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Previous: Leading vs. Lagging Indicators‚ Which Matter More?You’ve seen it before.

It’s everywhere. At entrances to sites, on reminder signs, and company swag.

“Safety first!” Uh-huh, sure. When you got some coffee, shaved, drove or rode, walked into work, started your workday, etc., did you say to yourself, “safety first”? Or at least, did you think of safety before the task?

No? Yeah, me neither. So, if it’s so important, then why don’t we do it?

It’s not natural. We have a task to accomplish, so we focus on our task at hand. It’s perfectly natural, too. If we don’t think “safety first,” why do we expect workers to do so? Good question. Likely, it’s become a catchphrase that’s been repeated so many times, we believe it (referential validity). It’s in our safety lexicon. And it feels good.

So, what would make more sense? What is more natural? What might be accomplishable? “Safety with …”. It’s what we want people to do. While you’re performing your task, please incorporate safe practices during it. “Safety with …”. Let’s try it out and see how it might work.

Safety with research.

Safety with construction. Safety with driving. Safety with work. Did you see how it flows so easily? And it makes sense. Engage in safe behaviors while performing the task or assignment. Only that’s too long – so instead, safety with. And it embeds safe behaviors into our processes, which is really what most safety folks want. “Hey Jon, while you’re on your daily 5-mile bike ride, please engage in safe behaviors!”

Okay, sure – that I can do!

And did you notice that “safety” still comes first? From now on, it’s “safety with.”

Next: Let’s stop talking about mere safety – instead, let’s discuss …

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Previous: Let's Stop Talking About Mere Safety Instead Let's Discuss...Risk. Or, more importantly, risk perceptions. And while we’re at it, let’s change it to “risk culture.”

In our fourth series of micro-blogs, “Risk is a 4-letter word”, we obviously discuss risk a lot. But let’s focus on the relationships between risk (and risk perceptions) and safety culture.

Briefly to frame risk – it’s the byproduct of consequence (a negative outcome) and probability (its odds of occurring). While safety is binary (I’m safe or I’m not), the risk is fluid across two or three ranges (the third one sometimes added is exposure).

Discussing risk is paradoxical. Risk is more complex than safety. So, in that regard, it should be tougher to discuss. But because of the many factors across the two or three ranges, it gives us many opportunities to talk about them. So let’s.

When we have thoughtful discussions on a topic, it adds to our frame and our ways of doing things.

Our norms. And thus, our safety culture. If risk gives us space to have conversations, risk perceptions just increase that space even more.

We all have varying risk perceptions. And we don’t spend nearly enough time talking about them because that’s what is at the heart of so many of our challenges – the differences between our risk perceptions.

As I write, we are still living in the land of covid-19. If there was ever an opportunity to discuss and listen (and I do mean discuss – not argue or force upon others!) of our different risk perceptions, this is it.

So, let’s talk about risk perceptions, which risks are worth taking, and our risk culture because life is about risk and makes it worth living.

Coming Soon: If I were to say, “safety culture initiatives,” what would come to mind?

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[Story narrated in their words by Sony Heir, prepared and written as a story by Jonathan Klane]

“Your training system will eventually fail. You may wish to get a new one.” No truer words were spoken. These were from the regulator inspecting our NEIDL Facility (with BSL-4 labs). We can’t operate if we don’t have accurate and trackable training. Or if a regulator shuts us down over it. Great – now what?

Facilities were doing in-person toolbox talks – you know, swipe their card, get an attendance record, and try to merge it with the training. It was awkward, clumsy, and time consuming.

I had the solution – “Let’s use our SciShield Training to systematize it!” Their response? “It won’t happen. It won’t work. The guys won’t log in. There are language challenges. Don’t bother even trying.” Ugh.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like getting “no” for an answer. So, I asked if we knew how many we trained? “No, we don’t know”. We needed to use SciShield.

Then the pandemic hits and we can’t do in-person training anymore. Now it’s, “Sony, can we do these online?” Cool! “Yes, but there’s no records with our online PowerPoints.”

Finally, we’re trying to roll it out to Facilities who have 34 different groups with over 700 people total! Large and complex to be sure.

We wanted to be able to see compliance in each “Area” – so, I I made each Area Manager a Sub-group Manager in SciShield with access to their employees’ records. I sent each manager an email with direct links to “bookmark these, please!”

Talk about a fantastic start - their first trainings started on a Monday and by Wednesday they had >65% compliance! Better still, within just 2 weeks they had >90% compliance!

We got lots of positive feedback! But we didn’t include a quiz – did that matter in our numbers? Everyone loved that we had actionable data for the first time! Their Director, Bill, put all of their training courses into SciShield – he loved it that much!

Next, we gave a bloodborne pathogens course from Vivid Learning (a SciShield partner for training) with a quiz. “Now we’ll see.” This time within a month, we had >90% compliance again! That was the convincer – the directive came down, “Put as many trainings as possible into SciShield!”

And what about those skeptics? Even with >700 Facilities folks, we had fewer than 5 problems with logging in, etc. – an amazing success!

Then we got new skeptics who claimed, “We have to keep our existing programs just in case!” They wanted integrations between SciShield and old ones. Guess what? None were worth it! We weren’t gaining anything and the efforts were wasting our limited time.

The old systems had no records and so our folks repeated the same courses they’d taken. But in SciShield the records are all there and easy to see. Finally, we had to and did let go of all of the old systems and as I told folks, “We are not going back!”

Managers now can discuss how it’s going, any training issues, who attended, their data, the quizzes, etc. It seems impossible especially with “covid time” – but we accomplished so much in these 9-10 months that we never would’ve before!

And now? We have actionable data, Facilities takes the learning into the field, and work out any challenges. People are amazed and happy with the outcome and what it means for us! We’re happy (and no one wants to go back to the old ways).

Back to our NEIDL facility and the regulator - we’re no longer worried about being inspected. “Do you have training data you can show us?” – well, back before SciShield, the answer was, “No, we don’t have real-time compliance data,” - now, it’s “Heck yes! We know our training data – here look at it all!”

Sony Heir, Associate Director, EHS Systems and Training at Boston University (BU)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdQzm732k2QIn science, losing data and samples is a major problem. Increasingly, lab digitization is becoming a requirement. The answer is eLabNext.Control procedures with eLabProtocols, manage samples and equipment with eLabInventory, or combine eLabProtocols and eLabInventory with an ELN for managing data and experiments in eLabJournal - our most complete software package.< Back to overview

Do you know his name? It’s Malcolm Knowles. In 1973 he published The Adult Learner, A Neglected Species. He is credited with the wider use of andragogy to reflect how adults learn and differentiate the process from pedagogy or how children learn.

When I was in my master’s program in adult education at the University of Southern Maine back in the ‘90s, my advisor and professor, Michael Brady, Ph.D., told us a story about Malcolm Knowles. He was the keynote speaker at a conference of adult educators in Maine.

After the usual introduction, plaudits, and applause, he spoke. “What would you like to learn?”

Now imagine you’re in the audience. You know of Malcolm and his work in your field. You’re very excited to hear him speak and interested in what this expert has to say. And he asks, “What do you want to learn?” How do you feel? What do you do?

Well, there was a pregnant pause with silence. And finally, one brave soul broke the ice, “Could you please tell me more about how you came up with your theory of adult learning?”

Malcolm smiled, “Why yes, of course – great question.” He then went on for several minutes, answering this learner’s question. “What would someone else like to learn?” And this time, he got a quicker response and another great question from a self-directed learner. And so it went – they’d caught on.

Malcolm was using the adult learning principles (ALPs) he’d written.

In particular, he was both acknowledging and helping them all to be self-directed. There are many other ALPs, including active (not passive), applicability, co-developing the agenda, immediacy of needs, and many more! [I’ll be writing a blog just on his ALPs - #6 in this series, so please stay tuned].

Let’s talk just a bit about what he meant by andragogy. Adults aren’t children – we have different needs, wants, and desires. I’m pretty sure you get this. It applies to learning, too, of course. And I’m willing to bet you’ve experienced it in yourself – I know I have. I was living alone, and a button popped off a dress shirt. No need to toss the shirt – I just need to know how to sew it on. Um, how?

I’d never learned. So, like so many of us, I searched online, found some simple how-to articles with photos, diagrams, and videos, and in about 10 minutes, I’d learned how to sew a button onto a dress shirt. Apparently, you can teach an old dog new tricks, eh? Well, at least a self-directed old dog, that is.

How much of a self-directed learner are you? And perhaps more importantly for your learners, how much of an adult learning facilitator are you, too? Do you facilitate (definition: to make it easy) the learning for your learners? Many of us in learning circles prefer the term facilitator over trainer or teacher. In fact, it’s widely used elsewhere across the globe. I traveled to Trinidad & Tobago years ago, and they introduced me as “our facilitator for our learning this week.” How cool is that?!

Be like Malcolm Knowles – facilitate active learning in others. Use his adult learning principles – trust me, you won’t regret it – and neither will your learners.

And check out heutagogy, too, while you’re at it. How heutagogical are you?

Next: Training needs assessments‚ Do not pass go, do not collect $200

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It’s 100,000 years ago on the savanna. You and your clanmate are returning from some nearby foraging. There is a gentle breeze blowing toward you, and the tall grass is gently bending. Some birds were chirping. It’s quiet now – in fact, it’s too quiet. The hairs on your back are standing up. You glance back and spot it – a saber-toothed tiger! You both burst into a sprint for your lives! You’re just a stride or two ahead of your clanmate, and you can hear the Smilodon pounce! You hear the bloodcurdling scream cut off and the rending of flesh, the breaking of bones! And you keep running, and running, and running …

You arrive at your cave out of breath. Your clanmates gather around you. They want to know what happened. You stagger over to the wall, pick up a piece of charcoal and begin drawing. You make some lines, some arrows, and a few Xs. You step back and look at it – yes, it depicts this well. And then you tell them about the graph you’ve drawn.

“As you all can see from my time-bounded graph, our Smilodon-induced fatalities had trended upward for the preceding two moons with a peak in raw numbers at five last moon when our hunting party was fatally surprised by three Smilodons. At this rate, in 3 more moons, our clan will reach criticality and will no longer be sustainable.”

You look at your clanmates, and they stare back at you in wonder and curiosity. What? No story?!

Stories have been with us since we could communicate. Studies of specific myths indicate that they go back at least 20,000 years, and stories in general likely much further.

Why?

Obviously, it’s how we communicated, especially since life is a sequence of events (scenes), involving people (characters), having a path or arc (plot), with critical stages (climax), and an outcome (what’s at stake). I think you can see my point.

But there is so much more to stories and narratives. They are how we facilitate relatability to others, including bonding. [I’ll be writing about that more in blog #2: “Excuse me, sir, are you okay?”]. They help us make sense of our place in both the macro world and our microworlds.

And they play a significant role in cognitive science. They are pretty darn powerful. So, why don’t we use them more? That’s a great question.

In the hard sciences, we have equated stories with anecdotes and have devalued them as a usurper of data’s importance. This has been an incorrect approach to seeing their power to tell the story, including our data. Data and stories go hand in hand – they’re not binary (data terminology) nor a zero-sum game (psychosocial phrase). Thankfully in recent years, there has been a broad movement to use storytelling effectively in the sciences.

Narratives and storytelling have their day in the sun. Storytelling is growing as the norm, with storytellers being sought out for their “particular set of skills.” Studies have shown that some storytellers in tribes have been shown to increase cooperation and consequently to tribal benefits; they are “preferred social partners [with] greater reproductive success.” That sounds pretty good to me. Storytelling skills would seem to be a selected evolutionary trait.

So, what’s stopping you from using them more? If you’re like most of us, you haven’t been exposed to the science (and art) of effective storytelling, including the empirical data that supports it as a tool, technique, and strategy.

In this micro-blog series – “3-minute micro-stories” – I’ll be sharing many of the methods and reasons behind them and, of course, as narratives. You can likely read each one in about 3 minutes or so. Here’s one more micro-story for you. It’s about my Dad, who was my first storytelling teacher and mentor.

My Dad sold shoes for a living. Oh, not in stores like Al Bundy – my Dad traveled all over New England and upper-state NY selling to stores. He knew everyone, and everyone knew him. I remember back in the ‘70s, and I went on a sales trip with him. I would’ve been in my early teens at the time. We stopped at a roadside diner for a late bite to eat.

As we walked in, several people saw us and yelled out, “Hi Keith!” It was like that frequent scene in cheers (“Norm!”) before there was the show. That was my Dad.

Later in life, I was married and had moved up to Maine, a couple of states away. My then-wife was getting her degree, and so my folks came up to help us celebrate. In the crowded gym where commencement ceremonies were, we spot my Dad, talking with two gentlemen. Later in the ceremony, the two men were honored by the college for their contributions. They were the Levine brothers, Levine’s Department Store owners – an icon for decades in downtown Waterville.

My Dad had sold them shoes over the years, and they chatted as old friends do.

Years later, my Dad passed away from lung cancer due to a lifetime of smoking, starting as a teen and reinforced as a sailor in WWII when they’d give the GIs cigarettes. At his funeral, my brother, sister, my oldest nephew, and I all told stories about him both as eulogies and later with loved ones back at the house. I still recall 25 years after that, so many of his old friends and family said the same thing how they loved all of the stories about my Dad. He was larger than life, and they said we’d captured his spirit well.

So, as you can see, stories have the power to transport us, frame episodes, and make sense out of our lives. You can (and I’d offer should) use narrative in many forms of communications.

Some examples to get you primed include training, conversations about risk, team building, meetings, and casual conversations. Drop me a line and tell me your story.

How are you using stories to relate, make sense, persuade, and contextualize your data? Start telling your stories.

Next: Excuse Me Sir, Are You Okay?

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Previous: What can Alex Honnold teach us about risk?

Did you ever drive someplace, only to arrive at your destination and think, "I don't even remember driving! How the heck did I get here – and in one piece?!" Or perhaps when you were surprised by an animal or child darting out into the road, and you braked or swerved just in time to avoid hitting it? And you thought, "Thank goodness – that was close!" If you're like me and most of us, you have, and it's a normal part of how our magnificent brain can work – sometimes. We can and often do make split-second decisions without consciously thinking about them. It was a survival skill and up-selected evolutionary trait that we thankfully continue to have and use today. It's called fast thinking or system 1. And as I'm sure you could guess, the corollary or companion to it is indeed slow thinking or system 2. In the 1970s, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky did a ton of studies on human behavior and decision making, and they learned a lot. Like why we care more about a loss than we do about an equivalent gain? Or why the first number have such an anchoring effect? And why do we throw good money after bad? Basically, they studied our many cognitive biases – how we make decisions that don't appear rational at first glance. And did I mention that Daniel Kahneman got a Nobel Prize in Economics Sciences for it? And he wasn't even an economist – he was a behavioral psychologist and researcher. But their groundbreaking 1974 article, Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, changed how we see risk, perceptions, and human decision-making. I'll be discussing these and many other of our cognitive biases in future micro-blogs in this series – "Risk is a 4-letter word". But what about all of this fast vs. slow thinking? Let's come back to that. It turns out that we don't do a lot of heavy cognition if we can avoid it. Our brains find workarounds to reduce the energy load. Imagine that you're driving, and you see something that looks like a child; you'll likely swerve to avoid it – a good thing, of course. What if it was just a plastic bag caught by a breeze or an animal? Our brain reacts to what it thinks it might be as opposed to what it is. If you want a literary allusion to fast thinking, look no further than Spiderman. Do you recall his Spidey sense tingling? And his super-fast reactions? Yes? Well, those are great examples of this non-analytical intuitive, fast thinking. Now, you don't have to be a superhero to have and use quick thinking (though I'm sure it'd be nice to have Spidey sense in a pinch!). Here are a few examples you may have experienced yourself. You're sitting at the dining room table enjoying dinner with the family. One of your sweet children reaches for a dish and knocks the vase with the fresh-cut flowers tipping it over. And as if in slow motion, your arm shoots out, and you barely manage to catch the vase before it crashes. Your loved one says, "Wow, what a catch! How'd you do it?" And you say, "I don't know, I just reacted." Fast thinking saves the day. Sometimes. You're driving and watching the road when all of a sudden there's a dog in the street! You swerve to the right, barely avoiding hitting the poor thing, likely killing it had you not cranked the wheel. But now you're skidding through into the breakdown lane and onto the shoulder going down the rolling slope! You're braking and trying to hold the wheels straight! You finally come to a stop. You're sweating and thankful that it wasn't worse. And you hope that dog is okay. You're on your way to getting your usual coffee, and while walking, you're looking at your phone, and you get to the door without a mishap—that time. You get your coffee, and you're looking at your phone as you walk off the curb and "Beeeep!" as a car goes whizzing by. You jump back, heart-pounding as the driver curses you out. And you think, "Boy, that was close! I've got to pay better attention!" You're in a lab decanting some sulfuric acid, and you're startled by a loud noise. You react and swivel, and in your fast thinking turn, the acid splashes out, spattering your arm! You turn one way, turn back, and you run to the sink! You drop the glassware in the sink, turn on the cold water, and stick your arm under the flowing water. A labmate rushes over and says, "Let's get your lab coat off to wash your arm better!" You do so, but you can't wash your whole arm, and you now say, "Oh my God, I think it got on my face!" The lab mate has to help get you into the emergency shower—much more fast thinking, which unfortunately didn't help you. These and similar situations happen to us all. Sometimes we notice, mostly we don't pay attention. Sometimes fast-thinking saves our butts, and sadly, too often, it doesn't. Try going without it. You can't. Try insisting that someone "Pay better attention" or "Needs to be more careful." Really? Try it consistently. I'll bet you can't sustain it. Don't expect others to either. Or as Daniel Kahneman put it, "It is wrong to blame anyone for failing to forecast accurately in an unpredictable world. However, it seems fair to blame professionals for believing they can succeed in an impossible task." Which system of thinking are you using when it comes to risk? And which system are those around you?Coming Soon: Why is "threat to value" key to understanding decisions?Sources: Kahneman, Daniel. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kahneman, Daniel and Tversky, Amos. (1974). Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science, 185(4157):1124-31. DOI: 10.1126/science.185.4157.1124.

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Previous: How Well Do You Know the Father of Adult Learning?

Training (or learning) needs assessments – Do not pass go, do not collect $200 I get asked this question a lot: "Jon, what's the most frequently missed opportunity (or mistake) you see being made with training?" A lot. And it's an easy question – not just because I get asked it over and over. It's a bit of a cliché, but way too many trainers don't follow Steve Covey's habit #3: "Put first things first" (or what I've heard rephrased as "Begin at the beginning"). I keep seeing trainers begin in the middle. Perhaps it's because this is supposed to always be done before even attempting to design the training. Once you do this, you may discover that their needs aren't best addressed via training. Yup, it's to do a training (or learning) needs assessment. I remember learning of a study published in an HR journal several decades ago that studied how many problems brought to a training department were actually solvable via training. Care to guess – out of 8 issues, how many can even be addressed through training? You have a 1 in 9 chance of choosing it randomly (it could be zero, yes?). While it wasn't zero, it wasn't much more – only 1 in 8 problems are solvable by training. So, what about the other seven problems? All sorts of different needs – supervision, supplies, budget, behavior, etc. The list is a long one – no surprise, training can only manage somewhere around 10-15% of typical problems. Many trainers don't know or realize that a learning needs assessment is that key first step. They end up maybe writing learning objectives or go right to put their training together (sadly, often text and data on PowerPoint slides). Or they figure that the learner's needs are whatever OSHA includes for required content. Ugh. Please, just don't. A learning needs assessment is a critical first step - heck, even OSHA emphasizes this in document 2254 on their training requirements. Then we need to develop well-articulated and crafted learning objectives to see just what the heck we expect the learners to be able to do after the learning event (training) (see micro-blog #3 in this series - Learning objectives ("At the end of this micro-learning, you will be able to …"). An easy example that's likely fairly common would be a perceived need for respiratory protection. Let's say that through some reporting, I get feedback that a lab group needs respirators. Hopefully, as a decent IH and trainer, I stop and think, "I wonder what's going on?" So, I check out what they're doing. Maybe they're not working in a fume hood? Or it's not functioning properly? Or who knows what? All great questions. Well, let's imagine that things are all fine with their processes, equipment, etc. They are preparing to use a new substance that's a known sensitizer, and they requested the respirator use as an added precaution above the hood, etc. It seems fine to approve. Now we've determined the need and that it can be aided via training. In this case, on respirator selection, fitting, use, and care. We can now begin to design the training by crafting effective learning objectives. "At the end of the training, the learner will be able to use a respirator properly."Had we found other issues – say, the hood wasn't working, or their process could benefit from some adjusting, then respirator training might not have been the right solution. It's all about a well-thought-out training or learning needs assessment. There are many methods and techniques to choose from in doing a learning needs assessment. Which one should you use? I'll give you an example in the next micro-blog – in the form of a micro-story to drive home the key points. Read on, fellow learning travelers.Coming Soon: "You want me to teach BBPs to who?!"

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ANSI/ASSE Z490 Standard on EHS Training has been available for a decade and a half, and few EHS departments use it. The question is, of course, why not use it? Is it fear of the unknown? Do EHS professionals and trainers think it will limit their training or "handcuff" them to unnecessary requirements? There seem to be many false myths that will be dispelled. Not only that, but also this paper will demonstrate that one can have a-rockin' EHS training program, complete with adult learning principles, and still comply with Z490! One should never "settle" for second best when it comes to EHS training – it's too damn important! This article will address many questions, including:

1. What are the major sections of Z490?
2. What are some recent updates to Z490?
3. If we adopt it, what are we then obligated to do?
4. How can it really help our EHS training program?
5. What other questions might people have?

Major Sections of ANSI/ASSE Z490 There are seven sections and four annexes in Z490. They are:

Sections:

1. Scope, Purpose, and Application
2. Definitions
3. Management of a Comprehensive Training Program
4. Training Program / Course Development
5. Training Delivery
6. Training Evaluation
7. Documentation and Recordkeeping

Annexes:

1. References
2. Training Course Development Guidelines
3. Safety, Health, and Environmental Trainer's Checklist
4. Virtual Learning

Let's start by taking a brief look at each of the major sections.

1. Scope, Purpose, and Application:

This section is easily summed up in one 3-part sentence. Z490 is about the criteria ("scope") for the accepted practices ("purpose") of EHS training/trainers ("application"). That's it – simple, isn't it?

2. Definitions:

There are only 14 definitions in Z490. These range from the ANSI/ASSE consistent ones (i.e., may, shall, and should) to the expected but very obvious (e.g., trainer, training, and training everything [course, event, program, provider, etc.] to the somewhat more sublime (e.g., certificate, competent training professional, credit, and virtual learning). None of the 14 terms are so specific as to "lock" one into something. On the contrary, they are pretty generic or wide-ranging.

3. Management of a Comprehensive Training Program:

Section 3 on the management of one's EHS program comprises just four subparts - accountability and responsibility, minimum requirements, resource management and administration, and evaluation – that's all. Within these four subparts, there aren't a lot of things you have to do. You need to identify areas of responsibility and accountability, provide some level of resources, administrate the training, and evaluate it. Oh, and yes, there are a few "minimums." But these minimums are very basic and traditional elements of any training program. What are they? They're such basics as development, needs assessment, objectives, design, format, delivery, completion criteria, evaluation, and recordkeeping of documentation. That's all – and they are the basics that every good training program should have anyway. Really.

4. Training Program / Course Development:

Section 4 is probably the biggest section with helpful guidance on many basic elements of any adult learning. These include needs assessment, learning objectives, design, delivery method(s), content, instructional materials, trainer qualifications, environment, strategy, completion, and continuous improvement.

5. Training Delivery: Section 5 on training delivery (my favorite section, of course) has some good "meat" to it, too. General subparts include trainer qualifications and delivery methods and materials. Planning and preparation have also been added here. 6. Training Evaluation: This section overviews a variety of aspects, including general criteria, approaches, and continuous improvement. 7. Documentation and Recordkeeping: The last section includes aspects of records, including systems, procedures, records, confidentiality/availability, and issuing certificates.

It's also important to understand the four annexes and their overall guidance, so let's review them.

A. References:

There are almost 20 references or resources to consider using in your training, five of which are recent additions.

B. Training Course Development Guidelines:

This annex is by far the most comprehensive one. There is a nice overview on course development with a newly added paragraph on structuring a training course with nine steps of how to do so.

C. Safety, Health, and Environmental Trainer's Checklist:

This annex has a detailed checklist with five major parts and various subparts and items within each of the five. These include delivery, planning/preparation, special issues, other considerations, and key points of delivery. There's also a "day of" checklist. It's a great multitude of basically bullet items to tick off one's list.

D. Virtual Learning:

This is a new annex with four nice parts and many bullet points under each.

Recent Updates to Z490 There really weren't many changes of a significant nature in this revision and process. Mostly it was cleaning up some wording to make it a bit more comprehensive and smoother. Some specifics include:

• Adding needs assessment, development, delivery, evaluation, and management to the purpose.
• We are adding managing and management of the training program throughout it.
• Section 3 became much more about the management of a comprehensive training program (rather than a somewhat disjointed or, heaven forbid, haphazard one).
• Of course, we are adding a definition for "Virtual Learning." Beefing up guidance (and I do mean guidance only) on training evaluations.
• Differentiating between the (overall) training program and (any individual) course development.
• Added "literacy" as an issue or concern.
• Clarified regulatory requirements vs. training needs and the "need" to consider whether training is even the right "response" or solution. Under objectives, added, "skills" and "attitudes" to "knowledge" (to round out KSAs).
• Filled out training development with greater helpful details. Made mention of virtual learning and having a secure connection. Added that trainer qualifications should include both subject matter expertise and delivery skills.
• Suggests that "testing out" may be an option to be specified. Added a few items under training planning and preparation. Added that there shouldn't be noise, should be lighting, and provisions made for emergency aid.
• Did a little bit of nuancing under evaluations.
• Added that incidents, observations, and audits should be used to hone the training and evaluations.
• Tweaked recordkeeping to include certification.
• Added resources to Annex A.
• Added a paragraph on how to structure a training course in Annex B.
• Made a bunch of minor edits.
• Added Annex D on Virtual Learning.

Obligations Under Z490

Beyond the "standard" requirements (which are very basic, as discussed above), there isn't a lot. Have a management system, including the usual training elements, use some common best practices, and document, document, document. How Z490 Can Help Your EHS Training Z490 is a bit like an owner's manual that you get to write – how awesome is that?! But wait – there's more! Sorry. Anyway, Z490 is perhaps best at helping you organize your EHS training and ensuring that you're adopting some type of management system along with a few best practices. And you know what? That's good enough. It has few minimums that any decent training program is likely to have anyway. Also, it allows you to stipulate what it is you're doing to manage your EHS training. So, go ahead, rock it! (and then document what you did to make your EHS training as fantastic as it is). Possible Questions? That's a good question – what other questions might fellow EHS trainers have about Z490 that we haven't already discussed? Most seem to ask about the experience(s) of others who've implemented Z490. Yeah, right. There is a dearth of organizations that've adopted it. This is likely due to two things – no regulatory imperative and a profound lack of exposure/knowledge about it. I guess we'll see in the future how it goes. Final Thoughts on Z490That's really all there is to it. Z490 is mostly just a standard for organizing, managing, and documenting your EHS training, as well as a few best practices thrown in for good measure. So, what's stopping you from adopting and using it to the benefit of your centralize software training program? Happy training!Where do you want to take your EHS training?

Learn more about ANSI Z490.1!

"

Do you know who Alex Honnold is? If you’re a rock climber or a fan of it, you surely do. Or if you watched the documentary Free Solo, then you definitely do.

Yes, he’s that guy. He climbed El Capitan “free solo” – without a rope, just him, using his hands or fingers and his feet or toes at times. To say it’s impressive is like saying the Eiffel Tower is a nice metal structure.

It doesn’t do it justice.

So, what can Alex teach us about risk? Good question. In addition to the first free solo of El Capitan, he holds the fastest ascent of the Yosemite triple crown.

But he doesn’t limit his climbs to nature’s tall wonders. He also has climbed the outside of several buildings – yes, free solo.

His preparations, routine, practice, skills, etc., decrease the probability of a negative outcome.

“For every hard pitch I’ve soloed, I’ve probably soloed a hundred easy pitches.” The repetitions and practice enable a higher skill level than one might appreciate at first thought.

He also rehearses each move and visualizes them. He has even visualized everything that could go wrong in the run-up to a challenging climb, including falling onto the rocks below and dying. A process we would call a pre-mortem. Visualization is a helpful technique used by athletes and others to prepare for a challenging situation mentally. Guided visualization is a training approach that I’ve used in some courses I’ve taught.

All of this preparation, mental and physical, helps to get ready for the actual event. All of which helps decrease the probability of a negative outcome, which reduces its risk. I’ll let Alex explain it – he sums it up nicely (as they say, “brevity is wit”).

Here is his quote that got my initial attention, and I thought, yup, that makes perfect sense to me.

“I differentiate between risk and consequence. Sure, falling from this building is a high consequence, but, for me, it’s low risk.” He’s right, of course. For anyone, it’s a high consequence (i.e., death) – yup. But for him, it’s low risk, specifically due to the very low probability of a negative outcome. Risk involves both consequence and probability (and we can toss in exposure, too, as it can helpfully add a third dimension).

If you’re familiar with the typical risk matrix (or if not, just visualize it), we have a standard two-axis graph. Consequence (a bad outcome) is usually the vertical or y-axis, and probability (likelihood or odds) is usually the horizontal or x-axis. If we need or want to add in exposure (how much one is exposed or how many of us are), it’d be the z-axis coming out to get a 3-dimensional model.

Due to our evolution and brains as humans, we aren’t good at differentiating possibility from probability.

The result is that we tend to over-focus on the consequence (potential lousy outcome) and under focus on the probability (likelihood). So, going back to our 2-axis risk matrix, the upper left corner – high consequence/low probability – tends to get and keep our attention – it pings our threat and risk center in our brain in a very visceral and affective way.

It’s real, and it’s emotional. It should come as no surprise that many people have wondered if Alex’s brain might be wired a bit differently from the rest of us.

So too have researchers in this field.

So, Alex volunteered to allow Dr. Jane Joseph, the first neuroscientist to study fMRIs of thrill-seekers, to conduct a study of Alex’s amygdala (threat and thus the risk center) compared with a similar control subject. His lack of response to stimuli of the amygdala of his brain fascinated the researchers and others. Images were flashed in front of his eyes – ones that “stimulate” threat or arousal. Some are so awful that Dr. Joseph can’t stand to view them. They tend to affect us all similarly. Well, not quite all of us – they don’t affect Alex, his amygdala doesn’t fire (light up in the scans). He is rather blasé about the imagery shown in the scans, “… I was like, whatever.” He also compared it to “… looking through a curio museum.”

Instead of taking us down the sci-fi-ish rabbit hole of rewiring our brains to diminish our amygdala firing, let’s focus on probability. [Note: I’m likely to focus on sci-fi as a tool to aid us in exploring psychosocial complexities and possibilities via narrative, so please stay tuned!].

If we can imitate, or at least imagine, Alex’s approach, we can be more analytical about probability and thus risk.

This can be as simple as reworking how we think of and word our risk statements.

We often say, “It could happen.” Instead, let’s try substituting probability into it. “What would have to occur for this actually to happen? And how would that occur? Under what set of circumstances?” In other words, we can ask, “How likely is it?” Yes, it’s longer and more complex than our first statement of possibility. But it facilitates focusing on probability instead. And that is risk.

Ever wondered how much of one’s life is spent on our greatest passion? It can be an amazing amount of time. We become experts in it. It can be rock-climbing, risk perceptions, or engineering. Or any of a myriad of other wonderous areas of study.

Besides the passionate pursuit, the commonality is our accumulation of experiences, knowledge, skills, attitudes, and expertise.

All of which can help us better understand both the consequences and the probabilities of our work.

The conversations I’ve had with engineering (and other) scientists and researchers have been some of the most fascinating and fun ones in my career! Somehow, they all eventually get back to the topic of risk. And I’ve found that experts in their fields know risk pretty darned well.

In the upcoming micro-blogs in this series, “Risk is a 4-letter word” (readable in 4 minutes or so), we’ll continue to explore the concept of risk and the cognitive science that supports it. If you’re at all like me, I think you’ll find it fascinating, enlightening, and helpful.

How are you framing the concept of risk in your own contexts?

Next: System 1 or System 2 thinking – which are we all using?

Sources:

• https://films.nationalgeographic.com/free-solo/
• https://www.alexhonnold.com/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Honnold
• https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/alex-honnold-climbs-halfway-up-a-new-jersey-skyscraper
• https://medicine.musc.edu/departments/neuroscience/research/joseph
• https://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the-worlds-greatest-solo-climber

"Recent Blog Posts""popular_past_year

Although MCE provides assurances, it does not ensure competence, nor does it fit adult education's meaning.

Mandatory continuing education (MCE) brings to mind visions of professionals going to courses, conferences, and seminars to hear and learn about the latest cutting-edge trends in an ever-changing society while maintaining their professional certification or licensure. Perhaps instead, one might listen to MCE and think of the seemingly endless parade of mandated training classes intended to comply with almost countless regulatory standards of the U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL's) Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT).

What Is MCE?

MCE is the on-going professional development courses taken within one's field to stay current, demonstrate competence and maintain certification or licensure. Nurses and other allied health professionals are usually required to acquire a certain quantity of continuing education units (CEUs); physicians require continuing medical education (CMEs); Certified Industrial Hygienists (CIHs) need certification maintenance points (CMs); Certified Safety Professionals need CEUs as well; the list goes on.

Also, a wide variety of para-professionals are required to go to some form of annual refresher training to be kept up-to-date and to be able to qualify for recertification. Designers, Inspectors, Monitors and Abatement Workers in both Asbestos and Lead-Based Paint (LBP) abatement fields go to one-day, eight-hour training courses (including a mandatory exam at the end), once per year to be allowed to work in their field, as do Hazardous Materials/Hazardous Waste Technicians. Some consultants who work in all three of the above areas and are multi-disciplined within each can expect to go to upwards of eight or more different one-day mandatory courses each year.

Why MCE?

If any, few persons would question the need for professionals responsible for others' health, safety, and welfare to stay current and demonstrate competence in their field of practice. Many sources consider a professional "half-life" (the time required to forget or invalidate one-half of one's professional knowledge) to be about five years (a number of years coincidental with many boards' required recertification). Nor would common sense let us be dissuaded from recognizing the need to educate persons (workers or the general public) on the hazards that they face in their jobs and lives. However, whether or not it should be mandated, is there a better way to ensure competencies, and how can MCE be improved?So, why mandate continuing education for certain professions in the first place? Perhaps there are several reasons. In a world of constant change and rapid advancement, it is more important than ever for professionals to stay current in their field. According to Professor Michael Brady at the University of Southern Maine, there are 7000 new articles published every day! This is undoubtedly a staggering figure. Also, today's society changes several times during each generation, whereas, in the past, it would take several generations to change the culture. If society is changing so rapidly, how else can we ensure that the physicians, engineers, and health and safety professionals are up-to-date on the latest techniques and trends available and appropriate to their practice? The general public, for whom these professionals perform services, wants them to be held accountable to the highest level of their profession and assured of such. In this highly litigious society, maintaining professional accountability through MCE is its defense against liability, sort of a form of Errors and Omissions (E&O) insurance, if you will.

In addition to professional accountability, society demands that anyone handling hazardous substances, e.g., asbestos, hazardous waste, and LBP, be properly trained to not risk accidental exposures or releases into the environment. Along the same lines, we want our workers protected against hazards they might face as a part of their job responsibilities. The easiest way to ensure that they are trained and educated about these hazards is to regulate and mandate them.

Table 1: MANDATORY CONTINUING EDUCATION

PROSCONSEnsures that training occursIn conflict with adult learning principlesLiability mitigation Inflexible curriculumComply with regulationsDoes not ensure competencyExposure to current trends Tests knowledge, not skillsPublic assurance False sense of security

Why Not MCE?

So, if MCE provides assurances of accountability and currentness in today's ever-changing world, what's the problem with it? In a nutshell, it runs 180 degrees counter to the very principles on which effective adult education and learning are based. There are several widely accepted tenets of adult education that MCE either violates or disallows by its structure.

Adult learners are typically self-directed, and as such, adult education must be voluntary. The content of any training must be flexible; in fact, adult learners like to participate in the planning and selecting course curriculum. For truly effective adult education, there must be a need and relevance for the learners to apply it. In particular, this problem expands exponentially when adults are required to participate in the same training year after year, i.e., Hazard Communication, Bloodborne Pathogens, Asbestos, etc.

Exams imposed at the end of the training are not necessarily a measure of competency as much as they are a measure of knowledge or test-taking ability. Forcing someone into a classroom or attending a conference will not guarantee any learning. In fact, considering expected resentment or even hostility toward the course, any education as an outcome would be unexpected. By the same token that "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink," one might say that, "you can lead adults into a classroom, but you can't make them think (or learn)."

"New and Improved " MCE

With so many problems inherent to MCE, the situation would appear hopeless, but this is far from the case. MCE, as a profession, can be improved upon in many ways that would help to meet the needs of adult learners.

As a start, all MCE offerings need to be more flexible. Courses and training classes need to acknowledge that people go to training to learn, and it's pointless to be restrictive in the course content. Be flexible, be adaptable, give the students choices - let them vote on the curriculum. Then deliver the students' training and the way that the students want or need it to learn. Certifying boards should show greater flexibility in allowing credit for courses taken that help professionals perform their work better, even if it's tangential to the field of practice. For example, health and safety professionals who take courses in management are certainly better able to manage their health and safety programs. Yet, they typically cannot count those courses as part of their accrediting board-required continuing professional development. Many conferences are already making headway here by incorporating a greater number of breakout sessions of a somewhat diverse nature within the field of their target audience. But not all conferences are accessible or affordable, and worse yet, attendees' biggest complaint is the session was a lecture with overhead slides unreadable from much of the auditorium.

This brings up the next recommendation, provide better training. People retain only ten percent of what they hear. Additionally, many people are visual or tactile learners. This doesn't even factor in those persons with auditory processing difficulties. So, why do so many trainers and teachers lecture if it's not effective? Good question. It's how they, in turn, learned as school kids, and it's easy -all you have to do is talk to the students. Many adults don't learn that way; they learn by doing and by themselves teaching and working with others, which is why all well-structured and facilitated, small group work in training is so successful.

Also, trainers should engage and encourage their students. The trainer is an educator, there to facilitate the best learning for all of the participants - the trainer should remember that he or she isn't the star of the day - all that matters is the participants' learning be enhanced to the best possible degree. They should take a train-the-trainer or other course in adult education principles and techniques (though I'm not for mandating it).

Certainly, a frustrating problem area is annual refresher training. Year after year, going to the same training session is at best ineffective and at worst insulting to adults and professionals. There are several viable options here:

1. Do away with it altogether - if it's ineffective, then it's a waste of productivity.
2. Lengthen the time between refreshers. Why is it annual in the first place - was there good data to support requiring retraining every year, or was it merely convenient? Using an estimate of the professional "half-life" (5 years) makes much more sense.
3. Allow persons to "test out of" or "challenge" the training. If they know or are competent at the material, why make them sit through the training?
4. Of course, in true adult learning fashion - make it voluntary. If they want to come to the training, they will, and if not, they won't.

Even all of the above improvements can only improve MCE to the point that it still may not achieve what it's supposed to; maintain professional competency and currentness, assure the general public, and protect the health, safety, and welfare of targeted groups and populations. So, what about the other options besides MCE?

Alternatives to MCE

If MCE doesn't ensure that it's supposed to, let's get rid of it or put something else in its place. There are several viable options to MCE, some better than others or greater success.

The peer-review process is probably the most popular alternative to MCE. In any of a variety of structures, have other peers evaluate their professional colleagues. After all, who else is better suited to determine true competency than fellow professionals?

An offshoot to peer review is competency determination through some professional associations. Allow the association to "regulate their own." Without its downside, visions of "good old boy networks" are among the biggest potential complaints.

If retention of competency is the need, then competency-based recertification is the answer. Require that competency be proven or demonstrated by any of a wide variety of means or methods; exams, articles, attestations, etc.

Another competency-based alternative, especially well-suited for the technical or para-professional, is a demonstration of work practices. Allow the affected professional the opportunity to show their abilities in a structured fashion audited by an objective third party.

Popular in some circles is periodic (re-) examination. Since most certifications or licenses require an entry exam, continue with exams every five or so years based on a professional "half-life." Exams have their inherent problems, but they have a high degree of control standardization and, believe it or not, can be highly motivating.

It would certainly be hard to argue that the authoring of professional articles or texts was not some form of competency maintenance. The research and actual writing process and editing involve extensive work and are a great learning tool. It even has built into it the third-party objectivity of either an editorial board or publisher.

Similar to writing professional articles or books is writing a journal or the process involved with self-reflection and self-evaluation. The documentation of any of the above can form a means by which professional practice competencies can be evaluated again by objective third parties, peers, boards, or the public.

The final alternative to MCE is perhaps the most obvious but most difficult to ensure, consumer education. An educated consumer is the greatest control of professional services. Just ask anyone who has felt "ripped off" by some service. Unfortunately, often it amounts to "too little, too late," not exactly very reassuring in this heavily litigious society.

Table 2: Alternatives to MCE

• Peer Review Process
• Periodic (Re)Examination
• Consumer Education
• Self-Evaluation/Reflection/Journaling
• Competency-Based Recertification
• Professional Associations
• Demonstration of Work Practices
• Authoring of Professional Articles

MCE - What Is It Good For?

So, back to our original question - what is MCE good for? Control, standardization, compliance, reassurance - all yes. But true learning, education, maintenance of competency, and currentness - no. MCE has its pros and cons (it's greatest being its conflict with adult learning tenets) like most things and has several venues for improvement of training effectiveness and facilitation of the learning process. There are, additionally, many viable alternatives to MCE worthy of further attention and investigation but perhaps not necessarily worthy of mandating.

"

I remember reading Dale Carnegie’s famous book for the first time. He wrote How to Win Friends and Influence People to help others, and once it was published in 1936, it became a best seller with 30 million copies sold and is credited with starting the self-help genre. Not too shabby when if you think about it.

I was impressed and found I got into and embraced Dale’s sage advice. I got to part three in the book “Twelve Ways to Get People to Your Way of Thinking” and thought, “Wow, this will be super helpful in my work!” It was, but not how I thought it would. I looked at the title of Chapter One perplexed and thought, “Really? Why not? I can. Hmm.”

The chapter was titled “You can’t win an argument.” And I thought, “Well, that’s odd. I can win an argument. I have won many an argument.” I must have gotten pretty decent at arguing because my then-wife (now ex) used to tell me, “You should’ve been a lawyer – you love a good argument!” It seemed like a nice compliment at the time.

The funny thing was, I had planned on becoming an attorney when I was in high school. But then I saw the movie, The Paper Chase, and I thought, “Oh wow – I sure don’t want to work as hard as they are!” And so, I became a geology student. That’s the power of a well-told, emotional story. [Note: See my micro-blog series, “3-minute micro-stories,” for more on this topic.]

Even funnier or perhaps, more interesting about not winning an argument is that a 17th-century scientist said pretty much the same thing 370 years ago. Yup, Dale Carnegie was by no means the first to write about this very topic – that winning an argument shouldn’t be your goal. A physicist, mathematician, inventor, philosopher published about it.

Huh. Perhaps if he’d sold 30 million self-help books, we’d all know him so much better. I’ll come back to him in a moment.

Growing up, I remember we’d argue over everything the way boys do. We argued about baseball players, sci-fi movies, chess moves, teachers who were hard, and girls we liked. We argued a lot about girls. Well, we were boys, after all.

In high school social science class, I recall having to debate a friend about nuclear power. He was assigned anti, and I was given pro. We discussed it back and forth following the debate rules – opening statements, rebuttals, more arguments, more rebuttals, and closing statements. I honestly don’t remember who won – probably he did. We both worked as lifeguards and had many a fun and funny conversation while on breaks – sometimes with a good argument, often without. We went away to colleges and grew our careers. He became a pastor – I study risk.

I also loved performing mathematical proofs in 10th-grade geometry class! They made perfect sense to me, and I “got” them. Ah, I embraced the pure logic of them! It was decades ago, but I remember their typical format. “Given the following statements, prove that a ¹ b.” I’d set to working out how to get from the givens to the final statement step by step. It was fun! Well, at least it was to the 10th grade me. It was a logical argument.

Like so many of us in a technical and scientific field, I was quite used to having arguments, or perhaps they too would be better described as polite debates. Well, at least debate if not polite at times. We would argue about exposures, their limits, the OSHA reg’s, training approaches, risk perceptions – the topics seem endless to me now. You name it – we’ve probably argued about it. I want to think that most of the time, it was in good spirits. We’d say the merits of the problem statement. Many a time, we’d argue what was the actual problem statement. But it was always about the problem, not about the person. Again, maybe ours were better termed as debates.

But those aren’t the types of arguments that we typically are getting into these days. No, these days, the arguments are often sadly personal. Maybe not always about a single person, though usually about a group of persons. And they are frequently seen as attacking the other side. Which finally takes us to that 17th-century physicist, mathematician, inventor, philosopher.

Blaise Pascal was a French inventor, philosopher, mathematician, and scientist who lived from 1623-1662. He accomplished much in those 39 years. One was a 900+ page “masterwork” of philosophy, theology, and a fair bit of psychology. He wrote about the dos and don’ts of persuasion, much of which is echoed by Dale Carnegie.

Here is one of Pascal’s quotes: “People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.” This advice is often found in much more recent research and seems intuitive. We all love our own ideas and aren’t as interested in others, perhaps viewing them with a healthy dose of skepticism or an unhealthy amount of scorn.

Pascal also advises empathy – again, a very common recommendation for persuaders and receivers (of persuasive attempts) alike. “Eloquence … persuades by sweetness, not by authority… Eloquence is an art of saying things in such a way — (1) that those to whom we speak may listen to them without pain and with pleasure; (2) that they feel interested so that self-love leads them more willingly to reflect upon it.”

The arguments I mentioned above – the ones that seem impolite at best and virulently hostile at times, are hardly empathic. And yet, that is precisely what is needed – both for greater hopes at successful persuasion as well as relating with each other. It seems that Blaise Pascal was an intelligent – and thoughtful – inventor and philosopher who was hundreds of years ahead of his time.

Dale Carnegie tells some great stories, and he uses this one to illustrate his point quite well. I’ll retell it here as an abbreviated version and in the 3rd person (Dale tells it in the 1st person, of course). [You can find the story in its entirety and better described starting on page 111 – part III, chapter 1.]

Dale worked for Sir Ross Smith, the Australian WWI air ace, who, after the war with three others, flew halfway around the world (England to Australia) in 28 days. At a banquet in Sir Ross’s honor, a tablemate of Dale’s told a humorous story that used the quote, “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.”

According to this gentleman, the source of the quote was the Bible. Dale knew this to be factually incorrect – there was no doubt that it was by William Shakespeare in Hamlet. As Dale readily admits, “… to get[ting] a feeling of importance and display my superiority …” he decided to correct this gentleman. The storyteller “stuck to his guns” and insisted it was from the Bible, much to Dale’s amazement and frustration.

Coincidentally, sitting on the other side of Dale was a friend, Mr. Frank Gammond, an expert on Shakespeare, having studied his works for many years. Dale and the storyteller agreed – they’d ask Mr. Gammond to arbitrate and decide who was correct. It made sense to both men.

As Dale tells it, “Mr. Gammond listened, kicked me under the table, and then said: ‘Dale, you are wrong. The gentleman is right. It is from the Bible.’” Dale was smart enough not to argue or protest it there. But on the drive home, he asked Frank why he said it was from the Bible when he knew it was from Shakespeare.

Frank admitted as much to Dale, “Yes, of course, Hamlet, Act V, scene 2. But we were guests at a festive occasion, my dear Dale. Why prove to a man he is wrong? Is that going to make him like you? Why not let him save face? He didn’t ask for your opinion. He didn’t want it. Why argue with him?” And here is Frank’s wonderful concluding alliterative advice – “Always avoid the acute angle.”

I pondered that pithy quote (or perhaps I should say that “adept admonition”). I did some searching and mostly found references to an acute angle, which, if you recall, since I did enjoy geometry class, I knew its mathematical meaning. My gut reaction was, “an angle less than 90 degrees – what?” But then I looked up just the definition of and synonyms for “acute.” Of course, I found more useful help – “Reacting readily to stimuli or impressions; sensitive, sharp, severe, intense.”

Ah yes, of course! Always avoid a sensitive or severe response – the acute angle. That makes perfect sense! If I’d only learned that fantastic advice earlier in life, I might have avoided inducing severe responses in others over the years.

Of course, there is a heck of a lot more to persuasion, but this is an excellent place for us to start the conversation. We’ll cover more of the research in future micro-blog posts in this series. I hope you’ll come back and join me.

And so, Dale’s rule #1 for part three is, “The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.” I quite agree. And it turns out, so does a 17th-century French physicist, mathematician, philosopher, and inventor. I’m persuaded – are you?

Jonathan

Sources:

• Carnegie, Dale.
• 1936, 1940, 1975. How to Win Friends and Influence People. Pocket Books – A Division of Simon & Schuster, New York, NY.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People
• https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/05/20/blaise-pascal-pensees-persuasion/

Next: If you think it’s a contest, you’ve already lost

"""

You know, as I look back on the whole process, I don’t think I ever could’ve predicted how really well it went. Even in retrospect, it’s still hard to see it. I mean, we had three major problems. We were going to lose an admin person who did a lot of our data entry daily grind. We had a pandemic going on like everyone else. And we were nervous about our biosafety certifications, tracking problems, etc. And yet, here we are – able to see everything. Here’s the story in a nutshell.

We were finally getting SciShield, and there were a lot of the typical reactions – mostly nervous excitement over how the implementation process would actually roll out, the full-on integration, and of course, how would implementation be?

Targeting our greatest needs, we got two of the modules to start – Inspections and Training – and of course, the Platform, a must-have to run it all smoothly! In the run-up to integration, our IT team was wicked nervous.

It was a tight tight tight schedule for us. But SciShield broke it down into manageable steps. They made it easy on us, and it really really worked great! Our IT folks were seriously impressed – and they’re a challenging group to impress, no doubt.

When we set up our Inspections , Brandon in Professional Services was so patient with us and our questions – he was so helpful and very courteous! What a pleasure!

We were already scheduled to lose an admin person before getting SciShield – and with no plans to replace her, that was going to slow us way down. But we got SciShield, and all of a sudden, we had all of the data we needed, just a click away. Who knew that we’d get a software system, and it’d also fill a gap we had? To be fair, this was not work one of our professional staff would be doing. It was the type of daily data grind no one likes. So, to have software spare us that pain was our gain!

Now that we’re using the Inspections , it has helped us with our biosafety certification program.

With our having to work remotely, of course, we had struggled with how to do the checking we needed to. Using the Self-Inspections tool, we were now able to do tracking – like with broken emergency showers for the first time – that was a relief. And as opposed to so many others in EHS land were struggling with not doing inspections, we were excited for how it enabled ours. We have much more confidence in our data now than we did before.

So, what’s next for us?

Hopefully, we’ll get the ChemTracker – then life would be beautiful!

Cynthia PressmanLaboratory Safety Manager Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute """Recent Articles""

I know this sounds a bit weird, but bear with me; I'll explain why I chose it for the title of this micro-blog series (and thus my first post in it). It might still be weird, but at least you'll know why and my various reasons.

First, it's pragmatic – I needed a 5th numeric reference – something alluding to the number 5. If you've been following (or at least perusing) my micro-blogs series, you likely noticed that they count up from 1 to 5.

What started as just my "Won (1) minute warning" quickly became a series of series once I added "2 minutes on learning", "3-minute micro-stories", and "Risk is a 4-letter word". 1-2-3-4. Easy and fun with a bit of wordplay.

And each number represented the amount of time it'd take an average person in my intended readership to read it. Typically, folks like you are well–versed in some areas (perhaps a science but not necessarily so) and are exposed to college courses (or perhaps non-academic reading at that level). Again, you or me.

Since these were all topics within my wheelhouse – safety culture, learning, narrative, and risk – they were worthy, relatively easy, and fun areas for me to blog. And they all apply to my work as well as my studies and research. And then, I got around to studying persuasion theory as part of my Ph.D. fields. It is a fascinating field! So, naturally, I wanted to blog about it, too. Doesn't everyone want to learn more about persuasion? Don't we all try to persuade others? "Let's get pizza for lunch!" "How about we go see the latest superhero movie?" "Why won't you wear your face covering?" Right?!

Let's face it – if persuasion were as easy as merely asking, we'd all be leading happier (and healthier!) lives. Sadly, it's not easy – but there is a science to it. And I'm so glad to share some of those insights with you all. But why compare it to the 5th dimension (besides the numeric convenience)?

Persuasion is something we talk about and don't seem to understand the science of very well - like the 5th dimension. Also, the 5th dimension is a combination of two things – gravity and electromagnetism into something we can't see.

In my Ph.D. research, I'm working on an approach using narratives and risk perceptions to facilitate persuasion – something we can't really see. And as I thought about gravity, the song "Up, Up and Away" came to mind – by none other than the 5th Dimension! This should come as no surprise if you know me and my love of all music from the '60s and '70s.

So, there we are – connecting to and comparing persuasion with the 5th dimension (in physics and in the song). But wait, there's more! A lot more.

Like over 70 readings from journals and textbooks at a start. You see, in my Ph.D., I have two fields – the first one (I passed my exam!) was in risk, its perceptions, cognitive biases, and decision-making. The second one (as I write this, my exam is in 9 days!) is in narrative, persuasion, cognition, and informal learning. It's a trip. It's also a lot of reading.

In my ASU program (Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology), each student develops their reading lists for their fields and subsequent exams. These, of course, have to be approved by their committee (three faculty), and then they are tested on their readings. The reading list must include at least 40 relevant journal articles, chapters, textbooks, etc., from the scientific literature.

As I got more and more into the literature, my reading list grew and grew. I was fascinated by the likes of Blaise Pascal, Daniel Dennett, Alan Hajek, Charles Darwin, Jan van Prooijen, and Daniel O'Keefe, to name just a few – and that's only in the area of persuasion! I also am studying narrative (stories), cognition, and informal learning. And while it's a lot of reading, I am enjoying it, and at the same time (just as my academic advisor predicted!), my dissertation plan is taking shape. In future micro-blogs in this series, I'll likely write about some of those ideas.

But let's return to some of the experts and what they studied, researched, and wrote. This will give you a flavor of what's to come in this series. We'll start with arguments … for the sake of argument, of course!

We seem to argue a lot – especially these days. One might think we are trying to persuade each other, but at times it seems as pointless as a Monty Python skit (and sadly not nearly as funny). It might even seem closer to "abuse," or they're "being hit on the head lessons" (watch the skit for context). It's all so pointless. We don't get anywhere with the back and forth, talking past each other, insulting the other who, of course, is so foolish, and the other thinking the same of us. That would mean we are both foolish, and if we were to ask some of the experts, they'd likely agree – we're both being foolish.

We might as well start with Dale Carnegie. Remember him and his famous book, How to Win Friends and Influence People?

I sure do. My old paperback copy is quite dog-eared from years of using it while teaching a Conflict Management and Resolution course. Dale has a great quip and advice on this very topic – which I'll cover in my next micro-blog in this series.

We've known how not to try to persuade others for about 370 years – so why aren't we following this sage advice? That's in micro-blog 2 (about Dale) and 3: "If you think it's a contest, you've already lost."

And then, in micro-blog 4, we'll talk about "Why you want what's in a philosopher's toolkit."

In micro-blog 5, we get to learn from both Charles Darwin and Michael Faraday how to use jiu-jitsu like logic to your attempts at persuasion that I've helped many an engineering student learn when they've asked me to approve their projects. It works, too.

In all seriousness, in micro-blog 6, I'll explain why "Jonathan thinks you should speak of yourself in the 3rd person based on multiple studies." As was said in the movie, The Wackiest Ship in the Army – "Don't laugh; it works."

And for those of you champing at the bit to bite into conspiracy theory research – yup, I will dare to take us there in micro-blog 7.

And finally, at some point (currently scheduled for micro-blogs 8-11, I'll share a bit of my research ideas on how we can conceptualize and systematize our view and approach to persuasion – and while playing a certain game, you likely have played.

Well, that's about enough. At least for now, it is. So, tell me – are you persuaded to read more of these? I guess we'll see.

Jonathan

P.S. It's now after my exam and I …?

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