Latest / The Action Catalyst / High-Consequence Success, with K. Scott Griffith (Risk, Management, Systems, Leadership)

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High-Consequence Success, with K. Scott Griffith (Risk, Management, Systems, Leadership) · The Action Catalyst

0:00
K. Scott Griffith: Hi Stephanie, how are you?
0:34
Stephanie Maas: Hey, doing great, Scott.
0:36
K. Scott Griffith: My pleasure.
0:37
Stephanie Maas: So I'm going to dive right in.
0:39
K. Scott Griffith: Let's dive in. And we'll we'll swim in deep
0:42
water.
0:42
Stephanie Maas: So in your background, you built this
0:45
reputation for world class reliability in high consequence
0:49
industries across the globe. So can you put some legs under that
0:54
table for me?
0:55
K. Scott Griffith: Absolutely. So the term high consequence
0:58
industry, it's a little bit of a misnomer. It originally was used
1:03
in those industries where catastrophic failures could
1:06
result in the blink of an eye. So think about a plane crash. on
1:11
a on a more human level. Think about a police officer and the
1:15
blink of an eye things could go catastrophically wrong, a
1:19
surgeon on an operating table, a nurse administering a medic
1:23
medication. So those are industries where the
1:26
consequences of failure are, are sometimes immediate and
1:30
catastrophic. So my reputation started in aviation, where I was
1:34
the Chief Safety Officer at the world's largest airline. And I
1:38
developed a program known as ASAP which led to a 95%
1:42
reduction in the industry fatal accident rate. From there, I was
1:46
invited by the Surgeon General David Satcher, years ago and 19,
1:51
actually, in 2000, to come to Washington and meet with a group
1:55
of healthcare professionals under the Health and Human
1:59
Services Department, and explore the potential for the aviation
2:03
success to be migrated into the healthcare industry. So for
2:07
about the last two decades, I've worked in multiple industries,
2:11
including healthcare, aviation, law enforcement, emergency
2:15
medical services, and nuclear power. I wanted to take the
2:19
lessons that I've learned and the strategies I've developed to
2:24
any business, because at some level, any business or
2:27
organization is high consequence to the people involved, the
2:31
owners, the employees, that the shareholders. So what has worked
2:36
in those high consequence industries can absolutely work
2:39
in any business.
2:41
Stephanie Maas: You said you have a 95% improvement that is
2:44
SIG nificant. So tell me about what are some of these
2:47
principles that you found really translated, regardless of the industry?
2:53
K. Scott Griffith: That's right, so so so it was it was
2:54
astonishing, in the sense that a group of industry professionals
3:00
came together with a common goal to keep the public safe to keep
3:04
planes from crashing. And so what we were successful doing is
3:08
bringing in a regulator that had previously been very rules based
3:14
enforcement posture, to become a more risk based oversight
3:18
agency. So the Federal Aviation Administration, we helped move
3:23
them from a position of it's all about the rules, to it's all
3:26
about how we manage the risk. The other part of that
3:30
collaboration was clearly the airline executives and leaders,
3:34
and then the Labor Association. So we worked with different
3:37
unions across the country, from Pilot unions to flight
3:41
attendants, and mechanics and air traffic controllers. And I
3:44
created a program that combined each of those entities into a
3:48
collaborative endeavor, known as the Aviation Safety Action
3:52
Program. And one of the central images are metaphors of our
3:56
success was that of the iceberg. So what we typically see when a
4:02
plane crashes, or a rule gets violated is yet just the tip of
4:06
the iceberg. It's a cliche, but it turned out to be a very
4:10
powerful metaphor in convincing the regulator that a crime and
4:16
punishment style of enforcement was was not giving them a full
4:20
picture of the risk in the National Aerospace system. So
4:25
what we did was we created this safe haven, this reporting
4:28
program where employees could report into a program that was
4:33
collaboratively managed regulator, airline and labor and
4:37
from that we changed the culture virtually overnight. And we
4:42
started getting reports not just of events and violations, but we
4:46
started to see risk below the waterline in the every day
4:50
successful outcomes that posed significant risks. And that's
4:54
one of the central messages for any business that most
4:57
businesses measure results. Not At the risk involved in those
5:01
results, if all we're doing is measuring outcomes, we're
5:05
restricting our visibility to what we see above the waterline.
5:09
And the real risk. And the real opportunity lies in the everyday
5:14
systems and the everyday activities of our people that
5:18
are sometimes risky. But when we get positive results, we we turn
5:22
a blind eye to the risk taking behaviors and the risky systems.
5:26
Stephanie Maas: So you just talked on this for a second. And
5:29
I want to come back to that from a leadership perspective. You
5:33
mentioned creating a culture where people were willing to
5:36
come forward with concerns around risk per se. So I love to
5:42
hear, how do you culturally, from a leadership perspective,
5:46
help your people embrace that
5:49
K. Scott Griffith: You must build a trusted program, I had
5:52
one leader it I won't mention the name of an organization, we
5:55
were talking about the issue of employee burnout. And it's a
5:59
significant challenge, particularly coming out of the
6:02
pandemic, we see a high degree of burnout in a number of areas,
6:06
but I had one when senior leaders say to me, Oh, my
6:09
employees come tell me when something's wrong. Every year, I
6:13
have a holiday Christmas party, and they come up and they tell
6:17
me and I challenged him to say, well, they may not be coming
6:20
forward every day, they may not be coming forward with their
6:24
real concerns. So what we did, which was unique was we built
6:28
that trusted system into a program. And that program was
6:31
actually described with a set of rules and conditions, if you
6:35
will, that described how the program would be managed. And it
6:39
offered employees a guarantee that if they came forward in
6:42
good faith, rather than being punished, that we would work
6:46
proactively to address the risk, whether that risk was in the the
6:50
behavior of the employee, or whether that risk was in how
6:53
that employee was trained, or whether that risk will lay in
6:57
the system and the environment around the employee. And from
7:01
that we started to, I guess another metaphor is we pulled
7:04
back the curtain on risk that was taking place every day that
7:08
we weren't, hadn't previously been able to see. So I developed
7:12
something. And I mentioned this in the book called The sequence
7:16
of reliability. And the first step in that sequence of
7:19
reliability is to see and understand risk. In most places,
7:22
when things go wrong. The first place organizations look is the
7:26
behavior of the individuals involved. And that's really too
7:30
late in the process. The risk has been there for a while, but
7:34
we haven't seen it because we haven't seen bad outcomes. Think
7:37
about driving our car, just give us an example we can all relate
7:41
to. Let's play a little game. Do you have a car? Do you have car
7:45
insurance for the car? You drive? 70? Idea? Yes. Okay, so
7:49
I'm gonna pretend like I'm your insurance agent. Would you agree
7:53
that if we could find out how you drive every day, day in day
7:56
out, that would give us a better profile of the risk of you
8:00
driving a car than if we just look to your recent accident
8:04
rate? Or record? Check. So the game I want to play is would you
8:07
do me a favor? Would you call me anytime you go over the speed
8:11
limit? Or would you tell me when you're talking on the phone? Or
8:15
you get distracted? And maybe you even text while you're at a
8:19
red light? Would you just call? Let me know. So I can build a
8:23
profile on you to understand how risky you are? I'm going to say
8:27
no, you're gonna say no, most people aren't going to come to
8:30
their boss at the end of the day and say, let me give you a list
8:34
of all the risky things I did. Because the way you're going to
8:38
measure me is on outcomes. If I get the job done, and I get I
8:42
get rewarded, sometimes for risk taking behavior, because my boss
8:46
can see what I do day in day out, they only see the results I
8:49
produce. So I'm incentivized, most people are incentivized to
8:53
get results. Now, we're not saying results don't matter.
8:57
Absolutely, results do matter. But we have to be careful that
9:00
we're not building excess risk into our system by rewarding
9:04
people for their outcomes.
9:06
Stephanie Maas: Very interesting. I think from a
9:08
human perspective, we all want to be that way. But when push
9:12
comes to shove, and something goes wrong, those are usually
9:14
the first couple things. They go out the window, especially
9:16
compassion. So talk to me about that.
9:19
K. Scott Griffith: Yeah, so So compassion I mentioned in the
9:20
book as a as one of the attributes, particularly in
9:24
fields like health care, but any any service industry, if if, in
9:30
the work that I do, Stephanie really is under I guess the
9:33
category of I help organizations become highly reliable. And if
9:39
you say to me, Well, what does high reliability mean? I can
9:43
define that as consistent high performance over an extended
9:49
period of time, in a small number of attributes, and by
9:54
attributes, I mean, the field that I started my career was as
9:59
a Chief Safety Officer. Sir, is a very important attribute for
10:02
any service industry, whether you're Disneyland or an airline
10:07
or a hospital, being safe is is essential to being reliable.
10:12
That that's not simply enough, because if you're a patient in a
10:16
hospital, and they are highly reliable at keeping you safe,
10:21
but they treat you with disrespect, or they don't treat
10:24
you with the compassion that you deserve, you won't consider that
10:28
to be a reliable organization. So there's a really small subset
10:32
or set of what we call attributes of high reliability,
10:35
that are universal, you have to be safe, you have to care about
10:39
people's privacy, you have to pay attention to infrastructure.
10:43
So if you're a hospital, a safe hospital, but you get shut down
10:46
by a cyber attack, everything you do is going to be affected.
10:49
So infrastructure is important. Equity, Diversity, belonging,
10:55
it's not enough just to be reliable with one segment of
10:58
society, we were open to the public, so we have to be
11:01
equitably reliable. So there's a small set of attributes that we
11:04
define. And so compassion plays into that, when we start to work
11:07
with organizations, where they typically typically look for
11:11
results like safety, we say, let's broaden that perspective
11:15
to look at what are the attributes that you have to be
11:18
good at, in order to be considered reliable, and
11:22
therefore to be a sustainable business?
11:24
Stephanie Maas: So is that this term, which I'd never heard
11:27
before, socio technical improvement?
11:30
K. Scott Griffith: So I have to tell you, I'm a geek by nature.
11:33
So that's a term that, that comes natural to natural to me.
11:37
But when I looked at the first time, I didn't understand but a
11:41
socio means people from the Latin and technical, we would
11:45
say, applies to systems and the the environment that people work
11:49
in. And in today's technologically advanced world,
11:52
whatever business you're in, you have people working inside in
11:57
with systems. Now, when things go wrong, where do we typically
12:01
turn the human, even though that human is working with
12:04
technology, or working in an environment, in a culture, what
12:08
organizations find challenging is how to unlink or separate the
12:12
system contributors from the human contributors. And we often
12:16
do that in the wrong way, we often just strike at the
12:20
behavior. And instead of looking at the system that we put in
12:24
place to manage the risk and the opportunity. So sociotechnical
12:28
is a geeky word for people working inside systems. And you
12:32
have to be good at both. If you put outstanding people in a poor
12:36
system, you won't get great results, you could take a great
12:40
actor and give them a lousy script, or a pro quarterback and
12:44
put them in a system that's not very well developed, you won't
12:48
get great results than the contrast, if you take an average
12:52
individual and put them in a very well designed system,
12:55
you'll get better results than others will get. And so the
12:59
second step in what I have called the sequence of
13:02
reliability, after we look to seeing and understanding risk is
13:06
to build reliable systems. And we do that because now once we
13:10
have seen and understood stood the risk, built a reliable
13:14
system. Now we can focus our attention on making the human
13:18
reliable that the employees reliable. And we do that through
13:22
something called performance management, where we train them
13:26
and we help develop their knowledge, skills, abilities,
13:29
and proficiencies. And then we focus on those factors that
13:33
influence their performance, the system, personnel factors, the
13:37
environment and the culture. And then finally, we then focus our
13:42
attention on their behaviors and behaviors come in two
13:45
categories, errors and choices. And guess which one poses the
13:49
greatest risk in our daily lives, the errors we make, or
13:53
the choices we make? Which would you think is most consequential
13:57
to the outcomes?
13:58
Stephanie Maas: Well, I've got two teenagers right now. So I'm
14:00
going with choices.
14:02
K. Scott Griffith: Absolutely. Choices, absolutely choices.
14:04
Now, people tend to think that it's the errors we make, think
14:07
about how many risky choices we make every day, specially
14:11
teenagers, and most of the time, our risk taking choices turn out
14:16
to be good results. So What lessons do we learn when we
14:19
drive over the speed limit? What lesson do we learn when we talk
14:23
on the phone? Mom, I don't have to wear a helmet when I ride a
14:26
skateboard because I've been doing this for two years, and
14:29
I've never fallen? Yep. Oh, by the way, here's an interesting
14:32
statistic that we should all pay attention to the way our society
14:36
manages the risk of drunk driving is through the legal
14:39
system, the legal system, as privileged as we are to work in
14:43
a nation of laws. Our legal system is not designed to manage
14:48
risk, because in order to enter our legal system, either as a
14:52
plaintiff or defendant, there has to be evidence of harm.
14:56
That's a terrible way to manage your teenager waiting for harm
14:59
to have And therefore you step in. So the way we manage drunk
15:03
driving is a police officer will pull you over if they suspect
15:07
that you're driving intoxicated, or there's a car crash where we
15:11
take your blood alcohol level. Well, on average, the National
15:15
Highway Traffic Safety Administration told me that on
15:17
average for every drunk driver arrested, they have driven drunk
15:22
ADA times previously without having been caught. So most of
15:27
the time in our society, that risk is out there interacting in
15:31
the socio technical world, and we don't see it, man. That's a
15:35
stunning statistic, isn't it? One thing we all have in common
15:38
is that we all make mistakes, and we all make risky choices.
15:43
The funny thing about the human brain and this gets into
15:45
neuroscience is that we learn most from our most recent
15:50
experiences. So when we do something, no matter how we were
15:54
trained, when we get by ourselves, and no one's watching
15:57
in, we cut a corner, and nothing bad happens. Oftentimes, we
16:02
learn the wrong lesson from that successful outcome. We do these
16:06
things repeatedly, because we don't see and understand the
16:09
risks. And we learn the wrong lessons from our successful
16:12
outcomes. And so we end up surprised when catastrophe
16:17
occurs.
16:19
Stephanie Maas: So where did your passion for all of this
16:22
come in?
16:23
K. Scott Griffith: I mentioned that I was a geek and I is an
16:26
example of that. Have you ever heard of a TV show called The
16:29
Big Bang Theory? Absolutely. I watched it for two years. And I
16:32
thought it was a documentary. I didn't know. Those were my
16:36
people. So in addition to being a pilot, I had been in graduate
16:40
school as a physicist, and in 1985, I was doing a walk around
16:45
inspection on a boat, a walk around inspection is a preflight
16:49
activity that pilots take on before they get in a plane to go
16:53
fly. So they literally walk around it to make sure that
16:56
there's structural integrity on the airplane. I'm walking around
16:59
this airplane, and I look up in the sky, and I see another plane
17:03
adult, a wide body jet coming into land, and it's in distress,
17:08
and it gets so low that it hits on top of a car on on highway
17:11
140. It bounced, and as it's coming into land, and next thing
17:15
I see the wingtip strikes at above ground water tower and the
17:20
plane cartwheels and it just explodes. You know, I was
17:23
stunned by that. A few moments later, I was knocked down by a
17:28
gust of wind. Several seconds after that there was a torrent
17:32
of rain, and I ran back up on the airplane, and the plane is
17:35
rocking, and people are starting to panic. And so what happened
17:38
was, that plane encountered a deadly microburst, which is a
17:42
downdraft of wind, that the pilots couldn't see, because it
17:47
was separate from the clouds and separate from the rain. It was a
17:51
clear threat. So I took a leave from the airline Long story
17:55
short, spent about a year working on a contract for NASA,
17:59
as a physicist to build the first airborne prediction laser
18:04
system known as LIDAR to scan in clear air what the Winfield was
18:09
doing. So the reason that plane crashed was because the pilots
18:12
couldn't see. And they didn't understand the risk, we could
18:16
only manage what was in front of us that we could see. And all we
18:20
could see was the tip of the iceberg.
18:23
Stephanie Maas: What a crazy intense thing to experience.
18:26
K. Scott Griffith: It was crazy. And in most businesses, most
18:30
organizations, particularly those that are regulated, we
18:33
hide our risk from the regulator, because we don't want
18:35
to be sanctioned. We don't want to be fat. It's like when we're
18:38
driving down the road, Stephanie, what do we do
18:40
instinctively, when we see the police car, instinctively, we
18:44
slow down. By the way, on any given day, studies have shown
18:48
that only 90% of us are driving the speed limit the rest of us
18:52
are driving over. That's our norm normalization of deviancy.
18:56
It's normal to deviate in our society. But I have found that
19:01
to be generally true in every industry, in every business I've
19:04
worked in. It's not that we're bad people. It's that we're
19:07
living with competing priorities.
19:09
Stephanie Maas: So what would you say to encourage leaders
19:12
that, you know, look, some of us quite frankly, ignorance is
19:15
bliss. What I don't know, is it going to hurt? And I'll deal
19:18
with whatever happens when it happens. What do you say to
19:20
leaders who want to stay ignorance is bliss?
19:24
K. Scott Griffith: Well, that's probably the best question I've
19:26
heard in all year. Stephanie. And here's my answer, talking to
19:31
a leader, particularly a CEO. And I understand CEOs have
19:35
people who handle risk management, what CEOs are all
19:38
about our opportunity and sustainable success. If you're a
19:43
CEO, you want to go out and capture the art you want to
19:47
build a business. And once you build it, and take advantage of
19:50
those operate market opportunities, you want to be
19:53
able to sustain it. The world is filled with successful
19:56
businesses. They crashed because they couldn't see the risk
19:59
ahead. Edyta, we've seen businesses not adapt. And we're
20:03
not saying be risk averse to the CEO. We're saying be risk
20:07
intelligent, go grasp the opportunities in an intelligent
20:12
way. And so to do that, you have to be good at some of the things
20:17
you're not known for, you're not good at as a business. So if
20:21
you're a company that depends on technology, and you're out there
20:24
providing some product or some service, and it is not your
20:28
specialty, you hire people to manage it. But if you don't
20:31
become reliable with that platform, everything you do is
20:35
in jeopardy. You have to be risk aware, which involves
20:39
situational awareness, positional awareness, cultural
20:42
awareness, so you have to see and understand the environment
20:46
you're in, then there's something called risk tolerance,
20:49
you have to assess where your tolerance level is for risk. I
20:54
mean, there's a financial analogy here when you're young,
20:57
and you can afford to take risks, because you have a
20:59
lifetime ahead of you to recoup it. When you get to be my age or
21:03
older, you may be more risk averse in that respect. But in
21:07
every business, there is risk that's in front of you that you
21:11
may not be able to see, one of the things that leaders face,
21:15
which is often and troubling is that they are surrounded by
21:19
people that often tell them what they want to hear they want to
21:21
be paused, right. So you want to empower employees and managers
21:26
who will see risk differently. A frontline manager has experience
21:31
and expertise, but only the frontline employee is the one
21:35
that seeing the risk on the assembly line, for example, it's
21:39
the frontline employee that is exposed to the risk, you want
21:43
them to be able to share it, and it filter its way up to the top
21:47
leadership. But to do that, you have to have a culture that
21:49
supports it. And most business books, stress the importance of
21:54
leadership and culture. Well, you can be a strong charismatic
21:58
leader and lead an organization in the wrong direction. And what
22:02
do most CEOs not all, but most CEOs, when they come in, they
22:06
want to set a new tone, there's a new path here, they want to
22:09
make their mark, which may be different than the previous
22:11
CEOs. But what we all want, and particularly shareholders is
22:16
sustainable success over the long term. And to get that you
22:20
have to go beyond leadership and culture into building systems
22:26
that become reliable. And that each manager each CEO, inherent,
22:32
reliable systems, again, you put great people in a system that
22:35
breaks down, you won't get great results. So there's a sequence
22:39
to it, let me just summarize it step one of the sequence of
22:42
reliability is see and understand risk. You can see a
22:46
risk and not necessarily understand it. Or like our drunk
22:49
driving example, we can understand it, but not
22:51
necessarily see it when it happens, you have to do both
22:54
seeing and understanding risk is step one, building reliable
22:58
systems is step two, helping people to work to reliability is
23:02
step three. And the fourth and final step is hardwire
23:06
organizational reliability. Most business books start with the
23:10
last step first.
23:12
Stephanie Maas: It's so cool. It's almost almost like we're
23:14
seeing this evolution of leadership. And to your point in
23:18
the past, we've always seen leaders hailed for their
23:21
charisma, their ability to rally, but I bet if we went back
23:25
and really studied super successful leaders, this risk
23:28
intelligence, risk awareness, all these things, they were also
23:32
super successful, because they were able to manage that as
23:36
well. super interesting. Okay, in the spirit of time, I'm gonna
23:40
shift gears. So I'm gonna call you the risk guy. So you're this
23:44
risk guy? When does this side of you get on your nerves? Oh, have
23:48
I just shut my brain off for 10 minutes? Let me eat this two day
23:52
old sushi, but I can't because I know the risk.
23:55
K. Scott Griffith: Oh my gosh, well, I was talking to my son
23:57
last night. And we were talking about the foods we eat. That's
24:01
another example that I think anyone can understand. Right?
24:05
We, you know, we're trying to manage our health through our
24:09
diet, you know, and food is part of our well being right the
24:12
foods we eat have dramatic effect on our health and how we
24:16
feel and how we act. And and I tend to focus in, at my stage in
24:20
life at at trying to encourage those around me to make smart
24:24
choices. Now, that's hard because the science keeps
24:27
evolving and changing. Remember when red wine was thought to be
24:31
great for coronary artery disease. And I was really
24:34
rattling around that right now. The latest research is saying
24:38
yeah, there may not be a safe level of alcohol consumption
24:42
now. We were eating a dinner last night and the food that I
24:46
wear it came with rice and I looked down at the food and it
24:49
was white rice instead of brown rice was as you know, as a whole
24:53
grain. And my son said you're not gonna eat that. Are you
24:57
dead? And I said, Well, probably Nobody said, You gotta lighten
25:01
up. He said, You got to enjoy your life a little bit. And so,
25:05
okay, we see it that we understand it, and we're going
25:08
to do it anyway.
25:09
Stephanie Maas: So it's the natural deviation, right?
25:13
K. Scott Griffith: That's right. Teenagers are a good for helping
25:15
you keep a perspective on on that.
25:17
Stephanie Maas: I love it. Thank you so much for walking us
25:21
through this
25:22
K. Scott Griffith: Stephanie, I would just say thank you for the
25:25
opportunity to speak to you and your audience today, it's been a
25:29
pleasure, I would say the most important message I would take
25:33
away from our conversation is that risk is all around us in
25:36
our life, it's a part of life. And bad things don't just happen
25:40
randomly. The technical term for how bad things happened is
25:44
they're probabilistic, meaning there's probabilities associated
25:48
with the randomness in our lives. But with a little bit of
25:52
effort, your life can be so much better balanced, when you see
25:56
and understand. And again, you're not going to avoid eating
25:59
white rice. But you're going to understand the risk and
26:03
everything you do. And you'll build systems in your manage
26:07
people. And ultimately, the organizations you build and work
26:10
for, will become more successful. So with a little bit
26:14
of effort, it's almost like Maslow's hierarchy of needs when
26:18
you understand that this sequence can transform your life
26:21
or your business in a positive way. And it applies to the the
26:25
big issues of our day, like climate change, and all the
26:29
other risks that we face. But if we if we work collaboratively,
26:33
those challenges can be overcome and we can live better lives.
26:36
Stephanie Maas: Thank you so much.
26:38
K. Scott Griffith: Oh it was a pleasure. Stephanie, you're a
26:40
great interviewer too. It was a lot of fun. Thank you.