid in a sandpit full of toys.

Was it any wonder that the power went off twice, each time for about 30 minutes, over a two-day period?

This story appeared in Safeguard Update of 16 November.

Positive, immediate, certain

When people tell Dr Kyle McWilliams that their organisation has reached health and safety compliance, he invariably replies: “Well, that’s not very good is it?”

The reaction? “Their jaw drops,” he told delegates at the Conferenz inaugural Total Safety Culture conference in Auckland last month.

There are two types of job performance, he said, ‘just enough’ and ‘want to’. People who do just enough to keep their job are focused on compliance, the minimum level of performance. ‘Want to’ performance includes discretionary effort and is at a much higher level. “This is the one you want for safety.”

McWilliams, director of Christchurch-based consultancy Corporate Learning, said top performance will never be achieved if it is activated by the need for compliance. Instead, he advocated focusing on the consequences of behaviour, and on providing consequences that are positive, immediate, and certain.

Positive consequences are obviously beneficial, and consequences which are immediate and certain are much more powerful motivators than those which arrive in the future or are uncertain.

He asked delegates why they answered the phone. “Because it’s ringing,” came the response. No, he said, that is just the activator of the behaviour. The positive, immediate and certain outcome was that you get to speak to someone.

“Look towards the consequences rather than the activator. Activators have about 20% effect on behaviour. They kick-start it. Consequences have the other 80% effect.”

Health and safety policies, posters, emails, even training – these are all merely activators of behaviour. “If you want to improve behaviour, shift your focus to consequences.”

However, he cautioned that just because a consequence appeared to a worker to be positive, immediate and certain (PIC), didn’t mean it was a safe behaviour. Getting down from a large truck, for example, could be done unsafely by jumping, or safely by climbing down with three points of contact at all times. The trouble is, jumping takes less time and therefore appears to the driver to have PIC consequences.

“Safety is a constant struggle against human nature, because we are programmed to conserve energy. Lots of unsafe behaviours are PIC.”

McWilliams said we are good at identifying what we don’t want people to do. The key, he said, is to define the safe behaviours you want, then work out PIC consequences for them.

He advised looking at recent incidents and listing the behaviours associated with them, and then listing the alternative safe behaviours. “I practically guarantee you will find the unsafe behaviour was PIC because of the activator.”

If you want to change unsafe behaviours, he concluded, “you absolutely must focus on the behaviours you want, and you must provide positive, immediate and certain outcomes for this behaviour.”

Feeling the cold now (was 1˚degree yesterday down from an average 35˚ on my travels), after returning from the Philippines to participate in the World Stickfighting Championships. I received two silver medals, one for single stick, the other for double stick. In both single and double, I fought Philippino fighters who are quick and agile. In both finals, I fought my Grandmaster and came runner up to him.

Normally, at the start of a fight, one is hyped up a bit, yet at the start of the double stick final I was feeling very relaxed as I was looking forward to it and I knew I was going to have a party for 3 minutes.

Just before the start whistle, I looked at my Grandmaster and then looked over at our Supreme Grandmaster sitting 3m away watching us and our fight to be, and I thought, “How cool is this, life is pretty good.”