Nippin Anand 00:00
Great. Welcome to Embracing Differences with me, Nippin Anand, and I’m joined by two very good friends, Vic and Chris, and they are going to say a few words about themselves before we jump into what’s going to be a great conversation. I think, Wake, would you like to say a few words?

ViC D’mato 00:18
Sure. Just just introduction. I’m Vic Tomato. I’m a senior networks leader with the National Safety Council (NSC) Prior to joining NSC, about five months ago, I was the head of safety, health, and environment for a global pharmaceutical company in that role for about five years, and have been in the EHS space for almost 40 years.

Nippin Anand 00:43
Thank you, and very nice to have you here. Yes, Chris, would you like to say a few words?

Chris Louis 00:47
I would, although I don’t have 40 years, but the gray is kind of starting to show that I do have some, quite a few years under my belt. But I, like Vic, I’m also working with the National Safety Council. For those that may not be aware, it’s a nonprofit organization based in the United States, and Vic and I both work for NSC Networks, which is a kind of a member-driven community where we provide basically just opportunities to to network and learn from each other. We do that through a number of ways, including in-person forums and and really other other types of opportunities. But my background is actually chemical engineering. I started out as a process engineer in the automotive industry and did that for about four, five years, and then kind of got forced into safety because nobody else wanted to do it, and I really had no choice. But it was it was really good for me. I I really I ended up enjoying it quite a bit, and been doing it, you know, full time now for probably 20 plus years, and been in a lot of different industries from manufacturing, construction, healthcare, food and beverage, consumer goods. So, seen a lot of a lot of good practices and a lot of very you know, poor practices, I would say, in terms of leadership and an organization. But, but yeah, really happy to be here. Thanks for having us.

Nippin Anand 02:31
Yeah, thanks for joining. It’s it’s so nice to have both of you. And I’ve met the two of you in person. We have spent some decent time together. And Chris, our relationship goes back to almost two years now, right? Two years, maybe more than that.

Chris Louis 02:44
Yeah, yeah, it’s been probably about a year and a half, I think.

Nippin Anand 02:48
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s been a and so so why not start from our relationship when you gave me a call and you invited me to join one of your sessions. So how has your you know journey been, Chris, all this while, it’s been it’s been we’ve toured the world together. We have you know you’ve also come to Swinburne last year. You’ve attended quite a few sessions, and we have we have also had a lot of offline chats between us. So how has it been for you, Chris? Maybe we can talk about that and see where this goes.

Chris Louis 03:18
Yeah, that’s been really I think probably the the best word is just it’s been very refreshing and eye opening. I think you know the you know what what had caused me to reach out to you in the first place was you know I I had seen a little bit about the book you had written on are we learning from accidents and a lot of that, you know, just really resonated with me. Really, kind of centering around the concept of, you know, in in society, there’s such a rush to scapegoat and and place place blame on particularly individuals within a structure or a system, and there’s not a really a strong desire to dig deeper and understand what’s going on, and there’s so much intense pressure to come up with the answer immediately that organizations find it the easiest way to do is to just, you know, in any type of public disaster, whether it be a you know a a plane crash or you know in your case it was the the Concordia accident, but you know it’s it’s easy to say Captain error, Pilot Error. You know they did didn’t they they didn’t do what they should have done, and then just kind of sweep it under the rug, and nobody wants to. No organization wants to admit that there’s some real deep systemic flaws within their system that really created the environment that lined up for this kind of thing to happen. And in some cases, as you discovered, you know, even outright lies about. What actually occurred, and so I think that that was really what kind of drew me to it. Is that you know I I feel like you know within within an organization you have some level of control to influence how you know and I don’t like to use the term investigation, but how an incident investigation is done. But in the in the realm of of politics in the public sphere, it it it always reverts back to this exercise of assigning you know assigning blame and a and a scapegoat, and you know they’re fired and now everything’s fixed and we’re going to move forward with new leadership, and everything’s going to be great. So, so I think you know that was just really kind of the start of what kind of got me really, you know, tuned into your work, and then you know having the opportunity to to be in you know several sessions around the world in different cultures, you know the same you know, the same realizations come up in every, no matter where you’re at, you know, it’s everybody, you know, kind of has a light bulb moment that they just say, you know, I didn’t really, you know, I never really thought about it that way, or things come to the surface that you just never really expected to to see or understand, and it’s it’s quite powerful, you know. Like I think a lot of I I’ve been you know I’ve been in sessions with you where I’ve known people for years and had many many conversations with them, and I’ll learn something very deep and profound about them just from your session that never never has come up in any of my previous conversations. And so I think you know it’s it’s really that’s kind of really what what’s really kind of drawn me to a lot of the the work that you’ve done and and and and really you know just a lot of the concepts that are part of the social psychology of risk.

Nippin Anand 06:56
Great, great, Wick, Wick. We met in Amsterdam for the first time, and how was your how was your experience?

ViC D’mato 07:04
It it was it was very as Chris said, eye opening. I didn’t have I don’t have the the multiple sessions that Chris has experienced with you in the conversations around the social psychology of risk. I think it’s it’s a really interesting concept, and you know I come from you know back, like I said, you know been in this business for for quite a while, and back where EHS, particularly safety, was very much a compliance sort of enforcement role, walking around clipboards and telling people you’re doing your job wrong. Was introduced to human organizational performance early in my career, or later in my career, around 2020 1220, 13, 2014, and always kind of thought this really makes sense because in my back of my mind, I always kind of understood that you know people don’t really have agency at their at their place of employment, they’re following instructions. They’re following what their leadership expects, what they believe their leadership expects, and then listening to your to the conversation we had in Amsterdam around the social psychology of risk. It was even more deep seated because you know Hop is based on five principles, right? And and and and and they’re not the sort of 10 Commandments or five Commandments of human organizational performance, and I, you know, I think when you start to talk about sort of backgrounds and culture, and and when you talk about context-driven behavior, there’s there’s even a deeper, richer meaning behind that. In that, people’s perceptions, people’s backgrounds, people’s lives are all all influence their behaviors, right? Regardless of what an organizational culture is, and I think, and and I’ll admit that I’m halfway through reading your book. I got it after A and I’d met, and I’m you know, and and it’s a it’s a page turner, and it’s really interesting because I think what Chris said is particularly these events that that sort of hit the public realm. There’s no there’s no justice, if you will, in any kind of investigation because the public is the jury and the media is the sort of the the attorney or presenting a case, right or wrong, without any detail or fact. It’s just this is what happens. Organizations then respond to that public pressure, and let’s face it, you know, and you hear people say this all the time that leadership blame is easy because it fixes a problem, right? And to Chris’s point, we get rid of them. And I’ve seen this on construction sites. A contractor makes an error, has an event. We fix the problem. What’d you do? We got rid of them. So you didn’t learn anything. They didn’t learn anything. You didn’t learn anything. You just replaced it. Replace replaced somebody who made a mistake. So I think that session with you and and and the whole psychology of of risk, I think is. And the social psychology of risk, I think, is really interesting because it takes human organizational performance to the next level. And I think, to Chris’s point, I hate using the word investigation. We try to learn from these events, and I think this is like the the book is really good at laying that out about how, you know, we’re really missing a key component here when we go to that blame somebody who in theory should be the expert, right? But even experts make mistakes. So yeah, it was really eye opening, and I think you know, comforting to the fact that like I always sort of kind of deep seatedly believe these things, but it’s really comforting to hear other people talk about it and get and watch light bulbs go off, and I’m like, I’m not alone. So it it allows me to kind of be more open about how I feel about social psychology and behavioral economics and human organizational performance, or all these things that intersect. And how do we improve what we do in the workplace? And I recall

Nippin Anand 11:00
the moment, Wick, when we were just about starting the session, maybe we were just two hours into it, and we we were talking about safety culture, and and you said now I get it. Why you know when I use the word that safety culture is mostly people will give you what whatever answer you you you are seeking from them, and that was a kind of a moment for you also, right? Do you want to talk about that? I was I thought that was very powerful what you

ViC D’mato 11:29
said. Yeah, so I’ve never been a big proponent of the term safety culture. I think culture is culture, right? It’s a culture because it’s not you don’t swap hats, right? Oh, today I’ve got my I’ve got my quality culture hat on. Tomorrow I’m going to put my performance culture, my my delivery culture hat on. Oh, it’s my safety culture hat. It’s it’s a culture, and it’s a culture of caring. It’s a culture of learning, and it’s a culture of improving. Right? Doesn’t matter what aspect, if it’s safety, if it’s quality, if it’s if it’s cost, if it’s delivery, we just want to learn, and all these things are integrated, and so we start to build these silos around a safety culture and quality culture. We confuse people, like and to your point, what I was trying to say is that yeah, you know when you look at how we measure safety culture, people answer the way that they expect leadership wants them to answer. It’s not an open and honest conversation, and I think that’s really the challenge. Is when we go into these, we start to talk about culture and measuring culture. Are we really getting a true and honest picture of what we’re talking about? And and specifically when we then silo it to safety culture. I mean, is it really, like I said, people don’t have agency. They’re going to react. They’re going to respond. They’re going to act the way they think their leaders expect them to.

Chris Louis 12:46
Yeah,

Nippin Anand 12:46
that’s right.

Chris Louis 12:46
Nippin, if I could add on to that for a second,

Nippin Anand 12:49
please.

Chris Louis 12:50
The other part, you know, I agree with with what Vic said when in terms of an organization only has one culture. I mean, that like you said, you’re not change. You’re not looking at different lenses, and the thing that’s so interesting about our profession in in the realm of of HSE is, you know, in an organization they always talk about safety culture, but anything that falls outside of that is just well, this is just the way we do things here. But all of a sudden, we have this, you know. But we need to improve our safety culture. But everything else, whether it’s like Vic said, it’s related to quality, whatever. That’s just part of the way we do things here. But but we have this separate safety culture that we want to try and improve. That’s that’s separate from everything else that that we do is kind of the way. And I think it’s, you know, it’s it’s almost like this. You know, you. It’s so it’s it’s a it’s a unique, I think, burden that we carry. And and I know you know anybody that comes into safety, who was you know like I myself, I was an engineer, and then I I came into safety, and you are, you know, maybe that has to do with some of people’s perceptions of the traditional safety cop and things like that. But people, the the conversations with you change. The way that people talk to you changes, and you know, they there’s always like this, you know, underlying, you know, jab at all, you know, are we being safe today? Or, you know, it’s like this this underlying kind of thing that kind of carries with you, you know, throughout when you’re trying to carry out this function that is really I feel like very unique to safety. Maybe like somebody in HR might have similar, you know, type experiences, but you know, it’s it’s it’s a it’s very unique to our profession, and I think it it you know some of it I think stems from just organizations are at the end of the day they they really don’t quite know what. To do with safety, like they do with everything else, and they they just it like you said, it it becomes that there’s very much a a engineering procedural component to it, but there’s so much else that doesn’t show up in you know quality or other parts of the organization. There’s so much deeper beliefs and attitudes and things that are driving you know your actual safety performance that don’t necessarily exist with and and actually they they they really do but people just don’t don’t correlate it the same way you know a lot of the the attitudes and beliefs that drive quality and productivity are are there with safety as well, but you know for some reason it just it seems to boil to the surface more with safety than you than it does with with other things. So, yeah, it’s just a it’s a really you know it’s a it’s it’s an extremely difficult position I think to be in in a lot of organizations, and and you have to, you know, it takes a lot of experience to really know how to navigate it. And a lot of times, you know, when you start out, you’re you’re kind of alone. You know, you’re probably the only one doing safety, and you know, you don’t have a lot of people to really kind of confide in and and learn from and bounce ideas off of, unless you’re you know happen to get into a very large organization where you’re you know you have a really large support system within safety.

Chris Louis 16:30
But a lot of the majority, I think, of people that get into the safety world kind of get into it as like a lone wolf type type thing, and and they’re just left to kind of wander the wilderness and figure out, you know, how they how they survive, and and it’s it’s an unfortunate, you know, I think it’s probably one of the one of the hard, you know, it’s it’s one of the hardest things are really how do we solve that in our profession, you know, how do we make that better? And I think it’s a there’s not an easy answer to it, but I think one of definitely one of the most challenging parts of our profession.

Nippin Anand 17:03
Yeah, and what’s interesting is that Chris, you said in your introduction that you’ve been in this safety industry for the last 20 years or so, and Vic, you have also spent a decent amount of time in this. And what’s interesting is that nobody has really figured out what is it that it’s about? We are all struggling, right? And and this is what Chris is saying that I don’t really know what is expected of me. Isn’t that fascinating? And yet, when you talk to people, a lot of people they say they are very passionate about it. I I quite find that word very interesting because passionate means what you’re full of emotions, but you don’t really know what you’re doing. So it’s a very emotional place to be in, emotional space to be in, but in many ways very full of ignorance also. That I don’t really know what I’m supposed to be doing. That’s tricky, isn’t it? And you have passion, but you don’t know what to do with it. I find it fascinating, actually. What do you think, Vic?

ViC D’mato 18:09
So I think you you raise a really good point, and and around that because I think that you know you know that aspect of safety, and we when you work for highly technical organizations, everything has to be measured, right, to to determine what success looks like. And I think one of the biggest challenges we have in the safety profession, yes, we’re all very passionate about what we do, but I don’t think we can agree on what good looks like for success. I think that’s the biggest challenge. Is and then take that if we can’t agree within our own community what good looks like, how do we communicate that to leadership? And so we’re measuring things that really don’t matter, and leadership is holding this up to look. I got an excellent safety program. Yeah, but you know, what you’re measuring isn’t really the right measurement to to measure what good looks like. I think that’s where the biggest challenges Nippin is that we don’t. We’re very passionate about what we do. We we can control certain aspects of it, but at the end of the day, when somebody says, “Tell me that you’re good, you’re you’re good, or you’re better than you are lucky, right, or that your program is good and robust and strong, it’s very. We don’t have a universal or standard way of measuring what good looks like, and we can’t, you know. And so, how do how do you achieve it if you don’t know? How do you get to the destination if you don’t know what your endpoint is? And so, I think that’s one of the biggest challenges we’ve got. So, to your point, we’re all very passionate about what we do. I think we’re very people-oriented, even though much of our background is maybe engineering or chemistry or biology. We’re very process-oriented. We’re very compliance-driven. But at the end of the day, we’re people that want to care for people, and that’s really difficult because you can’t measure that.

Nippin Anand 19:58
And that’s very very. Very interesting what you say. So, in many ways, we care for people, but the expectation is very religious. I would say the expectation of this industry is to save people, and I find it very interesting because there is no legal expectation, none whatsoever. You can say you know want to to manage the risk as reasonably low as practicable, which is a very subjective thing. But to say that I’m here to save lives is nothing but a position of ignorance. I would say, for many many reasons, at a very psychological level, I think there is nothing more disheartening and traumatic than seeing somebody dying and taking full ownership of that. It’s a very sad place to be in because you can only do an audit for one day or two day on the site, and after that you have to leave people on their own to manage the risk. So if you go with that mindset that you’re there to save lives, I’ll give you an example, and maybe we can talk about that. I often ask people, you have, you know, there are two people who are doing some some work on height, and or three people, and and and they’re not wearing a safety helmet. What would you do? And I actually show them a big picture of a container just hanging on top of their heads, and people who are so full of emotions and passionate about safety, their first thing is I’m just going to stop the job. I’ll tell them to come down, and I find it very interesting when people respond with that kind of passion and emotion because if you have a container right on top of you, you know maybe you’re talking about a five tons container, and if you are wearing a helmet or not, makes absolutely no difference. So, what are you trying to achieve? But I think there is a much bigger message there in all of this, which is that we tend to assume that our job is to save people’s lives, and we struggle to to understand that in so doing, we we do not try and understand why is that person even taking that risk. What is what is underlying all of this? Their culture, their values, their understanding, their priorities, and we miss all of that because the urge to jump in and save people’s lives. And I said that to you, Vic, earlier. That it almost feels like colonialism. That I’m here to save people’s lives, and I think that’s totally wrong. Because if you have not understood their priorities, if you don’t understand their values, if you don’t know that maybe this person has a mental health condition who’s not wearing a helmet, maybe this person maybe it’s he’s just been diagnosed by cancer and he’s dying in the next 14 days. Would he still behave in the same way? But the point, the bigger point, is that maybe the organization has come to a point where everything has become normal. Not wearing a helmet has become normal, and by just intervening and saving people’s life, you’re missing the bigger picture. You might give them a helmet and come back home, but you have not even scratched the surface of the problem. And I think that’s very problematic. Actually, to think that my job is as a passionate person to save people’s life. I think that’s I done a podcast on this some time ago, and people just do not get that message. And I think with the two of you, your level of maturity, it will be so good to understand your thoughts on it. That what do you think is the real job of a safety person? Let’s say yeah.

Chris Louis 23:31
Well, yeah, I I can probably go first on that because what you brought up kind of it goes back to one of the stories that you told in one of the first meetings that I had with you, where I think a you know I don’t remember where, but you’ll remember the story. But you were you know there was a a forklift accident, and the person that had been injured on the forklift, you know they were they were being interviewed about you know the the incident and everything else, and what could have been done to prevent it, and and the and the person’s response was, you know, the the this was God’s will. There was nothing that could have been done to prevent it. You know, and that that I think statement really stuck with me because, you know, when you when you look at something like that, I think even to get to your kind of point of like colonialism from a Western culture perspective, we would laugh that off, right? We would say that guy’s crazy, like that does you know that’s nonsense. Of course, it can be prevented, and you know there there’s a lot of you know cultures that believe that there are forces at work that are you know larger than what we can control, that are going on in this world, and and it’s you know, and I think you know to your point to say that that we can we can jump in and and and prevent everything from happening when there may be something larger at work that we’re not. Aware of right, and you know, there’s there’s things that happen. I’m a firm believer that that things happen for a reason. And you know, as I I kind of look back, you know, when you when you get older, you you tend to kind of start taking a different perspective, and you become more reflective. I think of of things that have happened, and when you go back and look at, you know, like particularly like how your career progresses and and how it’s led you to certain things, you know, there’s been times in my life when I’ve I’ve really you know applied for a job and I’ve I’ve interviewed for it and I I really wanted the job and it just you know you know wall after wall just kept coming up, and and it just never worked out. And in my head, I was like, “This is really what I want and what I want to do. And then everything that has led me to a new job has been a very easy process. Like it’s like it was, you know, it just very organically happened, you know, very easily, very Smoothly, and you know it’s kind of that you know there’s a lot of I think philosophy with you know kind of going going with the flow and not not trying to paddle upstream, but really just kind of riding where where the the the river wants to take you, and I think in a lot of part in life, we have, you know, we have certain things that are meant for us to do, and certain things that aren’t. And you know, the typically, when you keep running into barriers and walls, and and things become difficult, I think is typically because you’re doing something that that you’re really not, you know, not meant to be doing. And it’s not, it shouldn’t be difficult, right? It should. I mean, not that you’re not going to have challenges, but there should be a flow to that. And I think with safety, it becomes, you know, it it it becomes hard because so many people think that it is their job to save people. Like it, it. And quite honestly, I mean, that’s before I joined NSC. That was kind of where I was at in my career, I mean, I was very burned out. I took injuries very personally, and part of that I think is just because, again, as as kind of the lone safety, the lone person responsible for safety, you know, it was always like it’s your job to get injuries down.

Chris Louis 27:18
It’s your job to to reduce the number of injuries that we’re having in this organization, and and on a personal level, you don’t want to see anybody get hurt, and you feel like when they do get hurt, and it’s under your purview of responsibility that that you share in that blame, and it was very hard for me to to separate myself from that, and I think you know having time to kind of step away from that and get a little bit different perspective, I think, you know, helps you approach that in a little different way. But it’s it’s a tough that that’s an example, I think, of of one of the things that is just so difficult about our profession is what is the right answer to that, right? Is our job to save people, or is our job to kind of, you know, be be the savior, or to be the the guide and the the facilitator and and the the learn you know somebody that’s trying to help people navigate these things on their own. So it’s a it’s a it’s a really interesting I think conversation to have.

Nippin Anand 28:19
Absolutely. And Vic, do you would you like to add something to that?

ViC D’mato 28:23
I I echo everything Chris said, and I think that I think there’s, you know, we want to dive deeper, kind of the social psychology. A lot of it has to do with your background, your upbringing, who trained you, how did you get into this career field, who brought you in, who mentored you? Because I think the one thing that I would agree with Chris is that you know, early in our career, I’m here to keep you safe. That’s not really the role of safety, right? And when I say we’re people passionate about people, it’s not about that we want to protect them. We want to understand them. Why do we do the things the the way that they do? At least that’s for me. I can’t speak for everybody because I said I said that background because you’ll see people that come in early in their career that feel like yes that I’m the superhero that’s here to save you to keep you from harming yourself right to keep you from from from hurting yourself. People early in their career, but people late in their career still have that same mentality of, and it also depends on your industry. You know, I mean, there’s a number of people in the construction sector who are safety people that really believe that their role there is to keep people safe. You’re one person with 1000s of people on a construction site, an active construction site. How can you? How can you live to up to that expectation? So I think it’s it is a really great point. I think that we need to, and I don’t know how you do it, is break that paradigm of that we’re you know safety is here to keep people safe. I mean I’ve heard leaders even say this earlier in my career when somebody gets hurt. Where was safety? How how did they let that happen? Like they didn’t push them down the stairs. They weren’t there pushing down the stairs. It was very interesting conversation. Very interesting question.

Nippin Anand 29:59
Yeah. And I think religion has much to teach us on this aspect because if you look at the way we talk about safety, it’s it’s all a quest. Everyone just wants to be saved, and that goes back to a very specific religion, which is it’s actually all of it is coming from Christianity and very specific kind of Christianity, and and people don’t are very uncomfortable to relate religion and mythology, but that’s what it is. That’s the origin of all of it. If you look at and Rob says this a lot. If you look at some of the models, like the Swiss cheese model, which is a representation of of risk and safety, or you look at the bow tie method, what’s inherent in all of this thinking is that a lot of these models and actually go from left to right, all of them. So it’s not that it’s right or wrong, but it represents a particular worldview, which goes from left towards the right. Now, if you are somebody who’s trained to to see the world from right to left, for example, or who’s trained to see to write a script from right to left, you will struggle to understand why is it that the threat starts from the left hand side and the consequence ends on the right hand side. So not only it’s linear, not only it’s one directional, but it’s one directional for a particular group of people. It does not, and the trouble is that nearly half of the world’s population is not Christian, or is not Protestant, or it’s not Catholic. So, we we come from a different world. Our relationship with the nature is different, and hence the idea of colonialism: that who are you to come and save me when you don’t even understand my worldview. Where is it I’m coming from? How does perception work for me at a very very fundamental level? What is my idea of safety? What is my idea of being saved? And I thought that you know, Chris, the example that you brought up, which is that it’s God’s will, and in and in Hinduism, we would respond by saying it all happens for the good, now that’s that’s that’s the that’s the Hindu response to that. It all happens for the good, which is karma. You know, it happens because I it’s it’s my own actions and the consequences of what I have must have done in the past, unknowingly or unknowingly. So that’s our way of making meaning of suffering and misfortune, and but it’s completely in contrast with another worldview, and I think if you’re not culturally mature, if you’re not culturally intelligent, then you miss the opportunity to make the connection with people as a start. There’s nothing wrong with going on a site and with a good intention that people don’t shouldn’t be harmed, but what often happens is that we the end justifies the means. So I’m here to to save you, and I will do everything in my capacity, in my worldview, through my methods, through my tools that are that work for me. I’m not sure if it works for you or not, but I’ll make sure I leave this place with you fully safe. It doesn’t work that way because you fail to make the connection with that person. So the moment you are out of that sight, that person is back to how he or she has always worked, which is without a helmet, without a harness, without whatever, because they don’t believe what you believe. So I think this is where we lose the connection between, you know, first understanding people and then doing everything in our capacity to keep them safe, which is not a bad idea, actually. And how many of us miss that mark, right?

Chris Louis 33:28
Yeah, it’s a, it’s a really, yeah. Again, it’s just one of the, it’s it’s one of the deeper things that you uncover within our profession. That’s just it’s it’s it’s hard for people to really understand that, and when you have a leadership team, if if you’re a particularly in a large organization where the leadership is from a a particularly Western culture, they’re they’re not gonna their their tolerance to to hear these kind of things is very low. Like they they don’t really want to accept that as an answer because it leaves too much ambiguity, right? It leaves too much you know what they would consider to be a a vulnerability within the organization that that they’re not able to control and and they’re not willing to to accept that and so you have these things that are then forced, you know, good, bad, or indifferent. They’re then they become forced onto a culture that, like you said, it it might work when they’re there auditing, or or but but when no one’s around, things are going to revert back. And until you understand what is really driving or motivating that person, you’re not, you know, and everything’s gonna fail. I mean, it’s not, you know, I mean, you think about it the the opposite way, right? You you think about what you believe and what what you think to be true, and how would you react to somebody coming telling you that what you’re doing is completely wrong, and that and that they have a better way. For you to do it, I mean, you would be completely dismissive of that person. But yet, nobody nobody puts themselves in the opposite person’s shoe when when they’re having these conversations. And and again, it it all kind of comes back to a lot of the dynamics that come into place in organizations where, you know, it’s like I, you know, things kind of fall, you know. It’s kind of like the, you know, the the shit rolls downhill, right? It it kind of like comes, you know. It’s like I’m being told that I have to do this, and you know, if I don’t come back with an answer that’s satisfactory, then then it reflects poorly on me, and then now I’m I’m facing, you know, discipline for for not executing the mission of the company, and so you lose the ability to have that autonomy, unless you’re somebody that truly doesn’t care, and you know, and you know whether you get fired or not. But most people just have that, you know, you you all fall back to that basic need of I need the job, I need I need to perform satisfactorily to keep my job and to do that, I you have to do what you’re what’s being expected, and so it’s a and and again I think that’s where it’s the the non technical skills of an EHS HSE professional becomes so important and it’s so so often you know missing I think, and it’s missing in the education system. It’s missing, you know. It’s it’s the one thing that typically has to come through the school of hard knocks, right? You got to learn it the hard way. You got to learn what works, what doesn’t. You got to learn, you know, how to manage expectations of both your leader and the people beneath you. And it’s it’s it’s a tough challenge to to kind of to walk that line in a lot of cases.

Nippin Anand 36:48
Yes, Mick, you want to say something?

ViC D’mato 36:51
It’s it’s really interesting because Chris, I think you hit the nail on the head. Is that you know we’re always trying to look. You know, you’re right. You’re right. Everything is is left to right, right? Everything we do, except instant investigations, we start at the end and work backwards, right? And I think that there’s there’s there’s some some weirdness to that, in my opinion. But I think Chris, you know, we all react kind of to to what the expectations the organization has set for us, right? And it’s you know, let’s face it, you know, you know, solving problems is what people expect us to do in the safety space. The other thing is, is that I think there’s still this concept in leadership that safety is strictly compliance, and so failure is a is a lack of compliance. And so they look to safety and go, you know, fix this. They’re not compliant. Fix it, right? Chris also makes a great point about how do you, you know, where do you pick up these soft skills that are necessary to navigate complex organizations, which many of us work for, work for, or work for, and and it’s not just spot on. It’s not in the education system. You know, the only place you see soft skills are very high-level sort of descriptions that you see in job postings and job descriptions. You know, you know, engaged leadership. What does that mean? You know, what is the skill set I’m looking for for somebody that can do that? You know, somebody can have 30 years of experience but have never been in that position where they’ve had to engage with leadership. So you can’t quantify that. So when we even when we kind of go out to to to secure new leaders within this within the HSE space, we still don’t know what we’re looking for because we don’t have that clear cut. What what are those soft skills that somebody who’s effective in that role is? And when you look at the the role, it is familiar with global standards, familiar with regional standards, right? Familiar. We all fall back onto that compliance mode for for HSE professional. So it’s it’s you know it’s really tough to figure out what is the you know again it goes back to my my question of what does good look like when you talk about HSC performance?

Nippin Anand 39:03
Yeah, and I think what I find interesting in what you said, Vic, is that I don’t know if the answer lies in soft skills because we are talking about a certain kind of a worldview which is very religious. We call it safety saves lives, and that kind of religious statement, which is indoctrination, which is so embedded in people that you can easily upset them by saying that your job is not to save people; your job is to make people think on their own and take ownership of the risk, which comes through critical thinking. And I think so. I don’t know if skill development or soft skill development would be an answer to a problem that is so indoctrinated into people. It’s such it’s a dogma in many ways. So, and I think, in some ways, the answer to that is to to recognize the ethic, which is all about measurement and control, and replace it with something which is more humanistic. So the foundation has to, and then we can talk about the skills and and the knowledge. But I think the God needs to be challenged, the God of safety, which is measurement and control, and look at other ways of of creating a different kind of a God that actually wants to ask you questions, open questions, make you think on your own, take responsibility of of the things that you are totally unaware of, I think that that’s the place, and which is why I find the idea of ethics so important. And again, it is totally missing in the risk and safety world.

Chris Louis 40:33
Yeah, yeah, I think it’s like you know, it’s there’s every you know, it’s like every interaction is trying to solve a problem. You know, we we’ve kind of hit on that theme a lot, and there’s there’s not a lot of just opportunity to just have a conversation, and and just you know have a back and forth, and and maybe not leave that conversation with any real concrete decision, either way, but maybe just a conversation that has forced somebody to think, and even though they may disagree, you know, initially because of again the how they were brought up, what how they were indoctrinated, how they were programmed to think and react and feel, you know, their immediate response may be to dismiss you, but you know that night when they’re taking a shower, they they may be thinking about that conversation, and something may trigger you know a thought that say, well, you know, like I, am I really right, or you know, do I do I really need to to rethink that a little bit, and you know, it takes a it takes somebody. You know, you you really have to check your ego to to really be open to looking at different points of view and different different perspectives. And not every you know, so not everybody can do it, right? Some people are, and again, part of the Western culture is you’re you’re trained to you know you you have to show confidence you have to show decisiveness, and anything that would hint at the fact that maybe you’re a little bit unsure or whatever would be a sign of weakness, and therefore, you know you you can’t allow that to happen or or show. But but I think it’s you know it’s so important to have just deeper levels of conversation that that don’t necessarily produce an outcome, but just trigger you know some thought or or different you know engages different mental faculties that haven’t been engaged in the past, and at least hopefully will trigger something that can, you know, gain some momentum over time.

Nippin Anand 42:48
Absolutely, we are coming to the end of this beautiful conversation. Is there anything else you would like to share from both your side before we we conclude this conversation? Anything at all?

Chris Louis 43:01
For me, no. I just really, you know, appreciate the opportunity to to talk to you, and it’s always such a fascinating conversation. And I’m happy to say that we didn’t really have any, we didn’t produce any direct outcomes today. We just had a nice conversation, and and we learned, and and that’s really the name of the game. And yeah, I really appreciate the opportunity to to to meet and and have this have this conversation with

ViC D’mato 43:27
you. Yeah, same for me, Nippin. It was it was really great, and and I think the other thing is that’s interesting is none of this was rehearsed. This was completely organic. You know, Chris and I got on the call. We even know what we’re going to talk about today, so but we just let it roll. We we knew we were in good hands with you, Nippin. But I think I’ll I’ll say this: that you ask really good questions, really challenging questions that make you really think, and and I really truly appreciate that because, like I said, even just coming out of your the the the session we did in Amsterdam, I was like deep-seated my mind. I understood this stuff, but it’s so like he was like light bulb goes off, right? I’m like finally get it, and I’m not the only one that feels this way. And so I’m on a learning journey when it comes to understanding social psychology of risk, and and I truly appreciate it. And like I said, I’m you know read a lot on behavioral economics and and human performance and things like that, and this is just kind of one more brick in that wall that I kind of am building up to understand what I’m doing. I guess it’s not really a good analogy, but it’s one more sort of piece of the puzzle that I’m figuring out. Kind of how do we get better? How do we learn? And and to Chris’s point, we we always jump to solution mode. I mean, is what’s the problem statement? What’s the solution mode? What’s the root cause? And what’s the kappa? Right. I mean, that’s what we do in safety, and we got to think differently. Not everything has an outcome.

Nippin Anand 44:55
Great. No, that’s that’s a very wonderful thing to say. I was I had a conversation with with. Girl called Jenny Krasny, and just to bring it all together, she said that Nippin, you know what’s common between the word conversation, community, and some communion, and and so on. And she said it all starts with co. That means we co-create. So to your point, both of you, that we had this an hour or so to have a conversation to co-create something that we did not need to rehearse or anything. So I’m very grateful to you for your time. It’s been a wonderful conversation as always, and thank you. And I will stop recording.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai