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Previous: If I Can Focus On Only One ThingEvery group has some type of safety culture – the good, the bad, and the ugly are certainly three of many possibilities. How would others describe the safety culture for your group or team? Well, let's start with some possible categories.

As part of a study, I sought out descriptors in the safety culture literature, and I found 60. To be clear, these are mostly one or two-words used to describe a safety culture (as opposed to definitions or examples). Sixty seemed like a lot to wrap our brains around.

So, I sorted them into one of four categories - positive, negative, neutral, and ambiguous. It helped, but it still wasn't divided up enough for our liking.

So, I further sorted them into subgroups of similar approaches or effects. Yup, that helped. Admittedly there was a certain amount of subjectivity to my final subgroupings. Other safety or risk professionals or researchers may make different choices resulting in subtle changes within these subgroups.

Now, let's go back to my original question in the title of this blog – how would others describe your group's safety culture? Try this – take a look through my list here [URL link]. I've ordered them first alphabetically, then by categories, and lastly by subgroups. I suggest you start by skimming the alphabetic list. Only then, perhaps look at the categories and/or subgroups.

Here's a good thought-starter. Choose just one to start. Then consider how strong of a rating you'd give it from 1-10 (I'm leaving out zero because it'd be non-existent, and you should choose a different descriptor).

If it has a greater value, assign it in the 6-10 range. And if it has a lesser value, rate it from 1-5. Then choose a handful of others and rate them, too. Then stop. Now consider how others would rate each for your lab, group, etc. Interesting isn't it. You may want to use this exercise in your lab, office, or other groups or teams.

Next: Leadership – what do we all want?

Previous: Teams and the One Thing That Makes Them Successful Management author and guru Peter Drucker said, "Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing." I've always liked this quote, especially when it comes to safety and risk. It sums up where we need to focus our safety culture efforts – doing the right things.

I was chatting with a colleague who directs organizational performance and is a certified six-sigma master black belt – expertise that focuses on maximizing efficiencies. We were comparing our two areas and the natural commonalities between the two. Neither of us was surprised by how much the two circles in our Venn diagram overlapped when it came to process improvement.

The stark difference in the severity of outcomes struck us as we discussed Efficiency vs. effectiveness. As he put it, "Jon, when processes in my world focus too much on efficiencies over effectiveness, the worst things that happen are we have convoluted business practices, upset customers, and wasting our limited resources. Whereas in your world when efficiencies are emphasized over effectiveness, bad things happen – people get hurt, and some die. It's the problem of pencil-whipping the checklist – it may seem efficient, but it's hardly effective at the outcomes you need – lower risks." He was aware of some of the sad tragedies in academia.

It says something that a non-safety, organizational performance professional would notice this difference as naturally as I did. We spoke the same language despite working in different areas. It's this language that he and I both use – how can we be more effective and achieve the outcomes we desire? The more we concentrate on how we can be effective at lowering risks, the more likely we'll have the outcomes we desire – a true culture of safety.

Be effective and strive for the right outcomes.

Next: Measure what you want to see (and you'll be rewarded with more of it!)

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Previous: Why call this blog the Won (1) Minute Warning?

It’s safety culture. Did you guess it? I’m not surprised; I mean, look at my former titles (official and informal) - both have “safety culture” in them.

But why? Good question.

Let’s back up. Just what is safety culture anyway? Culture is often described as “group norms and behaviors.” Still, a good heuristic is “how we do things here”.¹ So, safety culture is “group safety norms and behaviors” or “how we do safety here.”

Why focus only on safety culture anyway? Is it that important? Because we are horrible multi-taskers, have the attention span of a squirrel, and yeah, it is that important. Maybe even more so. Here’s how.

How much of a rule follower are you? Likely not much if you’re average. Know what? Me neither.

Surprised? Don’t be. When’s the last time you (or I) sped, rode our bike through a stop sign, or didn’t wear our safety glasses as required. Why? Risk.

We know it when we see it – and when we don’t. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not advocating breaking rules.

Imagine instead that a group had a set of values that translated into behaviors and thus group norms. And imagine that the values were for everyone’s safety. Imagine. Are you with me? Einstein said that imagination was more important than knowledge.²

Picasso said that if we can imagine it, we can create it.³ Just as we do with our research. Imagine.

Any group (lab, team, office, program, or an entire college) can create these group norms and behaviors for our safety. Not because of a rule – because it’s how we do safety here.

Imagine.

Next: Safety culture – What descriptors would others use to describe yours?

Sources:

¹ Elaine Cullen, Ph.D., CDC Researcher. ASSE conference presentation and discussions.

² https://todayinsci.com/E/Einstein_Albert/EinsteinAlbert-ImaginationQuote800px.htm

³ https://www.pablopicasso.org/quotes.jsp

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To be honest, "the two-minute warning" was already taken by several others and were invariably about U.S. football. So, as I sat at my laptop pondering a new name, I thought, "Go briefer, Jon. I wonder if 'One Minute Warning' is taken?" It wasn't.

Okay, but how many words can the average person read in a minute? And can I write a brief blog that short that's also useful and value-added?

Good questions. So, I went looking for the data.

It turns out the average person can read about 200-250 words in a minute. College students seem to read about 300 per minute, and presumably, PIs likely read the same.

But the topics may be themes that cause us to pause and rethink. I aim for around 250-300 words or so.

All right, but what kind of warning am I giving? Any. In football, the game stops with two minutes to go. Life doesn't work that way. But if we paused for just a minute to reconsider our risks, we might avert tragedies great and injuries small.

Okay, but why "won" and not "one"?

I love wordplay and puns. In safety, I have wins and losses. A win is when we have a positive outcome for a safety problem.

When we have the privilege of helping a student make it through safely, that's a win. When we can't help them make it, and they suffer, that's a loss.

Some wins are big; some are small.

The same goes for losses. My win-loss record is 6-2.

Read on.

272 words - nailed it. Stay tuned.

Next: If I Can Focus on Only One Thing

Sources:

https://www.irisreading.com/what-is-the-average-reading-speed/

https://www.quora.com/How-many-words-can-the-average-person-read-in-one-minute

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Previous: Effectiveness vs. Efficiency - Let's Not Confuse the Two

Peter Drucker said, “If you want it, measure it. If you can’t measure it, forget it.” John E. Jones said, “What gets measured gets done.” Or if you prefer, Robin S. Sharma said, “What gets measured gets improved.”

There are many variations on this theme.

So, what is it that we want or want to get done or improved?

I think it’s a safe workplace. But what makes for a safe workplace? Well, two things – safe conditions and safe behaviors. Oh sure, there’s more to it than that. But behaviors and conditions are a good enough start.

Which are typically easier to control – behaviors or conditions? I think you’ll agree that conditions are generally easier to achieve and maintain. It’s relatively easy to install a guard. And once in place, it tends to stay there. And if one day it’s missing, I’d say it’s from an unsafe behavior – wouldn’t you?

So, behaviors. Safe behaviors. Like what? Well, how’s assessing risk as a start? Or discussing safe procedures? Encouraging others to put on a forgotten PPE? I’ve heard these the most over the years. Behaviors – safe or unsafe ones – are hard to measure. But they are possible.

Instead, what gets measured as our intended outcome? Negative outcomes – or rather an absence of them. Like what? Injuries, exposures, lost days, illnesses, incidents, their costs, and even deaths.

It’s odd when you say it – our intended outcomes are not to have adverse effects. Sure, these absence management metrics exist, but how do we get them (or I suppose not get them)? Behaviors. Safe behaviors. Focus on what you want, not what you don’t want. Safe behaviors become safe habits. And safe habits become norms. And norms become our safety culture.

Measure what you want to get or improve.

Next: Leading vs. lagging indicators – which matter more?

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Previous: Instead of Safety First We Should Be Saying ...“Hey Jon, what’s the matter with talking about safety?” Good question. It’s not enough, that’s what. We need to move this discussion and our language forward. We need to discuss safety culture instead—each and every time. Instead of a safety committee, it’s a safety culture committee. Our safety efforts become our safety culture efforts. And safety training is now safety culture training. Language matters, and repetition leads to referential validity (the more it’s said, the more real it becomes).

It works. I did this at a previous position. Granted, my role facilitated it, but it was my choice to turn every phrase into an opportunity to say, “safety culture.” At first, it seemed a bit unnatural, even forced – and I suppose it was. But after a while, it was perfectly natural – for me and others. It rolled right off my tongue, and I noticed that others were using it, too.

And why not? If we want to advance to a way (a zen?) of safety culture, we need to use every opportunity to discuss it – to make it real for people. As much as safety culture represents group norms and behaviors, it won’t just happen independently. It takes purposeful effort on our part. Or parts – all of our parts. We all have to be in the game, helping to make it happen.

Do your part. Instead of just safety, try using safety culture. See what happens.

Next: And now that we’re talking about safety culture, we should also be discussing …

Previous: Measure What You Want To See (and You'll Be Rewarded with More Of It)

Do you drive? Or perhaps ride a bike? Me too. When I’m driving or riding, I look ahead – I need to see where I’m going. Oh sure, I’ll glance in the rearview mirror or turn and look behind my bike even while going forward. But if I drive by looking backwards, I’m going to crash.

Trust me – not paying attention to what’s in front will lead to a bad outcome.

So, why the heck do we drive our safety programs by looking backwards? It doesn’t make sense. If you’re wondering, “Jon, what are you talking about?” Let me help.

Lagging indicators. They’re the things that we tend to focus on and keep track of the most. We drive our programs using them. Oh, you know them – they’re anything that is behind us, they are usually after an event, they lag. Want some examples? Sure.

They include injuries, exposures, unsafe conditions, lost days, illnesses, incidents, findings, fines, and even deaths.

What should we use to drive our programs instead? Leading indicators. They are ahead of the event. They often represent a positive in the future, such as safe behaviors. Remember my driving analogy? My leading indicators are being focused on the road, paying attention to traffic, avoiding others, indicating my intent to turn or change lanes, and watching my velocity.

For a safe workplace, we often think of leading indicators as the safe behaviors we hope for. These often include consistent use of PPE, engaging in safety and risk conversations, providing safety mentoring, creating safety initiatives, performing our own risk assessments, etc. All of these occur before events. In fact, they are what prevent adverse events from happening. Are they challenging to track? Yup.

But are they worth it?

Absolutely.

Drive or ride while looking ahead, not behind. Get out in front – pay attention to, encourage, and track leading indicators.

Jonathan

For more information on leading vs. lagging indicators, watch the

Next: Instead of “safety first,” we should be saying …

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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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