Ep 14: Being comfortable in the grey – Matt Hall

Adam Clarke 0:01
Welcome to risk sleep repeat, a podcast that features influential guest speakers from the world of fire, health and safety. We’re going to focus on trust based safety, owning and embracing risk and the importance of people over paperwork hosted by me, Adam Clark, the managing director, and Mike Stevens, CEO of practice 42. If you’re a fire, health and safety professional, join us for inspirational conversations about the future of our industry. Today, I’m joined by Matt Hall, Associate Director of Health and Safety at Imperial College healthcare NHS Trust. Matt is an experienced safety professional with the demonstrated history of working in the hospital, and healthcare industry, higher education and research. Matt is passionate about bringing pragmatic solutions, ensuring the patients are at the forefront of everything he does. Matt won the trailblazer in health and safety accolade at the shp awards in December 2022. For work you completed while at the Royal Free London NHS Trust. Can you give me a bit of an overview of how you got into safety? And then what are you currently doing?

Speaker 1 1:09
So I actually started out I did a degree in marine biology. And I started out in marine labs working as a technician and laboratory manager. And that was my first exposure to health and safety or so I thought but during my degree, I actually did the what was called the HSC part for diver. So it was a professional scuba diver and could do work related diving. So I’d been exposed to health and safety through that without necessarily realising it. At the lamps, I had a lot of responsibility for chemicals and bits like that. But that was where I first started doing risk assessment. And the safety manager at the time needed to take a bit of time off. So I took over a little bit and when I’m I’m interested in this is a bit more interesting. And it’s also a bit more secure. For anyone who works in science in research, you’re working on grant funding. So technicians often you’re doing six months on this project six months on that. So I moved into the health and safety. And that was the advantage of being a small lab. I had everything I had boats, I had overseas working radiation, little bits of lasers, chemicals by a hazard. So I got exposed to everything. And also was part of a network of the Natural Environment Research Council. So that that was kind of my beginnings in health and safety. And where I then maybe realised, actually I want this to be my full time career. So small lab about 150, I approached the recruiter and had an interview with Imperial got offered the job at Imperial hospital to join the NHS for labs and biosafety. That was what they were looking for me to be the specialist in and came out moved from 150, to staff of about 14,000. So it was a bit of a big jump. But it was a really interesting journey.

Adam Clarke 3:10
Excellent. So I’m really interested, then you mentioned about scuba diving as before you got into safety now. Yeah, scuba diving, obviously, can be quite a high risk, high risk activity, if not done correctly. But how did you find when you were, you know, participating in the training and listening to those who were explaining the risk to you? Do you recall that being very informative? Or do you do recall it being just another one of those things that I need to listen to so that I can do what I need to do? So I

Speaker 1 3:38
think the way we worked in scuba diving was you train and you prepare for what could go wrong. So we’d do a variety of things. I remember diving off the high board wearing scuba gear, which would be what would you need to do if you needed to evacuate the vessel. With practice as control to sense an emergency, a sense would practice first aid on the sea surface were obviously doing an equivalent of CPR is a bit difficult when you’re in the water, but you try and do what you can, it’s quite interesting. You lock your mouth over the person’s mouth and nose and you over their nose, you can create a sail and you can breathe in to their lungs. And so it’s an alternative to CPR. But it was that idea of preparing for what could go wrong. Rather than just being theory. You went in and you did it and you went these are the realistic things that could go wrong. So I spent time in decompression chambers, so that I would know what it would be like if if I had to go in and one in one for real. So it was practical, rather than trying to scare you about safety is that these are the risks. This is how we manage it. We’ve got bailout cylinders, an extra cylinder there. This is how you use it. Let’s try it.

Adam Clarke 4:54
That’s really it’s really interesting. And I wonder how much that’s influenced you over time because when I think about Are emergency responses to a whole different range of hazards? That it could be? It often tends to be very much a theoretical matter. We talked about the threat theoretical based response. And don’t always get into the detail of Yeah, but practically, how is this going to go into work? And I think, if I think back, probably the one that I’ve dealt with the most would be just a cherry picker, for example, or a scissor or a scissor lift. How are we going to get somebody to safety if they come out? And they need to be needs to be rescued outside of the pick up the phone call? Fire Brigade?

Speaker 1 5:35
Definitely. And I think that’s the same when you’re talking confined spaces. Everyone’s like, well, we’ll call the fire brigade, it’s like, No, they’ll they’ll say you should have a plant and how are you going to get people out? Have you rehearsed it? Have you practised it, I’ve done it a lot in spills. So that was something, when we’re doing spill responses in lamps, you don’t tend to spill things very often, which means you don’t practice it very often. So we’d use water would use old spill kits, I do the same with first aid, if something’s going out of date. And you’ve got to replace it because it’s out of date, then it becomes training material. So you can use those absorbent granules that work absolutely fine. And we can use them in a room with a bit of water to actually train it and practice it. And that’s where you work out things a bit like your cherry picker example. You know, what if the hydraulics have failed and spilt, you’ve got to get the person out. But also you’ve got fluid that’s heading towards the drain to people know where the absorbent material is, where the cover pad is, things like that. So I found that idea is useful, but it’s also a bit more fun.

Adam Clarke 6:51
How did you find them when you moved into an organisation where you’ve got a lot more, a lot more people a lot more? Other risks that need to build into? How did you find that kind of transition from, I suppose, a very specialist lab environment to kind of spreading it spreading out a bit further.

Speaker 1 7:08
So I think there’s an excitement to it, there’s something that you can really grab ahold of. And there’s suddenly you’ve got to work differently. So a small lab 150 people, I know everyone, and everyone knows me. So if I’ve got an I wasn’t responsible for all 14,000, I think I had about 6000, in the divisions I looked after, how do I get out? And about how do people know me? In that space, that was the first thing, how do I know them and understand what their challenges are, and the challenges in within the NHS have similarities to research, but we can’t stop something without putting a patient at risk. So you have to look at other controls. I think I’ve always tried to be a pragmatic health and safety person. But I think it really forces you to go, Okay, how do we balance the risk, versus the other risks that could come in if we we don’t do these things? And I think, how do I communicate when I can’t be everywhere at once, you know, I could walk around my whole lab within 1520 minutes, I couldn’t walk every bit of the site realistically in a day, let alone all three sites on hospital this big. So you have to find a different way of doing it. And that’s for me, it was about building relationships, finding out who are the kind of the key stakeholders who are the people who needs a bit of influencing. Who are the people who are really excited to do health and safety. There are there are more people out there that we think

Adam Clarke 8:46
who actually enjoy it publicly or not. But yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 8:49
Yeah, I didn’t have to sign like a waiver, a nondisclosure agreement and meet in a dark space and maths, their face, but they will say they enjoy it. So we’d have that balance in there. And then how do we make this simple? So we don’t need everyone to be an expert in the Health and Safety at Work Act and be able to tell you what section to ears. You’re in, I might get AI and we know exactly what that is. But actually, what’s practical? What do they need to know? And it is that thing? What do they need to know day to day? And what do they need to know when it goes wrong? And that’s the bit that we sometimes miss is we just do what we do within our day to day, but what’s our plan if something goes wrong?

Adam Clarke 9:31
So yeah, interesting. You saying that about that transition from a small manageable site where you like you say, you know, everybody, people know where to find you, you know, you’ve got it, you’ve got it down. And there’s a temptation that I find a lot of people that there’s a temptation there that I’ll stay here because I know what this is. I know this is like I can get it to a point where actually we’ve got a safety management system that’s operating pretty effectively. You know, I go and do my go and do my checksum validation, make sure that it’s all working, you know, bring them New people in, but then challenging yourself to go into, into an organisation where it’s a big, it’s a big challenge to do the communication piece, I suppose. My question to you then is, you know, if you think back to when you started in larger organisation to where you are now from a communication perspective, what are the things that you tried that didn’t quite work? or what have you? What have you learned along that journey where if you could go back, if you ever could have a conversation with you at the beginning and say, stay away from that one, it’s probably not going to

Speaker 1 10:32
work. I think probably most of us, when we come out of the qualification we see or, you know, part of our learning is all of the really big disasters that happened. And all of the major things, you know, thinking we all learn about challenger, Kings Cross Superga, and we tend to then share that with people. And I certainly did that. And then you create health and safety about is about fear, and about what can go wrong, rather than how do we make it safe, we focus on what can go wrong. And actually, we sometimes focus on things which are so big, that people go well, that wouldn’t happen here. So I think I probably went down that route. And you think you’ve got people engaged? Because it’s interesting to hear about the Challenger disaster, to hear about different things, but actually, are you getting them engaged to listen to you? Or are you getting them engaged in being safer? And that was probably going did I get the balance right in there, I think the understanding that people learn in different ways as well. And so experiential learners, people who listen, people who want to read it, and then I tried to do too many of those things, and actually to go, we can provide all of these different routes, and allow people to pick the right route for them. But to accept that there will be some times where actually there is a way that you can only practically deliver it in one or two ways and not to beat yourself up too much. If you can’t quite work out, how can I do a simulation of this? How? Because you just might not have the time. So it’s balancing the time against the risk. And that’s really important in the NHS is, if I want to take a staff member away from a patient’s bedside, what added value is this bringing to the staff member and to the patient and the organisation? It can’t just be this as a fun training course. It can’t just be well, there’s a theoretical risk. Is there something better we can do? Is it a different way we can do it? Can we train up small teams rather than train up everyone? Could we have groups of experts who will always be around and everyone’s got a bit of awareness? And then you have your experts who can step in? Rather than 14,000 experts that’s have 140

Adam Clarke 12:56
It’s really a really interesting one, because I suspect then that’s really helped over time with better decision making. Because whilst you’re not necessarily in a business, it’s basically thinking about it like a business case. Your client, obviously is the is the patient and you’re thinking about well, okay, they’re the ultimate person that we’ve got to service here. So if I’m going to have to do something to make sure that we can service service up our patients, then how do we make sure that we get the best value out of it?

Speaker 1 13:26
Whilst you say, the NHS isn’t a business, it was something I was shocked to see. We are the fifth biggest employer globally behind I think it’s McDonald’s, Walmart, the Chinese army and the American army, something like that. So if you think there’s one to 1.5 million, depending on how you count it across the UK NHS staff, if there’s a training course that everyone needs to do for 30 minutes times that by 1.5 million. If I make that course, 1040 minutes. That’s one point. Yeah, you have 15 million extra minutes. Is that right? Yeah, a lot of time, when you look at it in those senses, so we’re looking at things of going rather than pull somebody back into a training room? Could we do a competency assessment in their workplace? So can we observe them doing their actual role? And we use this in patient safety and staff safety? For manual handling? For example, can we observe what they’re doing and make sure that they’re doing everything right? And it’s demonstrated hand hygiene is the same. That’s what we do to make sure we’re protecting patients from infection. So we would observe what people are doing. And if they’re doing everything right, we would take them off and go, you are competent, rather than pull them back into your classroom. If they get a couple of bits small, you might give a bit of correction, and then do a second observation. And then if they don’t, you would then bring them back into a training room. So that shortens the amount of time that staff will spend training to train them on the areas that actually they’ve forgotten, or that their habits have slipped, rather than yes, we’re just going to bring you back in and everyone comes back in all the time, which, which isn’t a practical way of doing it. We do that a lot of working out what can be elearning, which is easy to access, and what can be blended. But we have such a diverse workforce. So our portering staff, our domestic teams, are not going to be sat behind a computer. So we need to go, how can we access people who don’t have access to computers in their role very easily. So we need different ways to train people and to have those touch points with them. And then the other thing is, so short five minutes of safety. So we put in little moments, there’ll be a safety moment, maybe once a month with our portering and domestics teams, they’ve got rotation of topics that they decided themselves. And then we just helped them to shape when might be a good time to talk about it. And they they actually lead it themselves. So the supervisors will lead it and lead a conversation about 12 different safety topics rotating through, which is much more interesting way to do it, then pull everyone back into a classroom.

Adam Clarke 16:18
Now, I really liked the sound of that. And again, I think back to some of the toolbox talks I delivered in the early stages of my of my career. And again, if I could go back to go back to myself 20 years ago, and give some advice, I’d do it very, very differently. Because it was, it was a tough one, delivering it to people anyway, when I felt like I was quite quite a newbie to sites trying to tell these very experienced builders, about about safety, didn’t really want it didn’t really want to hear it. But it was, you know, I guess it was more of a lecture at the time. But there’s a very different way of doing it now. And like you say, it’s, it was definitely more on the side of fear based rather than, you know, people based and us doing it together. So I love I love the fact that you’re saying that they’ve you know, they’ve owned the topics that they know are important to them. And then they’re delivering it themselves with the support of rather than it just being, you know, as you as you often see, here’s the safety function they swoop in, they do the thing, they get some signatures, they go off, and then we, you know, we repeat that. And, and then, you know, what you said about the the training and the assessments, I mean, it just goes back to what you said earlier about being pragmatic, I love that as a solution, because what you’re doing, you’re effectively triaging where people are, which means, you know, the scope of people that you could have people who are very, very new, or you’ve got people who are super experienced, and then what you’re not doing then off the back of that is that get the really, really super experienced people and just shove them in a classroom every time we think, Oh, I’ve done this is like the 32nd second time that I’ve done this thing, I mean, come on, I’m already pretty good at pretty good at it by now. But you know, it’s obviously important to, to verify or validate that people skills are still where they need to be. But once you’re able to do that, then it’s like, Great, thank you move on, you know, those people that the other end of the scale that probably do need a little bit more until they move up into that becomes far more consciously aware of it, and you tailor that solution to it. So not only is it about trying to make sure that the person’s experience is is valued. And that you’re you’re treating them as as the position they are. But But back to your your driving force of not wasting time.

Speaker 1 18:37
And I think the driving, it’s something I’ve in my head, and this may not work. But this is how I think of health and safety a little bit. It’s a bit like driving. So when you’re young, and when you’re learning about safety, you’re like you’re in the backseat of the car, and mum and dad are driving you around where you need to be. And then the next stage of it, and this is where we want to start moving people will sit next to them and teach them to drive. And yeah, we’ll have a little bit of fear. And we might have talked them through it as we go. The next stage is that bit where you’re maybe accompanying them, but you’re not teaching them you’re just doing that observation. And that last stages you go, here are the keys. Off you go and you bite by your knuckles and hope everything’s okay. But in driving once we’re qualified to drive which people do every day a bit like a lot of our safety tasks, you don’t get pulled back in to have another test unless you’ve done something wrong. So why sometimes do we just go Oh, yeah, we just got to retrain you. If you do this every day, and we observe you doing it to make sure you haven’t got any bad habits or the equipment is causing you problems. You know, it might be that that’s in there. Why are we making something that’s probably less dangerous than driving something that you have to now be pulled back to the classroom all of the time?

Adam Clarke 19:58
And you know, I can only look at that I before that coming back to the compliance, the compliance piece, it’s because someone needs you to be able to demonstrate that somebody has done something. And you know, sometimes that’s more of an optional. And sometimes that’s more of a mandatory. You know, I think about take asbestos awareness, for example, that you want us to deliver that and you, you’d have a would have had the person in there that’s done it every single year for 2030 years. And you’re having to explain to somebody who’s probably had lots of exposure to asbestos for the 30th time that it can kill them. And they have to watch the same lovely videos on people who have suffered from mesothelioma, the OMA and you think, Well, surely, they are as aware as they’re going to be on this. And yet, we haven’t come up with a better way of confirming that you’ve done it 10 times. That’s enough. And what we’ll do, then is once a year, we’ll have a conversation with the person just say, right, we just want to just want to check on this, you know, simple number of questions, and then you do that. I feel like it gets quite a lot of resistance to that. Because people feel a little bit uncomfortable when it’s trying to do things in a in a slightly different way.

Speaker 1 21:19
There’s that safety blanket isn’t there of knowing yet we can say we’ve pulled everyone in every year, every three years and every single person who’s undergone this training, but actually, were they engaged? Or were they just present and just signed off? Because they needed to be there. And you’re absolutely right. Are they safer than they were? before they enter that room? Particularly if they’ve done this for 1015 years? And in the majority of cases, unless we’ve said something earth shattering really different? The answer is going to be no. So it’s going how do we do it? Can we just test them? You know, is there a quick online test to go? He go? Now people are worried about online tests? Because obviously, you could look up the answers. Well, you know, what, if you look up the answers, you’re doing the learning. So if I get the test, right, it doesn’t matter how you get the answers, right, you’ve learned the answers.

Adam Clarke 22:17
So I can see now, you know, when again, when I think about how things used to be or weren’t the tailor towards the fear side of it. And now moving it towards much more of a collaborative approach around well, this is, you know, we’re doing this to look after you the people who are who are here, and then how it impacts on, you know, on stakeholders and getting more into coming towards the end goal of the why, you know, what’s the, what’s the purpose of us doing this? How does it? How does it help? And if we can get into? How does it relate to you? We might get better engagement?

Speaker 1 22:51
Yeah, I think that is the thing how, how does it make your life easier as well. And I think sometimes people see health and safety as the blocker. And it’s our job to be the person who says actually, this will smooth it because it will make you think through your process. And you might identify cost savings by thinking through it. It’s it’s aligning it to lean or other parts of project management and saying it, you’re just looking at each stage going, is everything done in the right order? Is everything safe? Does everyone understand what they need to do? Does everyone understand what the potential risks are? And I think the other bit is, have we made it easy for all of us put the other way around, have I, as an organisational leader made it difficult for you to do the wrong thing? It should be that we don’t rely so much on training that we actually make it really hard. We’ve done it in a lot of industry of putting guards and all of the interlocks in, which make it hard for you to get access to the most dangerous parts and machinery. And it’s thinking about within all of the areas of safety, can we do similar things? Can we make it easy to make sure you’ve got the right PPE, so rather than having to go I remember in my labs, the gloves were all in the cupboard because they look nicer in there. But we then might mounted them on the wall. And then we mounted them in different sizes in the right size order by the point where you were going to use them so now it’s really hard for me to not put my gloves on. And it would be the same lab coats were by the door as you were entering. Rather than you know, they did look a little bit cluttered there but it meant it. It was it was much easier to comply and be safe than it was to get there and go I forgot my lab coat in back at my office. I’ve got to run back to it. Let’s be honest, would you do it?

Adam Clarke 24:58
Outside of your subject matter expertise He’s getting more knowledgeable about that. What are the things that are related to operations to business, to finance and any other thing within the organisation that you know you’ve learned or that you’ve been exposed to, and how has it helped you deliver on everything is everything in the health and safety. So I think it’s

Speaker 1 25:23
realising the cost of time was something that was really important. When we train our theatre staff, we have what’s called audit days, and we will shut down all of the theatres. For that period, that’s everyone in multiple theatres closed. And that’s 1000s of pounds a minute that you are losing through the system. So you need to everything has to be of great value, which is in there. But I think it is that balance and going, Okay, what’s this cost? And what’s the reward? Understanding risk, and something I picked up three, four years ago, was risk management. And I think a lot of people go, Oh, it’s risk risk and health and safety, the same, and they are two different, but very closely linked things. So one, we’re doing risk assessment to remove risk. And the other side of it is going, what risk do we accept as a corporate organisation? And where would the line be where we would say, we don’t have an appetite for that. So we don’t have an appetite for patient or staff safety risks. But we might have an appetite for research risk, where we might, but the benefits will outweigh it. And then it was that thing. So my last about a year and a half ago, I took over as a deputy director for patient safety, which is an area I’ve worked a little bit in, but I was managing people who they were my subject matter experts. So I had a legal team, I had a data team, I had health and safety as well underneath me. So that was my comfort blanket of this is what I know. But I was managing some really smart people who were my experts, and I needed to trust them, because I’m not a lawyer. But they are the person who’s going to do it. And it’s learning that you can’t be everything, once you get to that sort of level. Okay, there’s probably a few people who are really smart, but I’m not that. So it’s finding what people’s strengths are. And playing to those strengths, helping to develop them, hopefully. And probably the best qualification that I did was coaching. So when I started in the lab, so I did some welfare work, and I’d be a local welfare advisor, which was using listening skills, and questioning skills to kind of help somebody through and then help them get the professional help, because I wasn’t a professional counsellor, I was a kind of that first level well above Mental Health First Aid. But below that, but a lot of those skills were very similar to coaching. So when I did the coaching course, I realised, actually, I’ve been doing some of this naturally, and I can try and improve. I don’t get it right all the time. Yeah, I get excited by a subject. And I’ll drive in and want to be part of the answer. And only, you know, I think, not to beat myself up when I get it wrong. But to keep trying to say, what can I coach through with people both in a safety conversation with just somebody on a ward or in a laboratory to help them find the solution, but also with my subject matter experts? I can’t give them help on their subject. I don’t have that knowledge, but I can help them to process and talk it through. So I would say coaching is probably one of the biggest skills that I developed and then enjoying that, that management of areas I’m not an expert in, it’s actually it’s a bit free.

Adam Clarke 28:57
Yeah, well, no, I can very much agree with you on that. But what I’m interested in also is did you find when it may not have been then I might have been in previous roles. When you took that on and you’re out slightly outside of your normal lane. How did you deal with the initial? Or did you feel initially uncomfortable with with that? And how did you deal with that lovely part of your brain that likes to throw rocks at you from time to time and say, hey, hey, Matt, you, you sure you can do this? The inner

Speaker 1 29:31
chimp which I loved that book, I thought it’s it’s well worth reading for anyone who hasn’t. It’s very readable. So I’d say that we’ve all got it to different extents. And I think when you step up, your chimp becomes a gorilla display. It just gets a bit bigger when you step up into a role. So it’s having people that you trust around you that’s been really helpful in all areas of my career is somebody that I can sound out who Who you can have a coffee? Go and have a quiet drink with and just sort of go? Can I talk this through before I go and say this to make sure I’m not saying something stupid, becoming comfortable with that? I don’t know. Because actually people respect you a lot more if you say, I don’t know, but I’ll go and find out than if you try and bluff. And I think certainly early on, you felt like I have studied this. And I should know exactly what the half life of radon is. Or I should know exactly what this is. Nice theory. But actually, what our training is, we know where to find things. And we know how to do the thought process. You know, we’re not all Sheldon from the Big Bang.

Adam Clarke 30:47
No, no, there aren’t. There aren’t many. But But then, you know, it’s a great example, actually, have you ever would you want Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory leading teams of people?

Speaker 1 30:56
Probably not people, but actually there were some good examples of safety. But yeah, I think it is, it’s, it’s going, what is it the need, so I think being comfortable in the grey. And I think that’s something that as safety professionals, we do need to help people to realise that there is some black and white and health and safety, there are certain things that this is just dangerous, we’re not going to do it. But there will be some space. And this is true of all of my career is there will be a lot of space where you need to spend some time in that grey, and see how you can kind of shade it a little bit more. Or actually go well, this isn’t this isn’t actually a problem. We we don’t need to fix this because it isn’t a risk. Nobody’s going to get hurt.

Adam Clarke 31:44
Exactly. And I think the further you get through your career, and the more that you end up interviewing, interviewing people, especially if they’re internal candidates going for going for a step up, I feel it’s really underplayed of how valuable it is, when you’re going through your career to have a mentor that you can lean on. And I think not just one that’s in your subject matter expertise, I think, one outside Outside of that, yeah, who can be a sounding board for you? Because that’s all from us. We need that concept of a sounding board. Somebody can just be I’m thinking about this. Yeah, I’ve done this, this and this, and this is what I’m planning. And sometimes it’s like, yeah, go with it. Even if it was I don’t, I might have done something slightly different, but not enough to say, do it a different way? Or if not similar? Being able to draw on that experience and give you a? Well, what about what about this, and it’s often you know, it’s amazing how much that can influence you. And then on the on the other side of it matters, you get to where you are in your career now where you get to be the person that gets to have nothing, I often say that I have the privilege of being a mentor or a coach to somebody else, but I find it incredibly

Speaker 1 32:50
rewarding. Yeah. It’s lovely when somebody tries to give you the credit, and I don’t think as a mentor, you get the credit. But when it’s somebody says to you, oh, I got that job because of you. And actually, no, it’s because of them. You’ve just helped them to get the confidence in it. They’ve, they’ve got it. But it is massively rewarding to see that. I think the the bit that you said about having a mentor who’s outside of your subject. So I’ve been very lucky, I spent quite a lot of time working within the theatre environment. So I’ve done an operating theatres. And I’ve done stage theatres. And I was a trustee in a chair of a board of trustees for a while and actually seeing how other people run an organisation. And being able to go, Yeah, I’m looking from the outside, and I’m holding you to account because there’s a charity, that’s our job, but I’m here to support. But you’re dropping in and out and you’re seeing some real experts just really deliver a very different set of things. And that’s something I probably watch more when I go to see a conference and I see somebody who’s like, Director of Safety for a major international company. I’m not interested in what they’re saying, because that won’t necessarily translate. I’m interested in how they’re saying it and trying to learn from them. So I’ve worked with directors and watch chief executives and and pick up bits and go, Why. Why does science and theatre not have have to be so different? Why can’t I pick the best of both worlds and have that creative and analytical and try and blend it so that’s been a fun thing, but it was the it was seeing the experts from the outside being that trustee that really was an interesting part of me.

Adam Clarke 34:40
And then obviously that there’s not exactly a new concept of reviewing things, you know, just just because we’ve implemented something if it doesn’t work, we don’t have to. We don’t have to double down on it. We have to keep doing it.

Speaker 1 34:53
Yeah, I have that. I know because I I was at Imperial NHS I left for a little while I’ve come back I’ve reviewed some policies and I’ve looked at why is that in there? I’m fairly certain I wrote it. And I can’t remember why. Now, I was probably reiterating what was there before. But the fact that I don’t know why that’s in there? Well, let’s take that out. And it is that continuous improvement, and that quality improvement cycle of going, let’s try something and not worry about as well, sometimes we just try and get everything perfect before we launch it. Well, let’s get it pretty good, and safe and robust. And then let’s launch it and do some learning and improvement, because we’ll probably spend another four or five months trying to get this perfect. And we could have launched it, and improved it within a month’s time, and made it much better than we would have ever imagined. But there is something the longer you work on it, the more protective you become of it and go, no, no, it’s perfect. I’m gonna ignore that feedback. Whereas if you get out there and say, We’re piloting it, and we want your feedback, we want your feedback.

Adam Clarke 36:05
That’s such a great approach or, you know, I’ll say, here’s, here’s a draft version of it, can we, you know, can we get a select group of people to go and like, you know, test this, we want to want to make sure that this is can actually work in, in practice. And I guess, from your industry that you’re in, there are lots of people that will do similar roles to you in other other parts of the NHS? Have you found as you progress through your career, that you do Lean on other people in other organisations to get their view on things?

Speaker 1 36:37
Yeah, and I think this is, within what we do, we tend to be either alone in an organisation or a very small team in an organisation. So I think it’s always been important for me, to have some people that I trust, who are doing a similar role somewhere else. So there’s a small group of us who we meet every month or so. And we’ll talk through things, and we’ll sound things out. And we can talk really openly and honestly. And then you might go to a more formal event where you don’t know everyone there. So you might you put on your business talk quote, yeah, so it’s, it’s good to have both of those, because you learn a lot from those wider events, because there might be 100 people there. But having a small, you know, two or three, four or five people that you really trust, that don’t all think like you. So I think there is a danger, to surround yourselves with people who will say the same thing as you. Whereas it’s really good to have people who will actually go hang on Matt, why are you thinking that? I don’t agree, I’ve read that differently. Or you’re spending a lot of energy on that we we’ve done it a different way. You might not change your mind. But you’ll have, you’ll have had to have justified, why? And half the time you might go, hang on, well, why? Why am I doing it that way? And because it’s a friend, because it’s a close person, you don’t, you don’t feel that thing that we may be talking about that that chimp doesn’t start yelling at, you can’t do it just because you’ve not got it quite right the first time. So I think having that small group of people that you do trust that you can go and sound things out, is really, really useful. And I really like what you said about having people who are outside your specialty. Because sometimes they’ll ask a question that we will just all take for granted as professionals and we’ll say something. Yeah, that’s because that’s what we’ve done for 20 years, because that’s what the 2002 regs say. So that’s what we do. And somebody will just say, but why

Adam Clarke 38:51
I’m not a great fan of the word failure, because I feel like failure is often feels like very, very big. Whereas actually, it’s kind of fall, falling is a fall I get back up, how have you found the time so your career where you feel like you’ve you fell over or you fall on something and then you’ve picked yourself back up and learned and moved on.

Speaker 1 39:10
So I think those are the probably the times where I find it hardest not to hear the inner voice particularly if you’ve spotted it, or somebody spotted it and you’ve been completely blindsided by those sometimes times where you really do beat yourself up on it. Most of the time, you’re going to be lucky and most people will point it out in the same way that we would hope we would try and point it out. So it’s it’s giving you an opportunity to relook at something which is very different saying that’s wrong. But I think when I have got it wrong, and again, I don’t think I always succeed in this but I will try and apologise to the person if somebody has been impacted by that. Because as a as a manager, I don’t always get it right. You know, and as a leader I don’t always get it right. If You get it wrong in a factual way. It’s about how you recover. And that’s what I always used to say, when I was working with contractors and areas like that mistakes are going to happen, and how do we fix it. And actually, that’s equally important health and safety. Because if I generate a space where it’s fearful of that failure, then you’re going to try and hide the error. So you might hide that you’ve got the wrong chemical into there. So now we’ve got a chemical being released to create your noxious gas, as opposed to sticking your hand up and say, Matt, I think I’ve done something wrong. Can you come and help them, we can work through it. So I think it’s about trying to put your hand up when it goes wrong, to try and not beat yourself up. And that’s probably where having a colleague, or a coach can really help. And I think I’ve found coaches, being a coach, but also having a coach. So when something’s not going up, as I would like it to go, it’s great to have an independent coach. So it’s trying to shut down that inner voice. That’s hard. Don’t beat yourself up too much about it, apologise or say this has gone wrong, what do we need to do to fix this, and where you can bring the solution as well, it’s really tempting, and this is probably the time it’s most tempting to say, I’m going to spend three months hiding the problem and bring the solution. Now, it’s much better to say, there’s a problem and get lots of thoughts into that solution, rather than you’re going to spend your whole time going, looking over your shoulder going, What have I done wrong, we’ve seen it in so many industries, where people must have been losing a lot of sleep, worrying. Whereas if they did put their hand up straightaway, the stress would be gone. And everyone could work as a team to fix that failure.

Adam Clarke 41:53
And whilst I feel like we could probably spend an hour talking, talking about it, you know, it’s not a big surprise that the culture of an organisation is a massive influence or on whether or not people are comfortable with putting their hands up. You know, it’s something that I often discuss as part of induction with with new starters, they look, you know, I make mistakes in getting to where I am, I have made loads of mistakes. But those mistakes are part of my character. And I own I own them, you know, and it’s what enables you, in fact, making mistakes and learning from them is critical to growth. If you want to move on, you have to come to terms with that you will be a decision maker. And you know that you hope that you will make the best decision that you can at the time,

Speaker 1 42:42
and the NHS has got something what’s called, that’s called a just culture. And I think that’s really important. And even for people who are struggling with alcohol or drugs, if they put their hand up, help will be given. But if something goes wrong because of it, then it becomes a lot harder. It’s something I learned when I was doing the welfare side of things is that people would come to me with what felt like very small problems. And I realised that they weren’t coming to me with what they really wanted to talk about. They were testing the water, and it’s the same with a manager, you go at first, and you test with something that’s minor. And that reaction will make you decide whether you feel safe or not with that person.

Adam Clarke 43:28
So last last infamy then in terms of as you progress through your your career, how do you find them when you’ll get the opportunity to deal with the most senior people in your in your organization’s when you’re either asking them for something? Or perhaps you’re having to inform them about something? How have you found your transition into being the person that that gets to do that?

Speaker 1 43:53
So I think the first part of that is knowing them beforehand. So I was very fortunate when I joined Imperial, they take health and safety really seriously. So our medical director was on my interview panel. So he he’s got an influence in it but I also got to meet him before the first time I need to ask him something isn’t me going up and saying something’s wrong. It’s I know you as a human being. So I think there’s that build that relationship. And I find as you move up the chain you get access to kind of the more this the more senior meetings the meaty meetings, asked to be involved with them as you’re making your journey up sit in on the odd one or two, you will generally get allowed to do that. And you can see how people are influenced is this person, a data person? Is this person a feelings person is what is it that I need to give this person to help them come to the decision because these people are running massive organisation issues and they’ve got 2030 Really big decisions to make every single day. You don’t want your decision to be okay, can you come back next week with a bit more information? clear, simple information, that kind of what’s the decision I need upfront. And then here’s the justification, the more they get to know you, the less that justification will matter to them, they will still want to see it. And I would always say put it there, because that’s your, your due diligence. But that’s also us saying, Look, I’m sharing everything I’m being 100% open with you, but knowing them as person knowing what it is that motivates them, and not being afraid to just say hello, you know, it’s, it’s one of the things that maybe we’ve lost with people being home working in some organisations is that I’m seeing most of the senior people are executives, Chief Executive Directors, outside of here, and you can just say hello on the corridor. That’s an advantage of hospitals a lot of people are in. But we’ve got a board member who is responsible for health and safety and is really engaged. He saw the report. And I said, Oh, can I have a bit of your time? And he said, Absolutely, yeah, as much time as you want. So we had just a conversation that was about us as people. And it’s something that a manager did with me a while back is we’ve got to talk about this business. But I want to know about you as a person first. Now I understand you now I’ve got that connection to you. And then we spoke about what he was concerned about what he wanted assurance on what he felt he was getting too much assurance on, where he felt we were maybe a little bit rigid. And that was a really good way for us to say, Okay, this is where we are. Now I know what you need from me. And now I know how I can speak to you. So I think talk to people as much as you can, that that helps.

Adam Clarke 47:00
There’s a reason why the best executive summaries are as concise as they as they can be. Because that’s what the people who are being informed that’s what they need. And that’s what you need to you need to give gift to them. And then you’ll know that you said you’ll build that trust. Excellent. Well, look, Matt, thank you so much for taking valuable time out to to have a conversation with me today. I think it was a really, really great conversation. So thank you so much for doing that. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to risk sleep repeat, if you’d like to appear on the show. If there’s a topic you’d like to discuss, or if you want to let us know your thoughts, please do so using the hashtag risk sleep, repeat or get in touch via our website at praxis42.com