A step change in safety requires a paradigm shift. HOP’s basic tenants provide the foundation for such a shift. Acknowledging that people make mistakes, pointing out that blame is counterproductive, insisting that behavior be understood in context, and emphasizing the importance of learning from those doing the work are extremely helpful ideas. But good ideas are not enough. Turning HOP principles into improvement requires behavior change, most notably on the part of leaders. ADI has been helping organizations change behavior for almost 5 decades. We can help you implement HOP, turning principles and concepts into action and ultimately safety improvements.
Key Features of Our Approach
Understand Behavior. ADI helps organizations understand the underlying causes of human error, or as we prefer to refer to it, behavioral variability. The words ‘mistake’ and ‘error’ are problematic because they still imply the problem is with the performer. Behavioral variability is a well-documented and well- understood phenomenon in behavioral science that focuses on environmental causes. Once clients learn how to analyze behavioral variability scientifically, error-likely situations become easy to identify.
Address Contextual Contributors. Understanding behavior in context has been foundational to the science of behavior for over 100 years. ADI’s proprietary tools uncover contextual contributors to behavioral variability. We then help clients modify the contextual factors to reduce variability (errors) and improve safety performance.
Eliminate Blame. Once leaders understand the true causes of variability, the futility of blame becomes obvious. Our approach goes beyond trying to convince leaders that blame doesn’t help, it provides evidence-based alternatives that shift blame into joint problem-solving.
Turn Learning into Improvement. A hallmark of HOP is the focus on learning from events. Using our analysis tools, we help clients not only learn, but identify clear-cut improvement steps and, importantly, institute positive accountability systems to ensure learning leads to sustainable change.
HOP Implementation Components
Assessment. ADI assesses the current state of your organization around the 5 principles of HOP and makes recommendations for improvement.
Behavioral Roadmap. Clarity of direction is essential for change. ADI facilitates the development of a Behavioral Roadmap that clearly outlines HOP-implementation roles and expectations at each level of the organization.
Education. Through our interactive workshops, we educate clients in the principles of HOP and behavioral science. We build buy-in by helping leaders truly understand behavior in context, using our proprietary PIC/NIC Analysis®, a tool specifically designed to understand the various influences on work performance.
Coaching. Simply telling leaders to react well to incidents and near misses isn’t enough to help them overcome long-standing habits such as showing frustration, looking for who is to blame, or calling for someone to be held accountable. For almost five decades, ADI has been coaching leaders to assess the impact of their actions on others. We help leaders change their behavior to create the psychological safety required to enable open and honest conversations around work as done, versus work as planned.
Accountability. Eliminating blame doesn’t mean eliminating accountability. We help clients build a positive and proactive accountability system, based on the expectations in their customized Roadmap. Everyone has a role to play in the transition to doing safety differently, and accountability for proactive, preventative actions is a key to success.
Organizations are perfect systems. The behavioral variability you are getting today is a function of the context within which the work is done.
Contact ADI, the behavior experts, to help you make a step-change in safety performance.
