Humanizing Safety Rules

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Christian Hunt, author of 'Humanizing Rules' and founder of Human Risk, a consultancy and training firm that brings behavioral science to ethics & compliance.

Christian helps Safety practitioners understand and minimize their exposure to human risk, and he begins by explaining why he wrote his latest book.

Packed with entertaining anecdotes, this lively conversation explores the 3 key drivers of human behavior and introduces a simple framework (‘HUMANS’) that will help EHS professionals evaluate and design behavioral interventions (e.g. a new rule or communication program).

Throughout the interview, Christian emphasizes the importance of looking at things from the workers’ perspective - who are humans, not robots:

“Think not about what we would like people to do, but what they're likely to do.”

In this action-packed episode, we also learn 6 golden rules of compliance, including ‘Compliance is an outcome, not a process’, and ‘Just because you can doesn’t mean you should’.This was Christinian’s second appearance on our podcast (his first was episode 4), and we hope he returns for a third time!

- [Mary] Hi there. Welcome to "Safety Labs by Slice." Rules, regulations, compliance officers, safety cops, most people don't greet those terms with warm, fuzzy feelings. We associate them with punishment, boredom, or senseless bureaucracy. At the same time, safety professionals are in the business of managing risk, which means influencing human behavior.

Our guest today spends a lot of time thinking about risk and rules, and has released a book called, "Humanizing Rules: Bringing Behavioral Science to Ethics and Compliance." In It, he introduces new ways to understand compliance and to create rules that are more likely to lead to their intended consequences. Christian Hunt's background is in financial services.

He was COO of one of the UK's financial service regulators and global head of compliance and operational risk for UBS Asset Management, giving him a unique perspective from both sides of the regulatory fence. He's the founder of Human Risk Limited, a consultancy and training firm that specializes in using behavioral science in the fields of ethics and compliance.

Christian helps clients understand human risk and minimize their exposure to it, and he supports those with a responsibility for mitigating it. He hosts and produces the "Human Risk Podcast," where he speaks to academics, behavioral science practitioners, and those with personal experience of human risk. Christian also has the distinction of being the first guest on Safety Labs to return for a second episode.

You can catch his first interview on episode 4 of our podcast when we were, but wee ones starting out. Christian joins us from London. Welcome back.

- [Christian] It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

- So, before we get into the meat of the book, I'm always curious, what prompted you to write it?

- It's a great question. I ask myself that quite freaking, and I certainly asked myself that as I was writing it because... One of the answers to that question is, well, how hard can it be to write a book? And the answer, dear listeners, is very, and it took up far more time, and somebody once said to me, actually, a book is the worst paid job you will ever do, which I think I would agree with.

But I got to a stage where there were lots of ideas bouncing around my head. I was sharing those with clients, and I just thought it would be helpful to put those down. So, in some respect, a very self-indulgent project of just noting down what I felt. But I also thought, well, how can I produce something that's useful and helpful to people? And I can produce things on social media, I can work with clients, but a book is an on-demand product.

Very old school, but on-demand product that people can read at their own time and think about. And so I felt like I had enough content that justified doing it, and I managed to find a publisher that was up for publishing it. So, the two things came together, and here we are.

- I have a lot of questions I'll have to focus on just some things, but let's set the stage by talking about some of the behavioral drivers you discuss in the book. So these provide a background to better understand why humans behave the way we do. The first driver is our experience and knowledge. How do these affect our choices?

- So, when we are still of starting out and deciding how we're going to behave, the mere fact that we're still here on the planet means that the previous decisions we've made have on some level been smart, right? We haven't been taken out by wild animals or anything else. And so the fact that we're still here tells us that actually, you know, if we've made a previous decision, then, you know, we've made it in a manner that has meant we are still around.

So, that's the sort of evolutionary logic here. But if we look at it and think, we don't want to use our brain if we can avoid it, because the brain takes up a huge amount of energy. And so we're naturally programmed to try and use it as little as possible. So, the first proxy for the situation that we might find ourselves in is things we've experienced in the past. And so we will deploy previous experiences in deciding how to react to a situation that we come across.

And that can be amazingly powerful if the situation that we've previously come across is relevant to the situation that we currently find ourselves in. So, if we're doing a task we've done before crossing the road, for example, our previous experience of crossing the road is likely to be very helpful, except if you think about...we go to, you know, I travel between Germany and the UK.

So, in the UK we drive on the left, in Germany, we drive on the right. If I as a pedestrian deploy the knowledge that I have learned in the UK when I am in Germany, I am at grave risk of not seeing vehicles and vice versa. So, there's a really good example of where past...sure, the other factors in crossing the road are relevant, but that very key detail becomes absolutely critical. And so it makes sense for us to rely on previous decisions, but of course, we sometimes don't recognize where those scenarios that we're looking at at the moment might be different to the ones we've had before.

And so you can see how it can be beneficial, but you can also see how it can let you down.

- Okay, so that's one shortcut and cognitive bias really, like that's what those things express themselves as. Sorry, that was super awkward. Editors, can you take that out? Just like cut out at the end of his thing and then start again when I ask the second one, sorry. All right.

So, secondly, we have other people. Why do we have to understand the influence of the group when we're trying to influence individual behavior?

- So, the simple answer again there is when we are looking around, what might be a good shortcut for us to copy. If we don't know, or our conclusion is different to what other people are doing, our go reaction will be, well, they must know something useful. And so if we see lots of other people doing something, then our go reaction is there's a reason that they're doing it.

And so that can sometimes override our own experience. So, if we think one thing, but we see lots of other people doing something else, then we'll sort of think, well, there must be a reason for that. Maybe they know something we don't. And so we know this on a personal level if we travel to a foreign country and we don't quite know how to behave, or maybe we want to go to a restaurant and we don't know which restaurant to pick, what's a good proxy?

Well, the answer is where other people are eating. And so if you came across two restaurants in a city that you'd never been to before and you looked at them and one was incredibly busy and the other one was empty and still open, there's some reason why no one's eating there, right? Maybe it's expensive, maybe the food's not great, maybe you'll get food poisoning. It's an unpleasant atmosphere. There will be a reason it's empty as opposed to the other one being full. And so our natural conclusion will be, "Well, look, all of these people are likely to know something, so I'm going to go there."

And we can see that manifest itself in things like TripAdvisor. You know, we rely on reviews. If we don't know, we can rely on what other people know. And, of course, if, you know, we have previous experience ourselves, we'll then weigh those two things up. But we know other people can weigh huge influence on us. So, again, as with the previous...and these things are known as heuristics, so shortcuts that we have evolved to use over time to make decisions.

So, if we don't know, it's a pretty good proxy, look around and see what other people are doing. You know, good example, if lots of people are running away from something, probably not a good idea to hang around and see what they're running away from because we don't want to be vulnerable, so we'll copy them. So, it's very, very logical, and again, as with the previous heuristic, if we're copying people that know what they're doing and whose circumstances are similar to ours, very, very sensible.

The challenge comes if we fall in with the wrong crowd, we copy the wrong people. They can act in a negative sense.

- Yeah. And so I think we'll get into the third, but it's important to understand these drivers that sometimes they work for us, sometimes they don't, but either way, we use them. And so it's important to know that when we're trying to influence people's behavior, these will be at play whether we like it or not, whether it seems sensible or not. So, the last driver is my favorite, and that is context.

Why is this so important?

- Yeah. So, the third driver...and I should add, Mary, that these are not the only things to influence our behavior. They're just three critical things. And the reason I'm highlighting them is that they're things we often overlook. So, we will write rules that are very logical, processes that are logical, but we also need to bear in mind that these other factors come into play in some level. So, they're just important to understand in the background that they are there, influencing us whether we know it or not.

And so environment or context also plays a part. And we know this, that we behave differently in different contexts. So, I always like to use the very facetious, but I think entertaining example, I can do things at home that I probably shouldn't do if I'm going down to the store. So, I can walk around at home in my underwear, nothing's going to happen. If I decide to do that in the store, there will be a reaction to that.

And so we tend not to behave in that way. And maybe the way we react in an office or in a workplace may be different to the way that we react when we're socializing with our friends in an environment that we're familiar with and where we control it. And so, again, it's just a factor that says one of the things that we'll take into account is where we are, the things that are going on around us, and the nature of the environment.

And so that can mean we can behave very, very differently in...you know, how do you behave when you are on vacation as opposed to how you behave when you're at home. And we all recognize times when we'll do things according to where we are and the things that are going on around us. So, it's a third factor, and it's probably the most subtle of all in the sense that we often don't think about it.

It becomes sort of default to behave in a particular way in a particular location. We know this when we're driving, for example, if we're driving down a street that we recognize and know, we might take a little bit more risk maybe in a road that we don't know. And so that environmental factor will play into how we behave and how we react to the situation.

- A behavioral intervention, this is for the audience, is anything you do to influence people's behavior. And correct me if I'm wrong, some work well and some have unintended consequences.

- Yeah. So, in the book, I talk about this idea of behavioral interventions. Now, that sounds like a very technical formal thing. What I mean by that...it is a sort of technical term for attempts to influence people's behaviors. You are intervening to try and change the natural course of events. You either want somebody to do something or not do something, you know, change the outcome.

If you weren't intervening, they'll be doing something else. So, you're looking to change a particular behavior. And so it's a technical term, and the reason I use that is what I'm encompassing in behavioral interventions is lots of different things. It might be a rule, it might be a control, it might be a communication. Lots of different things that we do to try and influence human behavior.

And so when we look at behavioral interventions...and sometimes these can be really subtle, right? We may not even be aware that...we may not think of it as a behavioral intervention, but it's an attempt to change. You know, looking at somebody in a funny way to sort of suggest disapproval is an attempt to influence their behavior on some level. And so when we look at these particular things, sometimes we do it really, really well.

Very effective interventions. Other times we can try things that just don't work whatsoever. You know, we've all seen advertisements that are effective at...an advertisement is a behavioral intervention. It's attempt to influence us to buy a product or service. And we know ones that have worked really well and we know ones that have worked less well. And so as we look at a human's attempt to influence other humans, sometimes we get it really, you know, right, and other times we don't quite get it right.

And so what I'm looking at as I explore behavioral interventions is to say that we need to think if we are trying to influence people, let's try and understand what it is we're trying to achieve. What's the outcome we're looking for? But also to think about, okay, what are the tools that I can deploy? What are the factors that I can use to try and do that influence? And so, you know, the success levels that we have will depend on how well we have understood the perspective of the people that we're trying to influence.

- So, then you present a framework, and that last point is really important in that it's a way to look at a rule, a policy, procedure, advertisement, any kind of intervention. But the perspective is important because most of us would say, you know, "Will this do what I want it to do?" And you have flipped that.

Do you want to talk about that a little bit? Yeah.

- So, when we're trying to influence other people, we are fully aware of what we're trying to do, and we understand things from our perspective, you know, as we do in all situations, right? We know why we think a particular thing. We may not always have the full information. We understand things from our perspective. And so if we're trying to influence people, maybe we are trying to communicate a message to them, warn them of something, maybe we're trying to put a rule in place that will tell them how to behave, we know why we're doing that.

And so what I say in the book is if we want to be effective, we need to start thinking not from our perspective, because we know where this is coming from, we need to turn around and say, well, what does this feel like in the loosest sense of the word, from the perspective of the people that we're trying to influence? In other words, we're understanding if you think about it in simple terms as being on stage, we are communicating to an audience, what I call the target audience, usually employees, but it may be broader than that, the people that we're trying to influence.

And we say to ourselves, we need to put ourselves in their shoes, see things through their eyes and understand not theoretically how they ought to behave, but actually practically, how is this likely to land with them? And so if we're doing something new, a new intervention, maybe there's a new rule, a new communications program, then it's a case of saying, "Well, let's think about how this is likely to land."

If on the other hand, we're reviewing something we've already done, a communications program that's in place, a rule that's already in place, then what we'll be doing is we're using the same lens to say, "Well, how is this landing at the moment?" And if we start to understand things not from our perspective, but their perspective, we can start to see why what we are trying to influence in their behavior is or isn't working effectively.

- So, I mean, in other words, developing empathy, which we talk about a lot, and maybe is a bit of a buzzword these days, but that's exactly what we're doing is seeing something from someone else's perspective.

- Yeah. The mantra that I always refer to is we need to think about not what we would like other people to do, but what they are likely to do. And I'll bring that alive a little bit with an example, which is to say that if I've created a set of rules or a communications program, I know where that's coming from, I know why we are doing it. And I might say, well, actually, what I'm trying to communicate is something that can save their life or to stop them doing something silly or to make sure they comply with the law.

And so I know where that is coming from, and I might sit there and say, well, of course, this is logical, it's obvious. They ought to understand it and appreciate it, and therefore they're going to do it. But the reality might be that they don't understand where the rule is coming from. They're tired. They've got a million and one other things to do. We've irritated them enough with some of our other policies and procedures that we're asking them to do.

And so the realities of the world is yes, theoretically, they should understand it, but for some reason, they don't. And so we need to think about the realities of how does this land with real people, not the theoretical people that are focused on what we think is important, but people trying to do whatever their job is, how does this land with them? And so recognizing not the wishful thinking on our part of surely this is going to land, but what are the realities of the way that they receive it?

When are we communicating? How are we communicating? What is their perspective on what we're asking or telling them to do? And if we start to think in those terms, we can recognize where there is a gap between what we think the optimal solution to a particular decision is and what they might be thinking. Now, that's not to suggest that they will be setting out to deliberately break rules, but there will be lots of factors, tiredness, you know, having a lot of things to do.

The thing we're asking them to do is not obvious to them why we're doing that. It makes their life 10 times harder. All those sorts of factors, if we can start to recognize that, then we can see where the things that we want them to do are going to be relatively easy. It's going to be simple. You know, the difference between what we want and what they're likely to do is diminished. If it's much larger, we are sitting on a bigger problem, and so we can think about how we can manage that.

- Yeah. And that's important. This isn't just in designing procedures, it's also in evaluating ones that are maybe not working very well. So, let's go through the framework. You call it HUMANS, which is an acronym, and we'll go through each one. So, the first one is H, helpful, and I'll let you express that as the question.

- Yeah. So, I'll emphasize this on the first one, but this applies to every single part of this framework. We are looking from the perspective of the people that we're trying to influence. So, let's use employee as a simple proxy for that. And so this isn't...when we think H is for helpful, and that means, how helpful are they going to think what we are doing is?

Not how helpful is it to the organization, hot how helpful is it to society, how helpful is it... What's in it for them? And so the first question it's asking is saying, what are they likely to see this? And so if you thought about a process that is going to potentially save their life or make their life easier, that was probably something that we'd think, generally speaking, ought to be more helpful. If on the other hand, we are asking them to do something, I don't know, fill in a load of forms that is going to slow them down, I mean, they can do less work, be less productive, or they're going to have to stick around at work for an extra half an hour to fill in our forms once a week, that will feel unhelpful.

And the point with this isn't to say, well, I'm going to tell them how they ought to feel about it. It's to recognize that if they think something's unhelpful, they are less likely to do it. And so what we can then do with that, and this applies to all the elements of the framework, is say to ourselves, if we think something is likely to be perceived as unhelpful, then we can say either, can we make it feel more helpful, or can we recognize that we can't because it's just, that's the way things have to be, at which point it poses a greater risk.

So, this isn't about letting people do what they want and just giving them free rein, it's about recognizing the realities of that. So, the more helpful something is, the more likely people are to do it. The less helpful, the less likely they are to do it.

- And you had a great example in there of, for example, a sales team, where you're asking them as the owner or manager, you would like statistics about customers. And so you're asking the sales team to fill out this new form, which from their perspective could feel very unhelpful because they now have less time to actually talk to customers or whatever. So, what are ways...if someone is listening and they're, they're thinking about this and, thinking, "Oh, this isn't helpful," how would you turn that around?

How can you sort of rejig things?

- Well, helpful isn't necessarily an absolute metric. So, the timing of things can render things helpful or unhelpful. So, let's just pick a very, very simple example and say, imagine somebody is working a Monday through Friday, standard working week, and we send them a request at 5:00 on a Friday afternoon. That is going to land differently to a request that is received at, I don't know, 10:00 on a Monday morning because the Friday at 5:00, it feels like you've offloaded something onto me just before my weekend.

That's not very helpful. I'm not going to find that as appealing. So, timing is just one example of something where we might say, we don't necessarily need to change the underlying ask, but we can change the time during which we ask it. Another thing you might want to think about doing is to say, well, if I'm asking someone to do something that is burdensome, that feels like there's nothing in it for them, well, what could I give them back? And so the example you give is something I've come across quite frequently, people need to fill in paperwork or respond to something online that gives the organization additional insights.

So, from an organizational perspective is useful, but actually, what's in it for the individual filling it in? So, maybe if it's a sales force and we're asking to collect data about something, are we giving them anything back in return? Is there a trade here? Is it worth their while to do it? And so if we can provide some form of feedback to them, some sort of data that's useful, then it adds value to that exercise and suddenly it'll be perceived to be more helpful than it might have been if that wasn't there.

- So, the next thing is about understanding. I'll let you I'll let you talk as you...

- Yeah. Super simple. Super simple, right? If we don't understand what it is we are being required to do or don't understand why we are being required to do it, then we are less able to be able to comply. So imagine you had a very complicated policy that was written in a language you didn't understand, full of technical terms.

In trying to comply with that, I might get it right through luck, but I'm less likely to get it right. And so this is really about saying we often assume that people will understand things, but let's just think about whether they genuinely, not whether they should understand it, but whether they actually genuinely do understand it. And so that can be simple.

I mean, literally, the language we use, is it written in a foreign language? Has it been well translated if we're talking about people in different language? Is it using technical terms? Do they understand not just what we're asking them to do, but the reasons why? Now, sometimes you don't need to understand the reasons why, right? Just do this, it's a safety matter. You must do this because this will kill you, and therefore it's non-negotiable.

Maybe we don't need to explain it, but actually, an understanding of where the thing is coming from helps you to comply in the right way, to meet the spirit as well as the letter of the law, then that understanding piece is helpful. So, this is really thinking about, do they actually get what we're asking them to do? And after we overlook that, we just assume it must be obvious to them. It's not necessarily.

The second thing that understand focuses on is, what do they think about. Do they think we understand what we are asking them to do? And we'll all be familiar with situations where we've had tasks foisted on us by someone that might be a partner in a relationship who's asked us to do something. It might be a boss. It might be some governmental body that's asked a question, and we just think, they have no understanding of what they've just asked for.

And that irritates us. So, the second part of understanding is, is there some element that actually we may be asking...they may think we're asking for the impossible, that we have no appreciation of what's there. And so if we're being asked to do something and we think the person who's asking for it doesn't understand it, that leaves us negatively, you know, disposed towards that. And so understand is a little bit more complicated than the first dynamic we looked at, but it's really, really important, and particularly important where there's a qualitative component to it.

So, if I need to understand the details of it to be able to do it properly, then, you know, better my understanding is the more able I am. It's worth noting, Mary, this is where it gets more complicated, of course, the more you understand something, the more capable you are also of breaking a rule. So, if I've got detailed knowledge of a particular regulation or a particular requirement, I'll also probably have a greater awareness of where loopholes might be.

So, we can't necessarily equate greater understanding with greater compliance, we just create greater understanding equals in a better position to be able in theory to navigate that rule. So, it's not the be-all and end-all, but we're thinking about, you know, if we are irritating the hell out of people and we're educating them about where something's coming from, they may be able to find ways around the rules.

So, it doesn't always work in the way that we think. So, worth remembering that as well.

- And you touched on this too, a lot of these aren't binary, they're not is it or is it not? Often it's to what degree?

- Yeah. And what I'm looking at doing here is say, you know, as we go through them, people may be thinking, well, how does that apply? And sometimes specific elements just they'll all be relevant in some level, but nothing may stand out. You might think, well, I don't know. I can't assess whether that's the case or it doesn't really jump out to me. The point of the framework isn't to slavishly follow it, it's to say here's some things to think about. And so if you are imposing a new rule or you've got one that doesn't work, you can start to say, well, which of these factors feel like they might be relevant in this particular case?

And so can I start to play with those? And we can also compensate for things. So to use the two that we've had before, we may be able to compensate for a lack of understanding by making it feel more helpful. We may be able to work with that. And so we can play with these things. So, it's not necessary you need to look at all of them, find the ones that feel most relevant to the situation you're in or the ones that are easiest to manage, and that may give you some levers that you can pull.

- Yeah. And they're intertwined as well, right?

- Yeah. As with all models of human behavior, what I'm doing is artificially pulling out factors for us to think about. And you are right, if you try and isolate these things and say, well, just this element that's relevant, then you're probably missing things. And there are overlaps between them, I'm just trying to get people to think about what it is they're asking people to do, and therefore what the parameters that might be driving the decision-making around whether to do that or not do that.

- Yeah. That's just a rule of thumb for all frameworks. None of them are perfect models. There's no...

- Yeah. I mean, we're not dealing with sort of the, you know, laws of Newtonian physics. And often I think that's...you know, it's interesting, and I think particularly if we look at safety requirements, if we're talking about safety in the physical world, things involving electricity, for example, there are constants there where we can write rules around that because we understand the laws of physics, laws of electricity, those things don't change. When it comes to human behavior, and that's why those factors that we talked about before are significant because somebody making decision on a standalone basis could come to a different conclusion to a decision that they might make about the same thing when they're surrounded by people who are influencing their behavior or the context in which they're thinking about it is different.

So, the reason we went through those factors is that they also need to be led on top as we think about it. And so if a specific rule applies in a specific context or a specific rule applies where people are going to be making the decision whether to comply on their own, that may be different to something we take a decision where lots of other people are or aren't compliant.

- Let's move along in the framework here. So, the next one is M, and that is manageable.

- Yeah. Very, very simple philosophy here is manageable. Do they have the wherewithal to comply with what is [inaudible]? And that might be, you know, the understanding of...so again, it's not to do with understand, but are they capable of doing this? Do they have the ability to comply with it? Is that something that fits easily within the flow of their work, or is it hugely distracting?

And the less manageable something is, the harder it is, the less capability we have to comply with it. And sometimes we impose rules on people that they just can't ever comply with. And so my point with that is to say, if you are asking somebody to do something that is impossible, don't be surprised when they can't do it. So, we've got to recognize the nature of what we're asking them to do and saying the more manageable it is, the more feasible it is for them to be able to comply.

So, recognizing the ask and seeing how capable they are of doing it, either from a technical skillset perspective or literally just, is it even feasible to do that? Have we given them enough time, for example, that can determine whether or not this is suitable? So, we can look and see, is that a constraint that is significant in this situation.

- Okay. And the other one is acceptable. So, this might take a little unpacking.

- Yeah. So, acceptable is looking not at the legal position, whether we are permitted to impose this, but how will they feel about it? And so this is often missed as a thing because we operate under something that I call the employment contract fallacy. And the employment contract fallacies in a work situation, because we employ you, we can tell you what to do.

And I refer to this as the employment contract fallacy because from a legal perspective, it's correct. You've signed an employment contract, and therefore there are certain obligations on you. And your employer... And maybe if you're on a contract, the same thing will apply. There'll be a contract there, so you can potentially ignore the word, employment, just look at the contract fallacy. And the reason I refer to it as a fallacy is from a legal perspective, the contract infer rights, and therefore employers or contractors can tell subcontractors what to do.

So, that's legally correct. But from a practical perspective, it may be that something is deemed to be unacceptable. So, I know that technically speaking, my employer can ask me to do or tell me to do these things or ban me from doing something. But actually how do I feel about that? So, you know, one of the examples I always quote is social media.

You could see a situation where employers would say, actually, it's a risk to us for our employees to have LinkedIn accounts or whatever because they might say something crazy, it'd be linked back to us, we don't like that. So we're going to ban that. Now, if you happen to work for the FBI, you might say, well, I would understand that that feels...you know, it's inappropriate for me to have that public persona. It might make me vulnerable to things, and therefore I can totally understand why they would ban that and I'm okay with that.

But if you happen to work for a construction firm or something else, you might say, "Well, who are they to tell me what I can and can't do?" That feels like employer overreach. And so what we have to look at is say, look, what is the response likely to be? And so there are going to be certain contacts and situations where something is acceptable, that's not acceptable in another context.

And so how do they feel about what we are imposing on them? And if there's a particularly visceral reaction either way that gives us some useful... So if people are feeling very negative about something, you know, how dare they tell me to do that? You know, then you potentially got a problem. But the flip side is if something is very, very acceptable, whisper it. But maybe we can go even further.

Maybe actually we haven't pushed that one enough. And so all of this stuff isn't about constraining what we do as a rule setter, it may give us an opportunity to spot things where we could go further than we already do because we're looking at the dynamics from the perspective of the other side of the table, which may be a different view than the one we have. So that dynamic's a really interesting one because that starts to become super subjective, but it's I think very, very powerful because we've all been in situations where we've had rules imposed on us that we just think are ridiculous or irritate, how dare they do that?

And none of us likes being told what to do. And so if you've got a particularly bad reaction there, that can be a very, very strong force that drives non-compliance.

- The other one is interesting to me because we talk a lot about normal work. So, the N, we're at the N in HUMANS is normal. Talk about that a little bit.

- Yeah. So, this pulls in those factors that we talked about before. So, normal is, does what... And again, remember all of these things are from the perspective of the people that we're imposing the rules on. So, I'm talking from the perspective of the rules setter. We're trying to turn it around and say, what does this feel like for the people that are subject to these rules? And so the question there is, is what they're being asked to do normal...and that applies in lots of different centers, so in this particular context.

So, if we looked at a...let's put ourselves in a safety critical environment. We probably expect if we're working in a safety-critical environment to have serious restrictions about what we can and can't do. Maybe the apparel that we need to have, the way we need to behave ourselves. If we work in, you know, in food hygiene, it's perfectly normal for us to be told how to wash our hands.

And so there's a very basic activity that we would all say, well, in that context, it makes perfect sense. If I'm working at a nuclear power station or in something where the consequences of me not following particular rules are obvious to me, and I've seen it before, I might say, well, that's perfectly normal. But if you did it in a different context, I might say that that feels like... So what's normal for this particular situation? So the environment, that's the third factor we talked about earlier is significant.

The second one is, you know, what do other people see? What do I think happens in other contexts, right? Is this a normal thing to be happening? How do I feel everybody else is reacting to this? Because I may come in with a different background, my own personal perspective may be one thing, but if I suddenly see everybody else is up in arms about this, well, maybe I should be irritated too. So N for normal also means, how do other people...what does this feel like in the ordinary flow?

And again, we can find situations where something we think is reasonable that we're asking people to do may feel incredibly abnormal. They've never had to do that before. It's new in this industry. Or we've hired people that have worked in a different industry and they're not used to having this particular thing imposed on them. So, you know, really good example from my background in financial services is that to prevent things like insider dealing and to have records, telephone calls are recorded, you know, emails are monitored.

And there's quite a lot of surveillance that goes on in the banking industry. Now that is perfectly normal in that environment. People don't necessarily like it, that's the acceptable thing, but it's normal in that industry. And you can sort of say, well, that's... But if you've come in from a different industry and suddenly you discover that, you know, you're being spied upon, that might feel absolutely weird. And so the context there becomes significant.

So, again, it's very subjective, but it's saying, is this a sort of normal thing I would expect, or does this feel...? And if we go back to the pandemic and some of the emergency measures that were introduced by governments, that were introduced by employers, you know, there were big changes that happened very, very quickly. We all have felt that sense of this is a bit unusual and abnormal, and, you know, and therefore that's where acceptable and normal might tweak.

We might say, this is really abnormal, but I kind of buy the narrative as to why that's acceptable in this context. Or we might go, this is utterly unacceptable. I don't think they should... This feels appalling. They shouldn't be doing this. And this is not normal. And so, there you'd have the opposite example where those two things together would prompt an even more visceral reaction.

So, what is normal is highly context-dependent, very, very subjective, but I think really important to understand. And again, we can think about, are there times where we could push it a bit further? If we're doing something that's abnormal, maybe doing a bit more of it, being actually stricter may feel more normal for that particular context. So, normal isn't necessarily a case of saying we need to loosen up, we may need to tighten up to make it feel more normal in that particular context.

- Can you give an example of that, of the tightening up rather than loosening up?

- Yeah. So, we will all have a perspective. I mean, I think safety's a really good example. And there are some industries that are very... And, you know, if we look at safety regulations, there are often driven by past experience. So, there is an incident that occurs, and we see this within sectors, we see this within companies, where an incident has occurred and suddenly actually there are some tighter rules around that.

Stop that out...we don't want that thing to happen again, so we'll put some rules in place. And what you can often see is when people move between companies within sectors, they may be used to things being a lot tighter, and particularly when you've got mergers of companies where you're bringing two different businesses together. And so if I've worked in an environment that's a relatively loose environment...and maybe the best way to look at this is I've worked in one country where the regulations are a lot looser and I'm suddenly shifting to another one where they're tighter or vice versa.

If I'm used to being very, very tightly controlled by something, I might find it weird that that supervision is no longer... And I may actually feel more comfortable with a tighter set of rules because that feels safer to me. And so this would be...you know, in a specific context is if you've been working in environment that's very tight and suddenly you're given free rein... Think about this as we're growing up, Mary.

We're given a lot more freedoms as we get older and actually that...you know, we all want that as we're getting older. And I know you've got kids, right? So, you know exactly how this is. They want freedom as they get older. But actually there a little bit of destabilizer, "Well, I'm allowed to do all these things. What am I going to do with my newfound freedoms?" And so actually sometimes, we revert back to where we want a little bit more control and we can...

So, you know, let's pick a really simple example. You buy a car that has a bigger engine size you can drive faster with it. Feels really exciting to start with, and you're, like, "I wish I had the brakes on the older vehicle because this feels a lot more dangerous." So, we often equate human beings to I want to do whatever I want to do, I want freedom. Sometimes that freedom actually can scare us a bit.

And so we like to go back to a more cocooned environment.

- Interesting, yeah, we want freedom, we also want security. And there's always a balance to be found. Okay. And the next one is salient.

- Yeah. I'm really pleased this comes at the end and it kind of has to, to match the word HUMANS, but I think it's also the most challenging. So, the word, salient, of all of the words in the framework is the one people may be less familiar with. And salient comes with a lot of...it's exactly the right word for this, but I'll try and sort of explain. And it means something that is relevant or stands out to us.

And so as we go through the world, we are not noticing every single detail of the things there because that would be exhausting. So, if you think about your commutes to work, to the extent that people are commuting to work, you'll tend not to notice it if anything...if it's a route you've done loads of times before, you'll only notice it if something unusual happens.

If there's a delay, someone behaves in a strange way, there's a unique weather pattern, something happens that makes it noteworthy for you. But otherwise, we can drive to work or catch the train or whatever it is on autopilot. And so our brains operate on focusing, not necessarily on what is important, but what feels salient to us. So things we've never seen before will be paying more attention to than things that we are incredibly familiar with.

And so the point around the salience thing is to say that human attention is not a given. It can be taken by...and we see this on social media, right? Some really ridiculously frivolous things go viral and they grab people's attention that are insignificant, that are idiotic, that are stupid, whatever. And so salient is basically saying if we want people to pay attention to rules or requirements, and pay attention may just simply mean know that those rules exist or pay attention maybe focus on them because they're technical and difficult.

If those things don't feel salient, they don't feel relevant to us, they're not going to grab our attention. And that might mean that we are blissfully unaware of them. It might mean that we don't think they're very significant, so we can kind of ignore them. And so we need to grab people's attention and the less salient something is, the less focus we have on it. Now, you might say there are certain rules I don't want anybody ever to think about.

I don't want you to be thinking too hard about certain things. I just want you to do it, be part of your everyday pattern. And therefore, we could say actually something not being salient could be amazing. There are going to be certain situations where people may need to put themselves in danger. We mitigate the risks of that danger and we don't want them being scared because the law...if we look at sort of bomb disposal, I want the people doing that to be ice cool and clear.

And I don't want other things entering their mind and they need to...you know, I've never done that role, but highly stressful, very, very difficult. I want them to be focusing on exactly what matters, and so blocking other things out. So, sometimes we don't want things to be salient. We don't want them to stand out. We don't want them to notice anything. We don't want to put ideas in their heads of things where they might break the rules.

Other times, we need them to focus and concentrate, and therefore is it grabbing their attention at a particular time? And so the amount of salience that we want may depend on the audience. Somebody that's got lots of experience at a particular task, we may need them to focus less on it. Somebody who's never done something before, I may want them to pay really detailed attention to what they're doing until such time as they're competent, at which point, maybe they can go into autopilot.

So salience, there's no right or wrong thing here, but it's about saying, how much do we think we've grabbed their attention with this particular thing? Is that what we desire for this particular piece? So, do we need to have their attention, or we don't want them to even notice this is there at all because we just want them to get on with it and do their thing? So, it's about human attention because that's a movable feast, it's not always consistent, it's not guaranteed.

And we know that we are distracted by strange things. So, are we getting people's attention at the right time in the right way for the task that we're talking about?

- Around compliance, you also introduce six rules as a way to understand compliance really as a whole. I'd like to go through those. I'm hoping we have time. So, the first one, compliance is an outcome, not a process.

- Yeah. And so the point of that rule is to say that very often, we equate solving a behavioral problem with following a due process. So, we assume a connectivity between the outcome we're looking for and the process that we're imposing on people. And sometimes that is absolutely correct, right? If we can do things...constrain people's behavior in the physical world, then we can guarantee the particular outcome.

But very often, compliance processes that we've got don't always deliver or have challenges. And so if we want to focus on getting the right outcome, don't assume that because you've designed the perfect process, that maybe the world has changed around it. So, a process that works in the physical world might not work in the digital world. And so we need to think...you know, often we think, I've written a rule, job done, or I've done a training. Training's the best example.

If I've done a training course, job done, they now know. If you've been running that training for five years, it may well be they're bored of hearing whatever it is you're telling them, and so it's no longer effective. And so we need to measure the outcome, not just the thing. So, people showing up to training is an input metric, not an output metric. Doesn't mean they've paid any attention whatsoever to what you've told them.

And we often leave the...you know, we move to the thing where we say, oh, because they turned up to training course, job done. Wrong. That doesn't mean they've necessarily listened, even in the best-designed training program. So, look at the outcome, you're looking for compliances about that, not about going through the motions. And we often pick the wrong thing to measure because it's easier to measure, you know, attendance or training than it is, has this training been effective?

- It's also important when you think about what you incentivize. Do you incentivize attendance at training, or do you incentivize, you know, change behavior afterwards? Okay. Number two is 100% compliance, and this one I'm interested in is neither achievable nor desirable. So, I want you specifically or particularly to talk about it not always being desirable.

- Right. So, I'll just deal with the it's not possible thing very simply. We cannot expect people 100% of the time to follow every single rule. Everybody listening or watching this, Mary, will have broken a rule at some point in the previous 24 hours, right?

May not be a significant rule, but it will be one...because we can't hold all these things in our heads and we're all capable of finding excuses not to do that. So, that's the first bit. The second bit is to then say, okay, if that is the case, then let's not set ourselves a foolish target of pretending that we can deliver that, and therefore we measure ourselves against 100%. Now, there are some rules that we absolutely want 100% compliance on.

So stuff that can kill people or injure them, I want 100%, or things like bullying, racism, sexism, things that are to be for that reason, we want to preserve those things. So, I'm not saying not all rules can be 100% compliance, I'm saying very specific across the piece of all the rules that we've got, some are going to be mission-critical where we do need that, others we can afford a little bit of slack, right?

Things can potentially be recoverable. So, I'm saying, let's be realistic about the challenges of compliance because we're dealing with human beings. They're fallible, they get things wrong, they get confused, they're tired, all those sorts of things. So, let's work out what's mission-critical and what's not. And let's say to ourselves, if we're going to have people breaking rules or doing things that are potentially slightly naughty or mischievous, let's make sure they do that in spaces where it's not going to be mission critical, where we can recover from it.

And so that's the bit. The other thing that I talk about, and this is where it starts to get slightly dark, is you would say, well, the other reason I don't want 100% compliance is it's a helpful way of calibrating where I've got the rules. So, if we take a speed limit, for example, I don't want a speed limit that no one ever breaks because that sort of suggests that either my data's wrong because someone must be breaching it somewhere. But the second thing is if a few people are kind of testing the limits of something, then I know I've probably got it roughly right.

And we deal with those people, but it's a useful piece of feedback that's there. And we do need people to break rules for, for example, research and development. And so in that context, I want people to be thinking creatively in breaking rules. So I think there's this myth that compliance is all about if we can get 100% of people to do the right thing all of the time, job done.

There are certain contexts in which you actually want...plus how we make progress as a species is people breaking rules, breaking conventions, breaking norms. You don't want them doing it with things that are end dangerous, but you do want to... So, there's a little bit of, of sort of creativity and development and progress that comes from breaking rules. And so whisper it, we should encourage a little bit of rule-breaking in the right spaces because that's interesting.

But the second thing is I know that if I've got a few people breaking the rule, I know that it's roughly correctly calibrated. And so I can deal with those people and I can have a sense of, okay, I've roughly got it about right. If no one's breaking the rule, well, maybe that's wrong, but equally, have we set this thing far too high? Is the rule not tight enough? And so the way that you find out whether the rules are correctly calibrated is to have a little bit of non-compliance around it.

Again, I stress not for things that are absolutely critical, but for things where actually a little bit of flexibility and bending in the rule actually is helpful for us to be able to monitor, observe, and know that we've got the rule set in about the right place.

- So, yeah, if you were to set a speed limit at 500 kilometers an hour, and find that no one is testing it, well, that's not super helpful, and actually your rule isn't helping anyway. It's not happening [crosstalk].

- And if we think about the physical, tensile strength, right? We test things out to see when they break. And so I think adopting a similar approach for rules where that makes sense is to say, actually the odd person breaking the rule, that's not an unhelpful outcome because then I can still say, oh, roughly got this about right. And it also allows us to see that our monitoring is working. If we have a rule where we think it's likely someone's probably statistically breaking this rule because they don't know about it or it's the sort of rule that lends itself...the speed limit's a good example, lends itself to being broken in the middle of the night when there's no traffic around there.

So if I don't see those breaches happening, are they happening and I can't see them, or it's a good test of whether we are monitoring the tensile strength of our rules and our monitoring capabilities?

- Okay. So, number three is when putting on a show, make sure you know your audience. This is about performativity or theater.

- Yeah. It's actually make sure you know about your audiences, plural, and that's critical. Let me explain what this means. Very often we can find ourselves doing things for performative reasons. So, the example that I quote in the book is airport security. Now, on the face of it, the reason we have airport security is to stop bad people from being able to take things that would pose a risk into a secure zone into the airport and therefore onto planes.

So it's a very logical control. But there's a second audience for that, which is the passengers that just want to fly somewhere. So, people like you and I, Mary, they just want to get on a plane and be safe. And so the other reason that we have airport security is to give us a sense of reassurance. Now, we can test that out because I can say to you, right, here's a choice, Mary, you can have airline A that has no security procedures whatsoever, and then airline B that has security, same price, same seat, same destination, same flight time.

You are going to go with the one that offers you the security because why would you take that risk? And we saw this after 9/11 and various other incidents, right? We know that security plays a key part in making people feel safe. So, what we are doing with the airport security thing is, yes, there's a basic thing which it is keeping control on that risk, but it's also sending...and the reason they make airport security slightly less efficient than they could is to send a signal.

And there are two audiences there that they're sending a signal to. One is the bad people who want to do the wrong thing, which is to say this is not as...you're not just going to walk into the airport with whatever you want to do. You're going to have to go through a scanner. We may randomly pull you, and we're going to maybe build a small lineup, not too long because we don't want to irritate people, but a little bit of a line so there's a sense of uncertainty.

And that's why they have those random searches. The buzzer goes off even when there's nothing there. They look through luggage. So, it's not as slicker process as it could be. And the other thing for, you know, the innocent passengers like you and I, Mary, is we know we've been through airport security. It's a process that we remember, we recall. It's salient to use that previously.

It's salient to us. And so there's an example of there are two different audiences, but in this case, both of them, the message is the same. Sometimes what we're going to do is we want to communicate something to one particular audience and we're doing something so that audience is aware of it. So, we might want to send a signal to people who have bad intentions that actually we're on to them and we're keeping an eye on them.

And we may put lots of visible security, we may put processes in place. Now, airport is an example where we all understand the risk. And therefore as a passenger who's not [inaudible] good, I feel safer going through that. I might not think that in a different context. Walking into a physical office...if I have to go through a ridiculous amount of screening just to get into a normal office, that might deter the bad people from coming...

But I'm going to...this is irritating and disproportionate. And so when we are looking at doing things for show, and we do lots and lots of things for show, we need to think about who are all the people that might see the show and how are those audiences, and that's why there's a plural there, is we often think about the audience we're trying to target, we don't necessarily think about other people. So, in doing something to keep a regulator happy, a performative process, we may irritate the hell out of our employees.

And so what I'm saying here is when you are doing something performative, understand the impact it's having both on the people that you're trying to put the show on for, but also on the people that might be unintended observers of it. And you may find that the benefits of the show to the intended audience may be outweighed by the irritation factor or the tedium, or whatever of the unintended audience.

And so recognizing there can be unintended consequences, we can't always control the people that see what we are doing. And so, there's a trade-off there, and we can work out whether that trade-off is worth having.

- Okay. And the other one is design...sorry, the fourth one is design for the willing, not the willful.

- Yep. So, this is very simple piece. When we write rules, we're often mindful of...or create training and rules is just a proxy for attempts to behavioral intervention. When we are trying to influence people, we're often sort of...we start from the mindset of, what am I trying to do? I'm trying to stop bad outcomes. And our mind races very quickly to sort of criminals, bad people, rule breakers. And if we could eliminate those rule breakers, we'd have the...

And so we focus, for example, training on...occasionally we add an element of threats to it. So, if you do this, this, this, these bad outcomes will happen because we're trying to send a message to bad people that, you know, this is something that we've gone on, and there's a consequences to your action bad people. The trouble with that is there's a very small percentage of people that are deliberately setting out to break rules.

The vast majority of people in our organization just want to do the right thing. If you give them the right opportunity, they will do the right thing. Equally, if you give them the right opportunity, they may do the wrong thing as well, but they're not setting out to do that. If we create communications and training and processes that send a signal to the good people, the average people, the majority of people that we don't trust them, then there's a likelihood that they might return the favor in kind and they won't respect us either.

And we've all been in situations where, I don't know, you may have walked around a museum or a store and a store detective or someone is following you around the store. We don't like that. And I've always found...if I feel that's happening, I'm going to go somewhere else, right, because I don't like that lack of trust. And so we just need to think about if we are focusing all of our efforts on bad people, and we do need to have controls to stop them from doing bad things, but actually, if we want our training programs and our communications and it sends a signal to everybody that we don't trust them, then we're irritating those people.

And we all know this, if we get treated like we're untrusted, we'll return the favor. And so what we should think about is, yes, we need to catch bad people, deter them, prevent them, but let's not let that pollute our entire program. Let's focus the program on the vast majority of people who come to work wanting to do the right thing. Let's facilitate that. And if that's our start point, what we then also do is expose when people are breaking rules, what we start to do is expose those people because if we've made it as easy as possible to the right thing, we've communicated with user-friendly stuff and we sent a signature, if people then don't do it, you know that that's willful, and therefore you've got a greater opportunity to throw the book at them and deal with it.

So, you are removing air cover from those people as well, and so that's why I say, it's a really positive, uplifting message. Let's just make the presumption that people want to work with us, and then we can provide the structure for them to do that. And then we'll have the mechanism to catch the bad people who, if they're attending a training course aren't listening, bad people don't read policies, you know, they do their own thing anyway.

So, let's not waste effort for good people on trying to catch the minority and accusing the majority of being in that evil minority.

- The next one is, if one person breaks a rule, you have a people problem. If lots of people break the rule, you have a rule problem.

- This is my absolute favorite because this sort of...it's sort of slightly pithy and simple, but there's a really interesting thing behind it, which is to say that we often think about when we've designed a compliance program, so whether that's training, rules, whatever. We've designed it and we say to ourselves, okay, job done. Whenever we get people breaching it, then it must be bad people because we've designed this perfect system that's designed to influence people.

And what I say is, look, have a look at the data that's there. And so if you've got a rule that lots of people are compliant, the vast majority of people are complying with one or two people aren't, unless there's a really good reason why they're not able to comply with it, that suggests that if everybody else can be compliant, we can point the finger at them. But if we've got a situation where there are lots of people breaking a rule, you know, the particular thing's not working the way we want, our natural tendency is to go, oh, look at all these terrible people, but they're not all going to be coming to work trying to break a rule.

There must be some factor that's driving a large number of people to do something that's against the rules. Now, it might be that the rule's idiotic, it's preventing something legitimate from happening. Maybe they don't know about the rule. Maybe the rule is really hard to comply with. Maybe it requires them to use a system they weren't aware of. And very often, if you've got lots and lots of people breaking a rule, then that means there is some problem with the rule.

Not just necessarily the rule itself, but the communications around it, the understanding of it, the systems, the processes, whatever. And so, the analogy I used to explain this to people is to say, if you think about roads, what we do is, of course, we treat drivers as the unit of risks. If we see people speeding on a particular stretch of road, then we blame the drivers and we punish those drivers and we target them.

That's absolutely fine. But if we have a stretch of road where there are lots of accidents, sort of accident hotspot or black spot or something, we don't just say, oh, terrible drivers. We look at the road and we say, why is it there are lots of accidents happening here? What can we do to change that junction to be able to deal with that problem? Make it clearer, put more signs up, put lights in, slow traffic down, whatever it is. We change the environment to improve the behavior.

We don't just leave it and pin it all on the drivers. And the reason this is important is if we don't understand this particular rule, what we can do is find ourselves in situations where lots of people are breaking a rule. The logical sanction, if you're blaming the people, is to say, let's fire all those people. As much as it's a bad rule, fire all those people and you can replace them all with new people, job done.

Except if it's an environmental factor driving those behaviors, then you are going to get the same thing replicating itself with the people that are there. You're not solving the problem, you are just removing a manifestation of the problem. So, this is not to say that we let people off the hook, but recognize if there is a volume of non-compliance, it's unlikely they're all willfully doing it. There'll be some other reason.

And if you don't solve that, then you're just going to have the same thing happening again.

- And the last one, this is one of my favorite, just because you can doesn't mean you should. That's a good one just to send out to the internet.

- It's a good story for life. And it's the last one because it works on two levels. So, level number one is a message to employees. And if we think about a world, particularly where we involve things like ethics that are harder to codify, what we don't want to create in many contexts is an environment where people say, well, I'll just read the rules and if the rules haven't prohibited me from doing it, I'm okay to do it.

We want people to be thinking just because...and, you know, a world where technology's changing, rules sometimes take time to catch up. And so we want to create an environment where people don't just think, oh, well, if there's no rule against this, it's okay to do it. Use your common sense and think about it. So, the message to people is just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean you should. Best example of that is, if I look at my driving license, I've taken two tests in my life, a motorbike test and a car test, and yet my license permits me to drive small trucks and buses and other vehicles.

Now, legally, I'm allowed to drive those things from an ethical, safety, moral perspective. I absolutely shouldn't...I've not even sat in them as a passenger. I've no clue. The law allows something, you end up with a lawful but awful outcome if I just take that permission and go, "I can do this." And so we need to be encouraging people to think for themselves and say the law is a good guide, we don't want people breaking the law, but also it's not the perfect guide and there are going to be times where the law, the rules haven't fully considered all the situations.

That's the first one. The second thing is a message to the rule setters or the employers to say, and this is back to the employment contract fallacy, just because you can enforce things on your employees doesn't necessarily mean you should. And there are going to be times where exercising your rights as an employer, back to those factors we talked about in the framework, will feel like overreach, inappropriate, you're going to irritate people, it is disproportionate, it's wrong to do so.

We've all been in contact with bureaucrats or, you know, some sort of jumped-up official that is sticking to the letter even when it's a dumb outcome. And we don't want that sort of thinking. So, just because a rule permits us to do something, a law permits us to do something, we have rights, doesn't mean we should always be exercising those rights. Let's think carefully about that.

And so yeah, again, it's another one of my favorites because it plays in two separate ways, but it's really, really simple, which is to say that life is complicated and codifications of things don't always make sense. And so we need to be mindful of the fact when they don't make sense and not just react in a sort of sheep-like manner because we can get some terrible outcomes.

- That's context too, right? So, our listeners are safety professionals and they're designing systems and processes to keep people safe. And this may be the hardest question I ask you, if there's one piece of information out of all the information in the book that a safety professional can hang onto or pay attention to, what would you like that to be?

- I'll come back to the mantra that I've quoted, and one of the wonderful things I discovered as an author is if you buy the Kindle version of your book, you can see what people have highlighted in the book in a way that you can, if you...I have no idea what people have highlight the physical, but the Kindle I can see the most highlighted thing. And I'm delighted with this because I think it's the most significant point in the book is to design and think about not what we would like people to do, but what they are likely to do.

And that's not to say we let them get away with it, it is to say, recognize the realities. So, if you are trying to get someone to do something when they are under huge amounts of pressure, don't have wishful thinking about that. Think about the real people in the world, what they like to do. And it's really easy for us to be blinded by the idealistic world.

We've designed the perfect rule, the perfect control, and we're just going to implement it, job done. Stop. Think about things from their perspective and think about... There's no place for wishful thinking, particularly in safety-critical industry. So, think not about what we would like people to do, but what they're likely to do. And then we can design around the realities of the world rather than some sort of fictional, idealized, stylized version of it.

So, the Kindle readers have got this right, that's the most significant quote from the book and that's the one I would leave people with.

- Where do you see the biggest gaps in understanding risk and compliance? Where do you see organizations many, maybe most, getting it wrong?

- In exactly the thing I've just talked about is that there is...all of the things that I've highlighted, you know, the book comes from experience of being a regulator and then moving into the firm. And I had to eat my own regulatory cooking. In other words, take responsibility for the rules that I had implemented. And I happened to have to take responsibility for them in a business that wasn't uppermost in my mind as a regulator.

So, when I was looking at UBS, the firm I worked for as a regulator, I was thinking about the things that had gone wrong and that I didn't want to have happen again, and those had happened in other businesses. And so when I jumped over the regulatory fence in the UK, you're allowed to do this, many jurisdictions, you can't. I suddenly had this experience where I was literally having to take responsibility for implementing things that I had seen from the other side of the fence in a space where often those things didn't always make sense.

And the rule, it was very logical, very sensible with the regulation. But when it landed where I was responsible for, I was sort of dumbfounded to realize that sometimes...you know, at best, these things were sort of just time-wasting. At worst, they actually prevented good things from happening and potentially facilitated outcomes that you didn't want because no one had thought about, understandably, that particular context. And so for me, one of the challenges is we don't always think about the nuances, the detail, the realities on the ground.

And so that's what I'm trying to do with this whole book. And I'm trying to say, look, the reason it's got humanizing in the title is that rules and regulations are very sort of theoretical and they're tablets of stone, you know, that we sort of hand down and say, this is what you need to do, job done and solved. But actually at the end of this, we write rules for humans to read, we train human beings, we need to think about how is this going to land with those human beings?

Is that going to deliver the outcome that we want? And so as we look at the challenge of what is compliance, it's the business of influencing human decision-making. Ultimately, organizations will be compliant or, you know, safe when people do things that we need them to do don't do things that we don't want them to do. And the way that we get to that is recognizing that that end piece, look back to that, rule we need to look at the outcome.

Very, very important to focus on that bit. And that involves human beings. And that, of course, is complex and it's joyous, it's amazing, it's wonderful, but it's also terrible and stressful and challenging. And so we need to get to that point and recognize what we're trying to do is to get people to vote. We're not programming robots, we're trying to influence human beings.

- Yeah, it's certainly not logical or linear. So are there any other books or tools or talks that you would recommend for listeners who are interested in these kinds of topics?

- Yeah. So, I mean, there are lots and lots of behavioral science books. One of the sort of the main books that always gets talked about is by Prof. Daniel Kahneman, he's a Nobel Prize winner, which is "Thinking, Fast and Slow." Now, I'll let you to a little secret about that. It is statistically a book that lots of people have bought, but not many people have read and/or finished, right?

It looks great, right? We all love it. And I have actually read it. So, if you've bought that and not read it, there's a good reason for you not having read it. So let's not force you to go through something else. So let's find you something else that will get you to a similar space. And that book I would recommend is by Dr.

Zoe Chance. It is called "Influence is Your Superpower." And she has taken many of the things that Kahneman talks about and found a much simpler, much easier-to-understand language. So I would look at that. There's someone called Rory Sutherland who works in advertising, who's a real behavioral science legend who's written a book called "Alchemy," which is all about counterintuitive thinking and how those ideas operate.

So, I'll just leave you with two, but those two, in particular, I think bring us refresh and they're easily accessible. And I think one of the challenging things with behavioral science, there's lots of technical things we could read, but we don't...you know, in the same way that when we impose rules and regulations on things, we're the experts in the rules and regulations, we don't want to turn every single employee into an expert in those rules. Same thing applies with behavioral science.

Lots of technical things you could read thinking [inaudible] is great, but it's quite hard work. So, let's find some things that simple. So, Rory Sutherland, the" Alchemy," Zoe Chance, "Influence Is Your Superpower" will be my two recommendations.

- And how can our listeners reach out if to you if they have any questions?

- First place you can find me very active there on LinkedIn. Just search for Human Risk in LinkedIn and you'll get hold of me, or you can find me at human-risk.com, and you'll find details of the book. You can read sample chapters of it there and some of the other things that I do there. So, human-risk.com, or search for Human Risk on LinkedIn.

- So, I'm afraid we're out of time. Thanks for listening to the podcast, subscribing on YouTube, and engaging in conversation with Safety Labs on LinkedIn. And thank you, Christian, for being willing to chat some more with me and for writing a really interesting and enjoyable book.

- My absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.

- The "Safety Labs by Slice" team always gets my thanks for finding fantastic guests and producing such a professional podcast. Bye for now.