SUCCESS!!! Do you want your team, organization and company to be put into a position of Success?!?, Of course! That means cutting edge Human Performance training and solutions. This week's interview is with Teresa Swinton, Founder and CEO of Paradigm Human Performance where they turn theory and research into tangible deliverable that achieve real results, by helping you to recognize what you do well and building on it with simple solutions designed around the way you operate! Find out more at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/paradigm-human-performance/

Website: https://paradigmhp.com/

Podcast Transcription:

[00:04] Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional, dedicated to transferring, cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hardhat, grab your work boots and let's go.

[00:21] Alright, it's another week. Thank you very much for joining this as the industrial talk podcast. My name is Scott Mackenzie. I think you know that by now. This is where we celebrate the human power of industry being the voice for industry this week was incredible. Got a great store to tell you. I can't wait to get the show on the road. We're going to be interviewing a young lady by the name of Theresa Swinton and she's with paradigm human performance. That para dig up. I know it's spelled that way, but it's a Paradigm. Human performance. She's amazing. She's from the UK. Incredible. So let's get this show on the road. Thank you once again for joining the industrial talk podcast.

[00:59] Alright. All right,

[01:02]                got a lot to cover. I can't wait to get going. Thank you again. I really enjoy it. I get, I get the opportunity to really interview a lot of great people in this interview. Um, I'm just, I'm excited about sharing because we're all about that organization where there's a ton of things that we need to know within the industrial space in one. Of course, if you have the right team in place, do you have that organization hopping and popping and what you need to get going. But before we get going, of course, you know, we gotta get going on this, uh, this thing that, uh, we call, uh, you know, tailgate talk, tailgate talk number one. This is the story South Eastern University College of business. I had the wonderful opportunity to talk to them last night and, uh, really just share with them about digital marketing, about podcasting and about the exciting times that we live as professionals.

[01:57]                And what third, just getting ready to embark upon it. It was just a fabulous experience. Wonderful young professionals. I feel comfortable leaving this world in their hands because they just, we're so focused, so dedicated, wonderful teachers out there. It was such an honor, but if this man, if you're looking out there and of course you are because, well, it's on YouTube. They gave me a nice thank you card. I'm showing it in the camera of course, but my ugly mug on it, but nonetheless it is very, very nice. But the best part if you're looking out on YouTube to line up baby lion up, they gave me a short. It's a fantastic short. How generous are they? I mean, I mean, I, I was just so surprised that they did that. Once again, that southeastern university, this is their college of business. This is what they do.

[02:50]                And this thank you note goes on my right behind me because that's where all my thank you notes in special, uh, writings go. So right there man. I'm just so happy if that was such a wonderful experience. Great. Great young people. Number two. Okay. Over the past, I think couple of times. So we've been talking about this learning management system and it really is focused on the industrial platform and uh, it takes into consideration putting down five categories. One, of course leadership too. We're talking about the financial side, three operations for what I'm passionate about, what I am always talking about, and that's filling that funnel, that sales, marketing and business development. And the fifth one is technology. How do you do more with less? What technology exists out there? What we're going to be doing is we're going to be taken all of these incredible interviews that we've had on the industrial talk podcast.

[03:46]                We're going to put them in and we're going to create A. Well, a system of education. We call it the industrial academy. It's out there, um, but we're still sort of putting a little meat on the bones there. So stay tuned for that because I know I'm pretty excited about it and I gotta tell you it's such an honor to be able to have individuals with such incredible caliber of skills, uh, being a part of that. So stay tuned. Number three, okay. If you're out there on YouTube, right? If you're out there on YouTube and you're looking at my ugly mug because it is ugly, don't get me wrong. I am very proud of the fact that I'm ugly. And that's why I do this. So I go to district donut. This is industrial approved food district donuts. Now there's one in New Orleans and there's one in baton rouge.

[04:31]                I'm not sure if there's a, there might be another one out there, but I go to the one in Baton Rouge and um, every time I go, no, I get coffee there, but I look at their donuts and onto the YouTube channel. You can see, I don't know which side it is on, but a maple bacon, Maple Bacon donut. And then the other one right next to it. Chocolate milk. Industrial approved food. Yeah, that's a check because I can't tell you. I mean, it's awesome. It's awesome. And they do a great job and they're very happy to be able to provide that quality of food. So let's get on with the interview right now. This is Teresa Swinton. So Teresa came through me, I think on LinkedIn, which is a powerful platform if you want to get to know a lot of good people. And uh, she founded a paradigm, human performance.

[05:22]                And uh, what a delight and a. she's got tremendous street cred when it comes to talking about what she does with this organization and how this organization can truly consider it or transform your business, your team, whatever it might be, but she is out there. She's in the UK, but, uh, she's got some fingers that are going all the way over here in the North America area, so go out and, and, and I can't, I'm having a hard time finding her on, on LinkedIn, but it's with paradigm, human performance, not Teresa per se, but paradigm human performance. So let's get going. I'd like to introduce you to Theresa Swinton and she's the founder and CEO of paradigm human performance. All right. Welcome to the industrial talk podcast. Thank you very much once again for joining. I really appreciate it. You know, this is where we highlight the professionals within the industrial space. And you know, this interview. I'm really excited. She's a delight. She's amazing. We've been talking offline and uh, we've had some good laughs, so I'm really excited. Hey Teresa. Welcome. Welcome to the industrial talk podcast. This is Teresa Swinton.

[06:38]                I'm very well, thank you. And you're coming from the UK, right? Yes, I am. Yes. Oh, I love technology because we can do this and it sounds right. Real time and all that fun stuff. So I'm really pretty excited about that. I know you're busy and you just came back from holiday and so you probably have got a stack of work, but you've, you've found time to be on the industrial talk podcast for our listeners and I appreciate that. Let's, uh, you know, I'm, I'm looking at, uh, definitely your statute on LinkedIn, but instead of me reading it off, why don't you give us information on, on who you are and where you came from, a little background so that the listeners understand why you are such an industrial pro.

[07:21]                Yeah, sure. Um, so I'm Theresa Swinton as you said, and I'm the CEO and founder of paradigm human performance. Are you sure? It's paradigm? I am absolutely positive. Not Power. It's applied parodic. I know that paradigm guys, paradigm, everybody. It's paradise, not paradise go. So, um, I started a paradigm human performance, um, in March 2017, so we're just over a year old. Um, and that was to introduce what we call human and organizational performance improvement to organizations in the UK and across Europe. Uh, prior to that I worked for one of the big six UK energy suppliers, uh, where I was a human performance and nuclear professionalism manager. Uh, and prior to that I've spent time in the rail industry and construction. I'm a HV distribution and so on and so forth, folks in operational rose as project management or operations management. Uh, and then more laterally moving into a occasional health and safety leadership and being a practitioner at some coal and nuclear powered power stations.

[08:45]                You know, what, what fascinates me about you, Teresa, is the fact that you had a pretty sound job. You had your classic career, but you decided to go out on your own. What, why, why did, what, what compels you to go out on your own and, and blaze your own trail.

[09:02]                Basically, Scott, what happened was, uh, as, as happens in a lot of organizations, large, large organizations that was yet another restructure coming up. And um, I kinda thought, you know, there's, there's more that I can do outside of this organization with what I know I'm human performance. I'd been working in at that point, just sort of seven or eight years was really exciting to me, but I could see that there were organizations outside of the, of nuclear industry, outside of aviation and the space exploration that can really benefit from this stuff, this knowledge and these tools and techniques that I was using and implementing in these big blue chip organizations. And I'm really passionate about what I do. So the opportunity arose and I grabbed it with both hands, rarely and the rest is history.

[09:57]                So when, when you say benefit, now it because I, I, there are a lot of, I don't know, maybe let's say catchwords out there within the industrial area and, and, and tell me and the listeners what, what you mean by human performance, like I mean and organizational performance. What, what are you trying to accomplish with that?

[10:23]                So human performance is about looking at the, the way that the person in the organization is susceptible to make in human error. We know from research done that humans on average make around about five hours per hour. Yeah, yeah. I wish I could say that. I wish my stat was that low.

[10:49]                Oh, I'm always way above average. Everything I do. So we excel at errors. So. So when you take that into the mix of the work environment, the majority of those errors thankfully are very little consequences or no consequences at all. In fact, we don't even know we've made them the majority of the time, but clearly some of those arrows have the potential to have a massive impact, negative impact on the organizations that they work for. And so human performance helps the organization to look at the way that they set their people to work in order to determine whether they're setting up to setting them up to fail or succeed. And fortunately for us, there are some clues that human error, human error is, um, we can predict it because humans are kind of predictable. We will are, we can predict where human error will occur, why it will occur on what the conditions are in which it can thrive.

[11:53]                We can help organizations to identify these kinds of, what I call perfect storm situations where people are likely to make an Arrow that is likely to result in an unwanted or negative outcome for the organization. Now, typically we start with an organization looking at their health and safety performance. Uh, and very often new clients who contact us after they've had an incident, it could be a repeat incident and they're scratching their heads thinking, well, what else can we do to address this and prevent it happening again? We, we thought we'd done everything. Um, so, so that, that's where we normally step in with a new client, a new organization. But of course, human error doesn't just result in unwanted safety outcomes, accidents and incidents. So very often what we find is when we start to work with an organization, we very quickly are looking at how human error can contribute to a loss productivity, a reputation damage to the organization. Quality of product can be impacted. So we tend to move very quickly right across the organization to look at the types of errors that are being made by all of the people that have an impact on all of the organization. Safety is tends to be our primary focus.

[13:15]                Yeah. But, but once again, errors are a result. Also can be a financial impact, could be a, you know, credibility, impact, whatever it might be, especially in this time of digital marketing. And that information can go out to the world in a matter of a jet second. So, so when, when let's say I have this issue, I, I'm a company, I come to you and I go, man, I've had this repeat issue and, and I need some sort of a root cause. Is that really short of where you're going? And saying I need a, I need to stop this problem. I need a root cause. Tell me what's going on. I can't, I can't solve it. Is that what, what happens?

[13:50]                Well, I think that's probably the starting point of wearing a lot of companies struggle because they are sometimes looking for a single root cause. Um, but the reality is that there's very rarely just one group, cause there are very often a number of causal factors and what we we call latent organizational weaknesses or latent conditions that sit on detected in the organization systems and its culture and its leadership behaviors that very often contribute to these events and what we see when we look at the way that our clients and in any organization investigates these events. We very often see that they stop at the human error and they call that the root cause. Of course what we do is we help them to understand the conditions in which human error thrives. So we make sure an organization digs beneath the human error to find out what drove the behavior, why did it make sense for the individual to do the thing they did at that time, which then resulted in my.

[14:58]                Let me ask you this, so that's great. Don't get me wrong. I understand. That makes sense. Companies need to do that and it's always probably a continuous battle just because culture's just ebb and flow and fluctuated, whatever it might be, but how does what you do and how you focus on the information and, and evaluate an organization, how does your stuff, your approach differ from other firms that sort of provide similar services.

[15:33]                So what we do in terms of human performance is we look at, we try to give our clients a new get this word paradigm. We tried to help them understand the environment in which their people are working and we introduced them to some theory called the drift model and the model talks about a drift away from our standard. So as a leadership team, we set standards for our people to work on. Then typically over a period of time, those standards get corroded through a number of reasons. It could be a poor leadership. Behaviors might be a conflict and objectives for the organization. It could be that the procedures that work is required to work with are inadequate or they don't have any procedures, could be, um, bad rules, things like that, that actually results in. They drive the behavior of the worker away from the standard.

[16:32]                What we very often find is that organizations, typical responses to what we call fix the worker, so they'll put them through retraining. They'll write more closes in a procedure, they'll tell them to pay more attention, uh, you know, care more in other words. And so those things don't fix those things, don't fix the problem. What we have to do is get the organization to understand that actually the human is working with the flawed systems that the organization has and all of these other factors in order to create safety out of them, which is why we don't have as many accidents or incidents as we potentially could have. Typically in this day and age, we performed really well. When it comes to safety, we don't injure too many people. We don't have too much damage in our organizations. So really, um, where we differ is we help an organization to fix the things that are within its power to fix as opposed to just simply focusing on fixing the worker.

[17:41]                So what you're doing is you're taking a step back, you're looking at the organization are saying, Hey, I'm a human being and I'm going to follow what procedures are in and, and also whatever the culture it is, you know, I'm Joe here says that I need to turn a wrench this way, whatever. It might be a simple oversimplifying it, but what I'm doing is me as a person, I'm just sort of listening to maybe the people around who have been doing it for many, many years who've been following somewhat the procedures in place. What you're saying is that I'm going to look at upstream a little bit and then be able to say those are flawed. Let's modify it and then be able to communicate that to the people in the field.

[18:23]                Yeah. Sometimes what we see is that I'm following an incident on the company will...