Building on the findings from a pilot project, this project dug deeper into how stories can be captured and used to train others and resulted in a toolkit for member use.
There is great need for capturing stories and expertise within high reliability organizations by strengthening the learning culture, bringing new workers up to speed more quickly and efficiently and clarifying procedures and policies. This project was conducted by Dr. Gary Klein and Joseph Borders of Shadowbox Training, LLC. The team conducted a site visit, tested existing story capture techniques, trained trainers on using a guide and conducting storytelling conversations. They then created a draft of the story guide and pilot tested it with a COP member company, then pilot participants provided feedback for ways to improve the guide.
We believe companies can benefit from instituting more opportunities for teams to share and discuss incidents regularly (e.g., storytelling), but they must be mindful in how they go about creating them. We are proposing to build, and pilot test a story guide that incorporates a compilation of best practices we learned about in the initial effort.
- How do you identify good stories
- How do you describe a story with the most impact (e.g., level of detail/specificity)
- How do you elicit stories from a team
- How do you extract individual lessons learned (the mistakes and the successes)
- How do you understand the contrasts between the interpretations of different individuals
Like most industries, stories are ubiquitous in the oil, gas, and petrochemical domain. The ways in which they are discussed and captured varies from one group to the next, but there is a consensus that they offer value. In an initial effort, we heard about unique methods that some individuals are using to capture and share incidents (e.g., monthly newsletters, team meetings, incident databases). The key to success for these methods seems to be that the incidents remain mostly intact, are relevant to the readers/listeners, and come from trusted sources.
The final deliverable for this effort is a simple-to-use story guide for COP member companies to incorporate into their existing operations.