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Standing on the Shoulders of Giants - Learning from the Safety II / HOP Community
- Steve Smith
- Aug 3
- 8 min read
Presenting at outdoor & experiential education conferences is an enjoyable part of our work at Experiential Consulting. We always learn new things from colleagues, reconnect with clients and members of our community, and share new insights and experiences with participants. At the same time, we are committed to getting outside of our immediate community and expanding the ways in which we professionally develop. At least once a year, we commit to attending conferences led by leading researchers and practitioners in safety science, tapping into the wisdom we can gain from other industries and workplaces. This includes the Safety II / HOP community (Human & Organizational Performance).
For example, here are a few of the Safety Science conferences we've attended in the past three years:
2023 - Safety II in Practice (St. Petersburg, FL)
2024 - Conklin Conference (Santa Fe, NM)
2025 - Community of Human & Organizational Learning (Columbus, OH)
All of these conferences have given us valuable insights into how other industries are operationalizing new views of safety management, using research to advance their safety goals, and supporting their people with the most current thinking from the safety science community. At the same time, while building on the past, there is no shortage of willingness to challenge assumptions and introduce new ideas and paradigms -- new approaches to old problems. It's simultaneously challenging and uplifting to be immersed in this kind of work, and to synthesize concepts, practices, and ways of presenting the information that is most useful for the EC community -- outdoor & experiential education programs.
In this blog, I will summarize some of the key takeaways from the most recent conference I attended, the Community of Human & Organizational Learning. Here, as in the previous conferences, I had an opportunity to meet and learn from leading scholars and practitioners in safety science, including David Woods, Todd Conklin, Georgina Poole, Elizabeth Lay, Rob Fisher, Ben Goodheart, Laura Maguire, Bob Edwards, Joe Estey, Gina Whitney, and many others. In addition to all of the remarkable content and substance from the conference, the other takeaway for me was how incredibly warm and welcoming this group was -- literally from the moment I got out of the Uber at the hotel, where I was greeted by an unofficial "welcoming committee" of Ben Goodheart, James Newman, and Georgina Poole (whose book on doing metrics differently I had recently read).
Georgina even agreed to do a spontaneous interview with me that is available on her YouTube channel.
The CHOL conference really is a community, as their name states. It was incredibly easy to meet and spend time with people whose work I have been reading and studying for many years.
Dr. David Woods (Ohio State University) - Dr. Woods was Sidney Dekker's professor at Ohio State!
Defusing Bombs and Going to Mars!
Ben Goodheart from Magpie Human Systems led a fast-paced and highly collaborative, experiential learning pre-conference session in which we worked in teams to explore human factors, teamwork, debriefing, adaptations, and complexity through computer-based simulations. In one scenario we had to work in teams, with incomplete, complex, and highly technical systems and procedures to defuse bombs before they "exploded." By adapting, learning, and debriefing as we went, some of us were able to escape unscathed ... but most importantly, we learned valuable lessons about how humans work in high-risk, complex situations. Taking it up a level from there, we proceeded to embark on a rocket ship expedition to Mars! Similarly, this was fast-paced, challenging, and full of human adaptations to match the demands of the situation. Ben is a skillful facilitator who was able to convert the experiential learning activities into concrete, specific lessons about the ways we can improve our performance in complex workplaces while managing risk and maximizing human performance. It was an unforgettable way to kick off the conference!
A Tribute to James Reason
In terms of content, the conference was jam-packed with material, ranging from historical and foundational to cutting edge and brand new. On the historical side, there was a moving and heartfelt memorial tribute to Dr. James Reason, a key figure in occupational safety management going back many decades. Among his many contributions, Reason is perhaps best known for is the Swiss Cheese model of incident causation. His colleagues (including David Woods) offered very personal and fascinating insights and stories into Reason's life and legacy.
Although I knew a lot about Reason as a writer and thinker, this tribute to him helped deepen my understanding of him as a human being with a sense of humor, an inspiration to those around him. His legacy is extraordinary, and the speakers challenged the people in the audience to ask themselves what their own legacies would be in our field.
In terms of current thinking and applying strategies like HOP or Safety II to workplaces, because there were so many widely-ranging industries represented at the conference, it was fascinating to see all of the different strategies and adaptations. What works in one setting might not work in another, so the conference invites us instead to distill principles and be inspired by creative ideas.
HOP (Human and Organizational Performance) Principles:
1) Error is Normal
Mistakes are inevitable because humans are fallible. Instead of trying to eliminate errors entirely, organizations should focus on building systems that anticipate and mitigate the impact of errors.
2) Blame Fixes Nothing
Blaming individuals for mistakes does not solve the underlying issues. Instead, organizations should focus on understanding the context and systems that contributed to the error.
3) Learning is Vital
Continuous learning from successes and failures is essential for improving safety and performance. Organizations should create an environment where learning is encouraged and supported.
4) Context Drives Behavior
People's actions are influenced by the systems, processes, and environment in which they work. To improve safety, organizations must address the context that shapes behavior.
5) How Organizations Respond to Failure Matters
The way an organization reacts to incidents or failures sets the tone for its culture. A constructive response that focuses on learning and improvement fosters trust and resilience.
While I was already quite familiar with HOP Principles, it was educational to see how they might be adapted and applied across different contexts, cultures, and workplace settings. This included topics such as:
Better Ways to Structure Debrief Questions
Rather than asking "WHY" after an incident occurs -- a question that can be loaded in various ways, or drive us to seek out a single, simple story or identify a convenient "cause" to fix -- I learned about an approach called TEDS (courtesy of Rob Fisher) that invites us to put ourselves in the worker's shoes and understand it from their perspective. TEDS has four steps:
Tell Me - what happened and how it happened?
Explain to me - the conditions under which it occurred
Describe to me - how this played out. Tell me your story. What was your experience.
Show me - where this happened, where it has happened in the past, and other places where you think it could happen again
Cultural Routines to Break Hierarchy and Foster Learning
As the conference's title implies, many of the sessions focused on different ways to enhance an organization's ability to learn -- not just when things go wrong, but all the time. Some memorable examples included:
Inviting newly-hired frontline workers to spend their first day observing work as it occurs, and to offer their observations, feedback, and suggestions at the end of their first day, with their fresh eyes. The specific story here came from an industrial logging operation that obviously works in a highly-hazardous industry, but was managing to do so with an excellent safety record -- not by suppressing incident reports, but by openly and actively breaking down power dynamics and inviting everyone to speak up and see their safety concerns as important from day one.
Shifting from Doing Safety TO People to Doing Safety WITH People: Todd Conklin spoke about a shift in safety management over the years, from doing safety "to people," to doing safety "for people," and finally, to doing safety "with people." This resembles a paradigm shift in Dan Heath's book "Reset" which states: "Leaders change their results when they stop focusing on what they want from those they support to focusing on what they want for those they support."
Recognizing how blame gets in the way of learning: James Reason came up with the concept of the Blame Cycle, a vicious cycle in which organizations can compound the likelihood of human errors by responding with blame rather than openness, process improvement, and learning. It was interesting to see Reason's familiar model broken down into a management version and an employee/worker version:
Supporting Second Victims
I enjoyed learning about some second-victim support structures that have been put into place at the Mayo Clinic. Second victims, in this context, are the healthcare providers who are traumatized by adverse events that they are directly involved in managing. Coming back to HOP Principles, how leadership responds to these kinds of events matters, and can make a difference between learning and healing or blaming and adding more hurt to harm that has already been done. In addition to specific event debrief questions, it was interesting to see how the debrief tool operates within a larger organizational framework and system of well-being strategies, including:
Peer Support Programs
Proactive Surveillance (for traumatizing events)
Well-Being Support Systems (such as EAP's, Coaching, Counseling Support)
Fair and Just Culture established in advance
Getting off the Merry Go Round
Speaking of second victims and compounding trauma, one of the most refreshing and memorable talks was by a safety leader, Richard Swanson, who shared some lessons learned over his 53-year career, using the metaphor of a merry-go-round for our work. Like our work itself, merry go rounds:
Go around in circles and impose habitual repetition on us;
Have their own momentum and inertia;
May constrain how we spend our time;
Can limit our vision and our perspectives;
After a point in time, may limit our progress toward what we really want (while maintaining the illusion of movement);
It's not always clear who is in control.
Swanson shared moving case studies and personal stories about how we can become trapped in our own merry-go-rounds (especially folks who work in the safety world) and how by focusing so much on our work that we may end up doing harm to ourselves, our families, and at some point, even the work itself that we are focused on. He made a compelling case to recognize if we are on a merry-go-round and to get back in control, to have more balance in our work and our goals and our lives. This was a very wise and meaningful message to deliver to a room full of hundreds of safety practitioners.
Richard's slides are available here if you'd like to read more about how he presented this compelling story.
Summary
It's important to invest in -- and make time for -- your own professional development, regardless of your role or how much you think you already know. The more I learn about safety management, and the research being done, the more I let go of some of my assumptions and realize I want to keep learning. If interested in learning more about the Community for Human & Organizational Learning, check out their website which features a lot of resources, materials, free presentations from previous conferences, and ongoing webinars and gatherings organized on social media like LinkedIN.
We hope to see you there at next year's gathering, in Denver!
