Learning from stories isn't easy...here's why

Providing access to stories is one thing, getting people to recognise the value to them is another thing.

Three examples of this come to mind. One diving, one relating to diving, and one which has nothing to do with diving. The latter two show how important it is to reflect on the situation, looking for similarities not differences.

Story 1

This account was posted online in the last few days and relates to a diver suffering a hyperoxic/oxygen toxicity event when they breathed 100% oxygen at their 21m stop but didn’t tox until they started their ascent shortly afterwards. Fortunately, the author of the account saw the tox from their deco stop above them, raced down, put the reg in the diver’s mouth, and conducted a rescue including surface swim. The toxing diver’s buddy didn’t know what to do in terms of the rescue. Both of the divers had been offered an analyser by the author of the account to analyse their gas prior to entering the water but they declined. On analysing the gas after the dive, it was 100% oxygen – the air top to bring it to 50% had not been added. The diver survived but then gave up diving because of this near fatal event.

Question: How often to do divers trust the dive shop to ‘get it right’?

Assumptions are normal human behaviour, but if the false assumption could mean an unrecoverable/irreversible situation (like a hyperoxic/oxygen toxicity event), then we need validate the assumption. Be that gas analysis, stops on decompression, penetrating a wreck, getting separated on a dive, surfacing away from the boat, counting divers back onto a boat before leaving the site…and many more similar examples.

Story 2

This next account relates to part of a two-day human factors in diving training course being delivered to a media company. This media company undertakes underwater media shoots. I showed them a case study which involves a media shoot and asked them to review the narrative and identify how it made sense for the decisions to happen in the way they did, and then how many parallels there were to their own diving operations. The first two responses were highly critical, s**t show, and I hope that wasn’t one of ours (which is fairly normal to be fair!). I then asked them to explore the event in more detail and pull out the error-producing conditions that led to the media diver in question bailing out due to a faulty rebreather on a shoot which had been put together at the last minute, and then going diving the next day on a field-repaired unit. On reflection, despite distancing themselves from such an event because of the differences at the beginning of the exercise, they started to identify many similarities and realised that this was a good learning opportunity for them and their junior leaders who they regularly deploy to remote locations with real and perceived time pressures to produce results.

Question: When you review an incident, do you genuinely look for similarities concerning the conditions surrounding the event or differences?

Similarities could be time pressures, peer pressure, lack of psychological safety, ‘it will be alright’, goal fixation, lack of clarity of goals… rather than differences where we mentally say “I wouldn’t do that because…”, or employ counterfactuals i.e., they should have, they could have, they failed to, or I would have… Look at the conditions, not the outcomes.

Story 3

This final account is a summary from an article by Dan Heath on LinkedIn where he describes trying to bring latrines to rural Indian villages where they normally defecate and urinate in the jungle/woods surrounding the village but when the weather is poor or at night, they defecate/urinate in the village leading to unhygienic situations. It wasn’t until the villagers actually saw how much defecation happened in the village, and the way faeces are carried on fly’s legs onto food and drinking water, did they actually realise the benefit of having latrines to prevent the spread of disease and illness. As Andrzej and I have said in class, you have to hold the mirror in front of the students so they can see what is going on, sometimes, they need to be metaphorically hit with it too! The feedback from the two-day courses shows the power of this, with consistent messages like “This is the best/most useful course I have been on, ever.”  because we encourage (mandate?) self-reflection. The students have the answers to their problems, we just help them find them.

Question: How much evidence do you need to show that change is needed? What are the factors that are preventing change?

I can’t remember where, maybe work by Kahneman under Prospect Theory, but there was something I read that said we need to see 2.5-3.5x the perceived benefit before we will even consider a change. That means even before we physically put something in place, we have to perceive that there is some value in doing so.

In diving, bringing human factors, non-technical skills, psychological safety and a Just Culture into the space is not easy for a number of reasons: 

• Safety (success) is measured by the number of dead divers. Fortunately, this is a pretty low number. This is no different than many other domains, safety is measured by its absence. Trying to make a small number even smaller, and showing the relationship between HF and improved numbers is nearly impossible.
• “Nothing has gone wrong in the past, therefore nothing will go wrong in the future.” – why do I need to improve my performance, the status quo is good enough.
• The marketing of diving infers that diving is a relatively safe sport and is accessible for all. Statistically, diving (by the number of fatalities) is pretty safe. How many people have DCS, have scary incidents, have left the sport because things have gone wrong, who are anxious because of incomplete or ineffective training?
• I believe the underlying culture within the diving industry is based around compliance (completing courses, to standard) and then we will remain safe. In reality, we have to be able to think outside the box and that requires us to fail, reflect, learn, and improve. Compliance provides an illusion of safety. Blog. Video.
• We don't always reflect on the activity. We don't consider whether we were lucky or whether we were good. 
• We don't have a Just Culture that allows us to explore the context surrounding the events, instead we focus on the proximal causes which are known and 'easy' to dismiss.
• Applying human factors requires mental energy to create the change, and it also takes time. It isn’t the same as buying something ‘shiny’ where we get an immediate rush of ‘this is cool’. Investing in our development is essential, and investing is the correct word - it is a continual application of knowledge and practice over time so that we can see and interact with the world differently.
  
  

Summary

Change isn’t easy. It isn’t easy because it requires us to apply mental and physical energy against a level of uncertainty that the activity or action will improve things. We can’t guarantee that the activity or action will make an improvement, and so we sit back and carry on with the status quo.

Learning doesn’t happen by doing something, or making a mistake. It happens when we reflect on the activity and the outcome, and wonder how it made sense to do that. If it was a good outcome (better than expected), can we identify the factors that led to that improvement. If it was a bad outcome (worse than expected), can we do the same, reflect on the conditions that led to the event, and then work out what we need to do to make an improvement. Just saying “I won’t do that again” is not enough. We have to put something in place, execute the change, then monitor the difference. If we just say “That wasn’t good, let’s do something different” we have identified a lesson, we haven’t learned it. To learn, we have to change.

Gareth Lock is the owner of The Human Diver, a niche company focused on educating and developing divers, instructors and related teams to be high-performing. If you'd like to deepen your diving experience, consider taking the online introduction course which will change your attitude towards diving because safety is your perception, visit the website.