What’s the Brain Got To Do With It?

Back in the ‘80s Tina Turner had a hit song called “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” The lyrics included “What’s love but second hand emotion…What’s love but a sweet old fashioned notion…” As anyone who’s been in a loving relationship knows love is anything but a second hand emotion or an old fashioned notion. Love is everything-it is what drives our (sometimes crazy) behavior and commitment to the other person. Now let me take a little liberty and modify Tina Turner’s song title to “What’s the Brain Got to Do With It?” The answer in one word would be EVERYTHING! How many times have you written the best policies and procedures, trained employees on the proper way to do things and provided them the right tools and equipment for them to do their job safely and efficiently and yet they still don’t do what they were trained to do or as one safety manager said to me, “it’s like his brain just stopped working!” Let me tell you right now that your employees were thinking…just not thinking in the way you expect them to think. Stop banging your head against wall wondering “how could he/she/they have been so stupid” or “what happened to their common sense” or “s/he should’ve seen it coming” and use your Brain to make the job fit their Brain (actually it’s the same Brain I’m just assuming that if you’re reading this you are in charge of or involved in making the work happen). The first step in doing this is to learn and understand how the brain functions. All too often the focus is on the “Physical” aspects of the job and little to no attention on the Brain. We train employees “how to” do everything related to their job, i.e. how to—lift properly, drive safely, listen and act on warning (alarm) signals, use a tool/machine, etc. We even have them demonstrate the “how to” back to us so we can check it off on their performance checklist sheet as being “competent”. And yet despite our wonderful training they still “screw up”—they get hurt, don’t see the other guy, miss the target, hit the wrong button, don’t use the provided lifting device, etc. When this happens we tend to be surprised and are quick to say—“What happened?” or “What were you thinking?” or “You’ve been trained, so why did you do that?” I counter that we shouldn’t be surprised and quick to judge and discipline the individual(s). Quite the contrary, it should be more surprising that these “you’ve been trained, given the best equipment and yet still don’t do things right” events don’t occur more often. A perfect example of this was an incident that occurred at a transportation company. The Operations manager told me about an incident that happened to one of his drivers. The driver was on his route at an intersection making a left turn. While he was making the turn he was struck by a car that was coming through the intersection and didn’t see the red light. The Ops manager stated his driver with over 5 years’ experience with the company “should’ve seen the other car coming and avoided the accident”. My immediate follow up question was “why would you assume he should’ve seen it coming?” He said that he knows the route; he’s been through defensive driver training and knows he should always look both ways before turn regardless of having a green light. It’s easy to think that when you weren’t there and are playing Monday Morning Quarterback; however, is that conclusion correct? Is the root cause of this incident the driver’s fault because he “didn’t see it coming” but should have seen it coming? If that’s your root cause then what is your action step to prevent it from occurring again? If you’ve caught any episodes of the TV series “Brain Games” on National Geographic channel, you should have an idea of what I’m talking about. The brain operates in specific ways which allows us to function remarkably well despite being bombarded by an infinite amount of information and stimuli each and every waking moment. What I’m talking about is cognitive ergonomics, also known as cognitive engineering, neuroscience, neuroergonomics, etc. My term for this is “designing for the mind”—both for the individual mind as well as the group (organizational) mind. We can create standard work practices, purchase the best “ergonomic” equipment and provide the training and policies to back them up but if those items don’t ‘fit the brain’ then failure will happen, it’s not a matter of if but when. Cognitive ergonomics (remember: designing for the mind) encompasses many different areas which are too numerous and beyond the scope of this article. There are three areas that I typically focus on when working with employers whether proactively, i.e. to design the work flow and job, or reactively, i.e. when doing an ergonomic evaluation or incident investigation after the fact: 1. Decision making 2. Vision (and to a lesser extent hearing) 3. Mental models I’ve chosen these three areas as they are easy to understand, are intertwined in function and effects, and greatly impact how and why people do (or don’t do) things. I won’t go into all the details of them in order to keep you reading and save you time because I know you/your brain like to “check out” and move onto other things. Decision making: When you get right down to it there are only two decision making systems—automatic/unconscious and conscious/”rationale”. What does 2+2 equal? I bet you immediately thought “4”. If you did you’d be right. Did it take you a long time to come to the answer? Did you have to think about it? Probably not—the answer was at the tip of your tongue. This is an example of an automatic decision. Something you just know, just do or just think without really thinking. Right now in the background your brain is deciding continue reading this article or to pay attention to something else. Tuning out or in to background noise is an unconscious decision that we rarely consciously think about. Now consider conscious decision making. When will you take your next vacation and where? Answering that question requires you to consciously think and make decisions based on many variables. It’s nothing that immediately is on the tip of your tongue. What actions steps are you, your department, and your company going do to the remainder of 2014 to meet the strategic initiatives that were set? Again, this takes conscious mental effort. Which decision making system do you think your brain prefers to do? If you answered “automatic” you’d be right. Vision: Do you always see everything you’re eyes see? A couple fun facts to know about your vision: One is that our vision consists of two zones—a “Hi-definition” zone and a “low definition” zone. The hi-def is focused, clear vision that is approximately the size of your thumb nail. The low def is your peripheral vision that is fuzzy but picks up movement very well. Have you ever looked for something, such as your keys, and just couldn’t see them? This happened to me recently as I was looking for my favorite pen which I thought I left on the dining room table. I looked at the table and didn’t see it. I asked my husband if he had seen my pen and he said it’s right on the table. I responded “Where?” He said “right there!—duh!” Yes, it was right under my nose; right on the table just not in my hi-def zone. Another thing about vision and hearing is that our brains unconscious black out and tune out images and sounds that aren’t important at the time. Have you ever heard of alarm fatigue? That’s when people hear certain alarm sounds frequently and they start to not hear them; they get immune to them. That’s your unconscious brain making the decision to tune out the alarms. This can be a very bad thing in hospital settings and also in construction zones or wherever vehicles are backing up. The “beep, beep, beep” of backing up can be tuned out and result in the person who tuned out getting struck. Mental Models: What does a dog look like? Right now your brain has just provided a picture of a dog. What does a German shepherd look like? Right now your brain just switched the picture of a generic dog to a German shepherd. Your brain can do this because it’s seen many dogs before and is familiar German shepherds because it is a well-known breed. This is an example of a mental model. When we are tasked, whether formally or informally, to come up with what something should look like, sound like or how long some task will take we rely on our mental models. It’s important to note that your mental model and my mental model may not be exactly the same and that our mental models may not even be accurate. Our models depend on our previous experiences and perceptions. They can be very helpful and efficient for our brains but they can also get us in trouble when they don’t match the reality of that given day, time or task. So, let’s go back to the earlier story regarding the transportation driver who “should’ve seen it coming”. The driver was on his normal route. That is your first clue in knowing that his brain has a good chance of being on “autopilot”. When we do, see or hear something repeatedly our brains can tune out. Have you ever pulled into your driveway after driving home and not remembered one thing the drive? If you are honest with yourself the answer is yes. We know our commute like the back of our hand so our brains can easily engage in something else like thinking about what we’re going to do as soon as we get home, or talking on the phone or changing radio stations or eating or…you get the idea. This is multi-tasking and our brains are not good at it no matter how much we try to convince ourselves that we can multi-task effectively and safely. It can’t be done—we can’t focus on two things at once. Let’s take another view of this incident. What if we had a camera in the vehicle focused on the driver and he did look at all directions of the intersection before turning left. With that information we could say that he “saw” everything and that should have included the vehicle coming into the intersection from his right. But would his brain see everything? His brain could unconsciously choose to see only a certain aspect of the intersection despite his eyes seeing everything. With this new brain information has your assertion that the driver “should have seen it coming” correct? If it has changed, now what are you going to do about it? Does the driver need more training? I’d say yes…but a different type of training. There’s so much more to the above and I hope that what I’ve given you is enough information to realize that there’s so much more to working efficiently and safely than fitting the job to only the physical. This is true in shop, out in the field and in the office. Our brains, just like our bodies, are lazy or if you like a more positive spin on it, energy efficient. Our bodies and brains like to do only as much as absolutely required. If our brain can go on autopilot or take shortcuts, it will. In order to truly optimize human performance and resilience you must fit the organizational systems, workflow and jobs to the body, individual brain and group brain. By Jill Kelby, PT, CEA; President and Owner of Kelby Ergo Design. If you’d like more information on our services in injury prevention, operational excellence, efficiency and productivity improvement or for assistance in determining what is best for your company, please contact us for a free initial consultation.