EP 72 — Dr. Andrew Petrosoniak on Holding the Problem Space
Highlights
- What's a Problem?
Summary:
An episode that we've recorded, but haven't come out yet, is with Diane Chadwick-Jones. She was the former head of safety and human performance at BP. How we ask that question makes such a big difference to the answer that we get to it.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
An episode that we've recorded, but hasn't come out yet, but will come out temporarily before this conversation in the future is with Diane Chadwick-Jones, who was the former head of safety and human performance at BP. And one of the things that she talked a lot about is about going to these site visits in various places and talking to folks that work in the oil and gas industry and doing a little bit of what you're saying, trying to gather end user feedback for, let's say, a valve or something. And like, should we redesign this valve to make it safer? What can we do here? How do we figure it out? And one of the things that she described that just was absolute genius that I'm still thinking about just nearly constantly is that how we ask that question makes such a big difference to the answer that we get to it. So what she was describing was starting with, hey, what's something innocuous? Like, hey, what's a problem? And a lot of times people will be like, nothing. I'm fine. I find workarounds. This is who I am. I find workarounds. Very similar what we described. Like we're MacGyver's. This is what we do. But her genius comes in when she asks these two really incredible follow up questions. One is, oh, that's awesome that things are going well. What's been a problem in a similar circumstance to this in the past? That's not this time. Oh, okay, so maybe some people open up about that a little bit. (Time 0:24:51)
- What's a Problem?
Summary:
An episode that we've recorded, but hasn't come out yet, will come out temporarily before this conversation in the future. Diane Chadwick-Jones was the former head of safety and human performance at BP. She talked about going to these site visits in various places and talking to folks that work in the oil and gas industry. How we ask that question makes such a big difference to the answer that we get to it.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
An episode that we've recorded, but hasn't come out yet, but will come out temporarily before this conversation in the future is with Diane Chadwick-Jones, who was the former head of safety and human performance at BP. And one of the things that she talked a lot about is about going to these site visits in various places and talking to folks that work in the oil and gas industry and doing a little bit of what you're saying, trying to gather end user feedback for, let's say, a valve or something. And like, should we redesign this valve to make it safer? What can we do here? How do we figure it out? And one of the things that she described that just was absolute genius that I'm still thinking about just nearly constantly is that how we ask that question makes such a big difference to the answer that we get to it. So what she was describing was starting with, hey, what's something innocuous? Like, hey, what's a problem? And a lot of times people will be like, nothing. I'm fine. I find workarounds. This is who I am. I find workarounds. Very similar what we described. Like we're MacGyver's. This is what we do. But her genius comes in when she asks these two really incredible follow up questions. One is, oh, that's awesome that things are going well. What's been a problem in a similar circumstance to this in the past? That's not this time. Oh, okay, so maybe some people open up about that a little bit. And then the even deeper one was, well, it's great that you have so much experience. Somebody else who's brand new starting this task for the first time, what problems might they run into that you would want to warn them about? And using that as a back end wedge to get over some of the identity issues that come up with wanting there to not be problems when you go through hard spaces. (Time 0:24:51)