Episode 17 - Performance Modes

A HOP Podcast (With No Name)

[00:00:00] spk_0: This is Andy and this is Matt and you're listening to
[00:00:03] spk_1: the Hop podcast with no name. What a dumb
[00:00:07] spk_0: name. So stupid.
[00:00:22] spk_1: And we, we prep, we prep so differently and then I hit record and I can't, I can't not say em off. Um
[00:00:33] spk_0: I'm sure
[00:00:35] spk_1: I heard of turtles. I'm sure I'll say another one in the books at some point too. So probably multiple times here we are. This is who I am. Uh episode 17 and we have naturally some homework to recap. And then we're gonna take our transition from operational learning into something different which I won't spoil, but it's definitely not performance modes, it's performance sponsor and we're excited to talk about that. So, uh as we always do last episode's homework, we talked a lot about brainstorming solutions and then being aware, we're only suggesting solutions that fall into our sphere of concern and not within our sphere of control or even influence. And so we wanted to do some, some checking when does that happen? Catch ourselves before we get too far away from this uh current problem and current solution set. And so you have a good example from back in your day,
[00:01:38] spk_0: back in the day, we actually have a good example happening right now that we can't talk about yet. We will. At some point, we we're doing some operational learning for a group and it is happening as we speak, this, this difficulty of having things only in our sphere of concern is happening. But you asked me if I could remember an example from a while ago that would be OK to use. And the one that came to mind, I think came to mind just because the switch from thinking about things that were in a sphere of concern to sphere of control was like it happened very, very quickly and it was a kind of a, a simple switch that happened. I don't remember all the specifics of even why the group was called together. But I do remember one of the solution sets was the fact that in order for a certain group of people to be able to operate well in a space, there are a whole number, a host of doors that had to be like closed off and marked off at a period of time, I think late in the day um for their work to be done. And so there was a whole process to do that by and um the team was struggling because they really wanted the leadership team to like make it happen, meaning like I, they needed to assign a person to like close these doors off and lock the doors and they were struggling because it felt like it was incredibly important to do, but they themselves didn't feel like it was in their sphere of influence to get it done. And so I just asked what kind of felt like a silly question at that time. But I just said, hey, is there anything that's like preventing us, you all in the room that it's so important that this thing gets done? Is there anything preventing us from doing it? Like, does it have to be somebody else?
[00:03:19] spk_1: And my question to you is how long was the pause after that? Silence fills the room
[00:03:28] spk_0: about that long. How long was that?
[00:03:30] spk_1: I could, I could probably check. I think it was a couple of seconds. I was too busy being caught up in the fact that I almost enunciated room correctly because growing up, I called it rum and I was like, wow, Matt, good job. You're over here counting time
[00:03:46] spk_0: anyway for about that long. So it was, yes, it was, it was a, it was a pause and then it turned out that there was absolutely nothing preventing those folks from doing it themselves and because they were so passionate about it, they really wanted to. And so suddenly something that felt like it was in a sphere of influence or maybe in a, even a sphere of concern was quickly in their control and they just decided to take turns and created a, like a little schedule of who's gonna do it. That was that
[00:04:17] spk_1: nailed it, right. That's it. We're done. We got it. It's now closed when we say we want it closed and we did it ourselves. So lovely. OK. Simple example, simple example, we, we're sure you have your own. We'd love to hear them at some point. Hot podcast dot com. Send it in. Uh But we'll move out of thank you for all the operational learning episodes. And we quickly shift into the catalyst for why we're on performance modes today. Which is you looking at old trainings?
[00:04:51] spk_0: Yeah. Yeah. So I, we were just looking through some trainings that I used to use years ago because I was given some really good advice that sometimes the things that you used to talk about are still very important, even though I got bored of talking about things and stop talking about them. Um That, that doesn't mean that they're not important to share. And so when we were looking through it, I saw that I used to actually talk for quite a while on performance modes. And I think you asked me why I had stopped talking about it. And I didn't have a really good answer apart from the fact that in talking about it a lot, it felt like sometimes it was the concepts were showing up in organizations in, in ways that maybe we didn't have to use them that way, meaning like it got very structured very quickly and people just started running with the concept of performance modes and maybe it wasn't giving them as much return on the effort that they were putting into categorizing things. And so I think that's probably why I stopped talking about it as much.
[00:05:58] spk_1: It's also, I mean, you're now that I've been doing this with you for almost two years, we have a set amount of time with a group of people and we're trying to get across systems thinking, complexity, science and behavior and organizational psychology into a class that might be four or six hours and you could, you can talk about it for an alarmingly long amount of time. So we, we sometimes had to make the call. It's like what's going to be most relevant for this group at this time. I think over time, you kind of felt like there's more and more to talk about and in reviewing the old training like, oh, wow, I have done this is, this should be brought up more. And so, yeah, because
[00:06:38] spk_0: there's still some like very important aspects of things that I don't talk about as often now that it was probably foolish of me to skip all the time. But, but now we can put it on a podcast and
[00:06:52] spk_1: forever in perpetuity. This is where it's all going to
[00:06:56] spk_0: live. Yeah. So Matthew, do you know anything about performance modes? Because I don't even think I maybe taught you the concepts when you started, maybe,
[00:07:07] spk_1: maybe not. I think they were a very small footnote in a conversation. And I think the first time I saw them taught was when we saw Dr Todd Conklin last year or earlier, this year or whatever that was. And I was like, oh, yeah, this, I remember hearing about it, but we don't talk about it much and then you and I spoke about it briefly and then here we are now.
[00:07:27] spk_0: So the reason I think that it's probably important for us to at least have a brief conversation about it is because of the ways that it affects how we think about when to train people or retrain people and when to lean heavily on procedures or not heavily on procedures. Um And then the, the ideas of how we actually design for mitigation and the fact that it kind of transcends all the different performance modes. So if, if the people who are listening to this have not heard what performance modes are, we should probably start off with just like a brief.
[00:08:05] spk_1: That is an amazing place to start a brief overview of what it is. This is
[00:08:10] spk_0: what it is. So it was work that uh Russ Meson put together, I think in the early eighties and he wrote an incredible paper on it. So um worth reading the original paper, he worked in the design space around systems thinking and around human factors and human performance. Um And one of the things that he wanted to help us navigate was the fact that we're cognitively looking at the world in different modes depending upon how familiar we are with something. So he helped put things into categories that relate to basically how familiar are we with a task in relation to how much attention we have to pay to that task and then put a relationship together. So if we are not familiar with something, and it's like one of the first times we've done something, then we have to pay a lot of attention to what we're doing. So the example that made the most sense for me, are you going to be surprised if I say driving Matthew?
[00:09:10] spk_1: No, I was actually thinking of other options to throw in
[00:09:13] spk_0: there. It could be anything but driving is a really relatable
[00:09:17] spk_1: one, good one that most people can really do. Yes.
[00:09:20] spk_0: So if you are brand new to driving, if you just think about, um, I have one of the first times you're behind the wheel, right? You don't really know if you're
[00:09:28] spk_1: brand new to driving. We're very happy. You found this podcast because there's a lot of driving conversations,
[00:09:35] spk_0: but also pay attention to what you're doing and turn off the podcast. If you're driving at the same time, stop listening. And the reason why that's important is because if you're brand new to something, the performance modes that Rasmussen would say is your knowledge based performance mode, which means you're spending a lot of attention to try to figure out what you're doing. So you're trying to figure out how hard you have to turn the wheel to get the car to go, where you want it to go, how hard you hit the gas, how hard you hit the brake, all of those things you are actively thinking through using your thinking part of your brain because you don't have any habit loops stored up, right? So you're trying to understand the world around you and in that performance mode, your error rate is really high. Um because you, you don't have mental models that you're pulling on, you're just, you're kind of guessing your way through things through trial and error. And so it's like one out of every two actions or inactions, you're gonna make an error. It's just part of how we process the world around us. And it is true for everything that we do, which I, I try to teach Penelope that because she gets really frustrated when she doesn't do something perfectly the first time. Maybe I should draw performance, performance
[00:10:42] spk_1: notes for her the
[00:10:43] spk_0: next time being like, no, no, we're all trying to figure it out when you learn something new, you're just, we're messing it up a lot and that's
[00:10:49] spk_1: perfectly. Here you go. Look at this
[00:10:53] spk_0: and then there's another end of the spectrum and that is when you've done something for a really long time and you have all of these habit loops built up. You're actually, you can use the thinking part of your brain for something else. Right? So, if we are talking about driving again, this is part of the reason why you can end up driving home and not remembering driving the last 10 kilometers or 10 miles. It's because you were using habit loops because you don't have to pay a lot of attention to what you're doing. You have lots of reference points, you have lots of mental models all stored up. So as long as everything's stable, then you can just use those to be able to process the world around you, your error rate in these circumstances. They cite it as being like one in every 10,000 times, you do something, we just plum do it wrong. So, so you still have error, but it's just far less frequent. And oftentimes it's because we've, we've missed something, their system has become so stable that we miss some sort of signal that there's something that has changed. And we end up, we end up in a space of making an error because we're not acting, acting around to the actual environment that's happening, something is different.
[00:11:56] spk_1: So that's one end and the other end, I'm guessing there's a middle.
[00:12:00] spk_0: Yeah. Yeah. So there's one in the middle and it's just called rule based and that's when you're, you're kind of familiar like. So, yeah, you're familiar enough that, you know, you, you have some amount of mental models built up, you know, sort of the, the rules of engagement, but you could easily misapply a rule. So if we're thinking about driving for me, uh, that can be something like, um, if I'm driving in a different country, I could be in rule based performance modes. I know how to drive. I generally understand what the rules are, but I could misapply what I think a turning lane is in one place, it could look a little bit different and then just misapply what I think is accurate information to a different scenario or if you're just learning how to drive, this could be like the first time that you've actually been in a shared turning lane where you like generally understand what you're supposed to do, but now you have to put it into action. And so you're kind of in this middle, middle ground of hoping that there's some other way besides your brain to understand what you're supposed to do.
[00:13:00] spk_1: Like driving in midtown Manhattan. Sure, there are no rules and you have to learn that you don't have to follow rules because there aren't any. So that's how that works.
[00:13:09] spk_0: And so air rates, there are like one in every 1000. So I think, I think when I first started teaching this, I thought the air rates themselves were incredibly important. Um,
[00:13:20] spk_1: that's what it sounds like to me when I hear it with my, with my new ears, what I'm hearing is I need to know how often someone makes an error. That's all I'm hearing.
[00:13:30] spk_0: Yeah. And I, and, and maybe that's just, uh, I don't know, maybe that's when you hear it for the first time, that's the part that sort of sticks out. And so I guess my first interpretation of performance modes was like, well, everyone needs to be in skill based, right? That's the one that you are super familiar with something because your air rate is really low. But, but then I'd hear conversation to say, well, in those circumstances, sometimes the consequence of that air can be incredibly high. So even though it doesn't happen very often you can get in, for example, a terrible crash because of, you know, making that one in every 10,000 times mistake. So then that didn't feel like the right thing to focus on. And then in other cases, people say, well, you kind of want everyone to be in rule based performance mode. That's the one in the middle because that's the place where actually procedures and checklists, those are all incredibly helpful because you're not so familiar that you just use rote memory for everything. Um So you tend to go and look at at written guidance and really good procedures are very helpful in those circumstances. But then that doesn't feel true either because we're still in a complex environment. So you're always gonna have things that are outside the checklist or the what, whatever the assumed practice is gonna be. And so the more experience you have the better off you have it navigating. And so then it's just like, well, you never want anyone in knowledge based because the air rates so high. But then it's like, oh, so we don't teach anyone new things ever again. We we only get experienced people. And so I think I was trying to maybe draw connections with the information that maybe weren't there or maybe weren't intended originally. Um And so I'll tell you what connections do, make sense to me and see if it's helpful for anyone else. And it's the recognition that not every solution set is going to work for every person that is engaging in a process because how things don't go to plan is also dependent upon how the person is seeing the process, meaning not all car crashes are created equal, right? Not all incidents that the outcome of the incident itself could look the same, but the understanding of what people knew or didn't know at that time can be incredibly different. And that when we mix up our understanding of a performance mode, if we get it really, really wrong, then the solution sets aren't gonna work very well. And often times we get it really wrong just if we're using a lot of assumptions to understand how something happened. And then there's, um, there's a story, there's a story that I remember that illustrates it. But maybe we'll have to wait for next time to tell the story. I don't know. Matthew, do we do story time? Now, do we do story time? Next time?
[00:16:43] spk_1: I think we do story time next time only because I want to not make us hang on for too long. And I think it'd be, this is, this either is something that's either fairly new or maybe established and you're putting a different way to look at it and letting people soak on that and then giving them a story to push on and push against is probably very helpful.
[00:17:05] spk_0: Well, we'll find out they'll tell us yes, they will. But uh since we're not gonna have time for story time right now, we'll at least talk about the fact that solution sets in the spaces look very different, right? So when we're trying to design for somebody who is brand new to a task, or we're keeping people in mind, like there will be people brand new to a task that will be in this process, then it's really, really important that we have things like fast feedback because those error rates when we talked about it, like if you picture driving the in the system of learning how to drive, you have somebody sitting right next to you and the reason you have somebody sitting right next to you is because one out of every two decisions or actions you take are gonna probably be wrong. And so you need fast feedback and correction and that can be done in real time with a person. It can also be done through the design of the system, right to help correct and bring your attention to places that you, that you need to be changing what you're doing quickly.
[00:17:58] spk_1: And so what I'm hearing is that one of us learned how to drive correctly and one of us borrowed our parents' car when we were 14. That's also what I'm hearing, but that's neither here nor there.
[00:18:10] spk_0: So, and on the other end of the spectrum, right, on the skill base when you have been doing something for a really long time, and you're sort of using habit loops, that's when things like attention activators or like redirecting your attention to a piece of information that you didn't have before becomes incredibly important. So if we're thinking about driving, right. A piece of that puzzle is just, hey, the position of each of the brake lights, bring your attention, sort of snap your attention to a bunch of people braking at the same time. So it kind of snaps you out of your in the zone, not actively thinking about what's happening and alerts you that something's happening. And actually the newer pieces of our car design that beep at you and bring attention to the fact that hey, there's a car moving in front of you or the traffic in front of you has stopped. Um Those are all different ways that you would handle in the skill based performance mode. And then in the middle, that that rule based performance mode piece of it, right? That's where it's actually incredibly helpful if you are going to a place like let's imagine going to a different country where the rules are slightly different, the signage is slightly different actually having written instruction that shows you what the signs mean so that you can update your mental model of what the rules are and how to apply them. That becomes important. You know, enough about driving, you know, enough about rules that you can sort of make sense of all of that written instruction. So that's another place as well that a lot of warnings and controls can, can help you in that space of making sure that you're not way off the rails with how we're trying to apply those rules.
[00:19:46] spk_1: Very helpful. It was, I mean, it was for me who is just also learning in real time with everyone else, how this works. So it is, it is very helpful.
[00:19:56] spk_0: Yeah, but I don't think it makes a ton of sense without a story. So I think we're going to have to do some stories next time around the actual application of the thought process, we'll
[00:20:04] spk_1: tell the story and then we'll talk about maybe some which is broader uh application across hop and how it fits in because we talked about that as well as a part of this puzzle. So we'll talk about that too cool.
[00:20:16] spk_0: But we do have homework. Yeah, we do. Yeah, we do. All right. So the homework in this case is just to be able to separate out when we are misapplying a group of people in a solution set for a specific group of people, meaning where I see in real life, we tend to mix up performance modes a lot. And whether or not we are designing for the performance modes is is that we assume we're designing for knowledge based performance modes for people or rule based performance mode. So we're, we tend to design for nobody knows anything about what they're doing, never done it before or we design for everyone's always going to be looking at a checklist because they need the checklist. And then in those circumstances, it gets really confusing because oftentimes the folks that are actually doing the work have been doing whatever that process is for a while. So our suggestion for your homework is to try to find one misapplication of, hey, this solution probably would work really well for somebody who's brand new to the job or hasn't done it in a while. So that would be in knowledge based performance mode or rule based performance mode and then acknowledging the fact that maybe it wouldn't work as well for someone who's been doing this for a really long time and actually might get in their way and cause some problems.
[00:21:39] spk_1: What would that would that be like sending a 20 year veteran forklift operator to get like go through the driving a forklift booklet after he has a small incident? Is
[00:21:51] spk_0: that what you're talking? That would be an absolute example of the misapplication? Ok,
[00:21:55] spk_1: perfect. So that's the homework and then next episode, story time and we'll keep talking about performance modes and apply it a little more broadly. Cross hop. Sounds good. Awesome. Thanks for listening. We'll talk soon.
[00:22:14] spk_0: Well, that's
[00:22:16] spk_1: it. Yep. Another one in the books we did it.
[00:22:20] spk_0: If you uh wanna send us any of your thoughts, actually fling us any of your thoughts you can do so at the website www dot hop podcast dot com.
[00:22:32] spk_1: That's Hoppo DC A ST dot com. It's still
[00:22:39] spk_0: such a stupid name. A
[00:22:40] spk_1: stupid name. We look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for listening.