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Episode Overview:
Skot Waldron and Rob Fisher engaged in a compelling and insightful conversation about the fascinating world of risk management, human error, and the impact of individual personality traits on decision-making. Rob Fisher shared his extensive expertise in error reduction strategies and the critical role of understanding mental models in managing risk effectively. He discussed the concept of e-colors, which correlate personality types to risk tolerance. Fisher's work and his platform, "Improve with Fit," provide invaluable resources and training to empower individuals and small organizations to enhance their decision-making and reduce the likelihood of errors. His blend of practical insights and psychological understanding offers a unique perspective on improving personal and professional performance while minimizing risks.
Additional Resources:
Skot Waldron (00:01.194)
Hello, Rob. How's it going, man?
Rob Fisher (00:03.617)
It's going great, Scott. How are you?
Skot Waldron (00:06.178)
I am so good. I am so good today. These interviews are always insightful, so no pressure, but I always learn something.
Rob Fisher (00:17.301)
Well, I always do too, even when I'm the interviewer or interviewee.
Skot Waldron (00:22.226)
Okay. All right. Okay. So I'll, I'll try to help you learn something today, Rob. Yeah. So here we go. I want to know, first of all, your journey, um, to get to where you are today, went from being a power plant operator. Like, what do you, so you're mentoring now, you're doing self-learn with executives. You're doing a lot of mentoring and training and, and that space. What did that journey look like for you? And.
Rob Fisher (00:28.084)
Good.
Skot Waldron (00:49.75)
What are you using now that you learned back then? How did that application happen?
Rob Fisher (00:55.717)
Yeah, so I was actually at a nuclear power plant that got in trouble with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And it was kind of a convergence. My background was I was a Navy nuke, submariner, periscope photographer, did that for almost 10 years. And when I got out of the Navy, went to work at a nuclear power plant, and a few years after it started up, this is late 1980s, early 1990s, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission came in and said, look, you have human performance problems.
and nobody knew what that was. So they handed us a book by a guy called James Reason called Human Air and they said here go make this work. So I got on a small team at the facility to help get us out of trouble with the regulatory commission and it worked very well. So we had to do turn the theories of human air into the practical applications of reducing human air. So this is after Three Mile Island, after Chernobyl.
after Piper Alpha event in the North Sea. And so I guess I got good at it because we got out of trouble and then the facility I worked at started farming me out. Well, when I was being farmed out, first it was to other nukes, then it was to other utilities, then it was to non-utilities and hospitals and airlines. And my wife came to me one day and said,
Rob Fisher (02:22.573)
and you're being paid to be an operator, but you're never back operating anymore. You're always on the road and you know if you want to do this for our family, then let's do it. So I started my first company in 1992 and kind of stayed with the organization that I worked for, but they let me freelance to other places and did that for a couple of years and then went full-time. So we've been consulting full-time since about 1992.
one version or another of Fisher Improvement Technologies. But I think what that did was we built the air reduction strategies, the human air reduction strategies and human air management strategies from the floor to the ceiling. What does an operator need to know? What does a mechanic or an electrician or an engineer? What does their supervisor need to know and do? What does their manager need to know and do? Then what does the senior leadership need to know and do?
but we deliver it from the ceiling to the floor. So while building it, it was all about the people that may make the mistakes that could be catastrophic. And there's really only three things you can do with a mistake or an error. You can prevent some, you can reduce their probability, or you can mitigate their consequence. And the organization, the system is involved in all three of those things. But very often, they just want the workers to be perfect.
So by coming from an operator or operations background, that allowed me to do very good translations of the needs and the knowledge and language and behaviors at all of those different levels. So when you deliver from the ceiling to the floor, you're actually giving them the things that they need to know, the things that they need to say, and the things that they need to do, with the outcome being better performance at the field level or the floor level.
So I always count on those years as an operator, I spent 22 years in operations. So I always count on those years as thinking about, don't get too far away from the people that are gonna face the problems. And then you can have conversations with all of the other people in the organization about how they impact that thing. Is that answering your question?
Skot Waldron (04:43.75)
Yeah, it does. I'm a couple of things. First of all, I love that your wife is the one that came with you, but the idea to like go out on your own, usually it's you come into your wife with the idea that got on your own and they're like, Whoa, are you sure you want to do this? And she's like, go like, let's hit this thing. So, you know, praise your wife for that one. Um,
Rob Fisher (04:55.423)
Yeah.
Rob Fisher (04:59.294)
Yeah.
Rob Fisher (05:02.825)
Well, and it was really strange, Scott. I'll throw a little more in there. Um, when we were going to do it, there were several people at church and people that I worked with that when we had made the decision and we were going to make a move, they drug her off to the side and said, don't do it. He's not very good at this. It's not going to last very long. It's not needed. You're going to ruin your family. Don't let him do this to you. And she said, we're doing this together. I mean, she's, she's owned 25% of our company since it started.
Skot Waldron (05:06.231)
Yeah.
Rob Fisher (05:32.605)
So I think that's a success path for people, for entrepreneurs that really want it to work at home and at work, that involvement has to be together. It can't be, they do this and they do this.
Skot Waldron (05:52.718)
That's good. I think that's important for a lot of things in life. Have that unity, have that alignment in your marriage, in your relationships as well as at work, right? And say, hey, this is what we're going to do. I need you guys to come with me. This is the vision. This is where we're going to happen. And to get buy-in on that is going to be important because we're talking about risk here a bit. How do we mitigate risk or how do we understand it better so that when things happen, we're
because things will happen. And I love the statement is like, they just want other people to be perfect and never, you know, mess up and never have these mistakes and the consequences from those things. But we all know that's not a reality. That's just, it's not a reality. There's a couple of things in your bio that I wanna pull out really quick that go with what we're talking about. You said, understanding a personality diversity into risk management. So understanding what personality diversity has to do with risk management. So I wanna talk about that.
You talk about making, make the science of errors practically applicable. I love that statement that the science of errors, I don't know who studies. The science of errors. So I love that statement and then incident analysis, procedures, things that you do that you analyze incidents, the science of errors, like those things, like, is that your life? Is that what you do?
Rob Fisher (07:19.705)
It's the life of our organization. It's how I started. So my very first fatality investigation was the Texas A&M Bonfire Collapse. 1999, Texas A&M Bonfire was being built in November. It collapsed before it was supposed to be burned, killed 12 kids, life altering injuries for 75 other people. And...
That was my first fatality investigation. So I'd learn root cause analysis, but that's where the rubber meets the road is when you're analyzing what caused something that killed a bunch of kids that were your kids age. Hoo boy. I mean, that brings reality home. And so we now both do and teach effective cause analysis to companies and people of all sizes.
not people of all sizes, but companies of all sizes and individuals that want to understand how things fail better.
And the personality diversity piece, a few years ago, we were asked by a major oil corporation. They were doing personality diversity so that they could have better teamwork. And we were in another part of the company teaching how to reduce errors. And one of the vice presidents said, is there any way you can find some synergies between your two things, these two companies, us and a company called Equilibria that does e-colors.
And so I sat down with their CEO and we started walking through things. And I'd always know that our personalities had something to do with how we see and manage risk or how we make errors or how we're successful, but I couldn't really put a pin on it. Well, the E-colors, equilibria had figured out different people with different personalities get hurt differently. They follow procedures differently. They approach risk differently.
Rob Fisher (09:22.973)
So we now have about 1.6 million data points on how all those things happen. And we took that and we put it in the middle of the human error management systems so that now if you've got two kids, one of them may be more risk tolerant than the other, or one of them may be more risk averse than the other. And they have to be treated a little bit differently.
with the same risk of mowing the yard, for instance. That's the same thing that happens out in the industrial world. You've got several people on a task. If they all have different risk tolerances, doesn't mean one of them is trying to do something more risky than another. It just means that their brain processes risk in a different way. So how do we put that together? Because the risk doesn't change. 480 volts is 480 volts. So...
How do we get them to approach the risk in a way that manages the tendencies associated with their personality and how they see and manage risk? So we took, about eight years ago, we incorporated Equilibria's e-colors into our human performance management systems. And it's been fantastic. I was just speaking to a group of executives yesterday in Chicago and they were blown away.
by how their systems, how everybody knows that intuitively that our personalities impact how we see and manage risk, but nobody puts it in their management systems.
Skot Waldron (11:03.242)
Tell him, give me an example here. So let's apply this. I've gotten the premise. I think this is super fascinating. I coach individuals and I coach teams on personality, dynamics and way of communication and building influence with others and building a personal brand, whether it's a leadership brand or something else you're trying to do to help do the thing you wanna do.
Rob Fisher (11:07.219)
Okay.
Skot Waldron (11:28.874)
But you're taking it from the idea of risk and error and management of those things. Tell me how the different personalities, give me an example of a type of personality, how they would approach risk or how they approach errors during, after, like, I don't know, kind of give me, give me the lay of the land here.
Rob Fisher (11:47.553)
Sure, well let's do the approach of risk. So if you think about the standard for major personality types, doer, socializer, thinker, and relator. So we've put colors to that. So a doer is a E color red. They approach risk from a perception of risks. We're ready to go and into instantaneous perception of risk. They either get it or they don't.
and then they start moving because they like to be doing things. They're doers. A thinker, a topical green, may approach risk as I'm going to collect in as much information as I can so they may get hurt because the incident outruns their ability to gather information on it. If it's a fast moving event or risk, they're still trying to gather information.
Rob Fisher (12:46.385)
we will tend to get hurt by jumping in to help others. So my personality is I see a risk to Scott, but I don't see that risk applying to me. So I'll jump in to help Scott without ever realizing that by jumping in to help Scott and a risk that he's clearly in, I can get hurt myself. What's interesting about these top-y color yellow or socializers is that applies to both physical risk
and emotional risk. So you find a lot of socializers that will jump in to help family members when they need help but didn't ask for it, and they're the ones that get hurt by trying to jump in and help others. And then the top color blue, the relator, they can get harmed by risk by believing that I've turned that risk over to
the person in the uniform or the person with the title, the doctor, the foreperson, and not speaking up on what they think the risk might be. And if you take that and expand it, we're not just talking about risk in the workplace. We're talking about risk of financial risk. We're talking about risk of the way people run their companies for some of the people that you.
consult for. We're talking about risk of decision-making related to finance. All of those things apply because our brains process risk exactly the same way. We just have to shift to which risk we're thinking about. Is that answering your question?
Skot Waldron (14:29.146)
That's really good. I love that. I love the thinking about it. Now let's apply it. Can you apply this to the Texas A&M situation or another situation that you've worked in to help us kind of relate? How did this work in the real world?
Rob Fisher (14:44.673)
So I can't because we don't know what the e-colors of the people were and that was all an organizational issue instead of an individual issue. But what I can tell you is that after something happens, different people with different personalities do different things. So we all, humans like to blame others. It can't be you so it must be me. But based on our personalities, some of us blame, some of us shame, some of us name, and some of us complain.
And so you can tell by how people react to any kind of situation, whether it's their kids coming in late, or a fight they're having with their spouse or significant other, or a problem that they've got at work, or somebody made a mistake and now we have a problem that we need to analyze, you can go across the line and see the blamers, the shamers, the namers, and the complainers.
Skot Waldron (15:39.823)
Do those four things correlate to the colors at all or do they all kind of intermix?
Rob Fisher (15:43.413)
They do. They almost directly correlate to the colors. Yes.
Skot Waldron (15:46.914)
Do they really? So let me guess, let me guess. The Shamer is probably red. Or is that the Blamer?
Rob Fisher (15:55.957)
So the Blamer is red because they get it done fast. The Shamer is actually green because they're very judgmental.
Skot Waldron (15:59.438)
Okay, and then they blame everybody else.
Skot Waldron (16:05.862)
OK, and they're the thinkers. OK, and they're processing. OK, all right. OK, good.
Rob Fisher (16:08.959)
Yeah.
Rob Fisher (16:13.2)
Yep.
And then the complainers or the top-y color blues, they'll just process it and complain about it, but there's not a lot of overtness to their blame. So the reds and yellows, they externalize blame, and the greens and blues internalize blame. In other words, they'll just hold onto it until they have to release it.
Skot Waldron (16:24.091)
Mm-hmm. And everybody's wondering.
Skot Waldron (16:31.118)
Okay.
And then they'll sit in the room and complain or they'll go to another person and complain and complain. And then nobody else knows what the problem is because they're holding it all into themselves and putting it all out there. Okay. Yeah. All right. That's good. That makes sense. Um, is your book, uh, understanding mental models, is it incorporate this idea or what's the premise of the book?
Rob Fisher (16:43.681)
Correct. Yeah.
Rob Fisher (16:57.901)
It talks about that a little bit, but understanding mental models is more about... So in the late... In the 1960s and 1970s, two researchers said, okay, we get it. People are fallible and even the best will make mistakes. We hear that all the time. I wonder if those mistakes are predictable in that... by percentage, what kind of mistakes get made. So they discovered that there's really three mental models.
based on how our brain processes information. And they have very specific error rates associated with them. So if you know where you're at in those error rates, then you can do something about it. You can reduce the probability. So one of those, and this is where it ties back in to the e-colors, one of those has an error rate between 10 and 50%. Now,
We don't know where it's going to fall in that. But if you tell a toppy color red, if you tell a doer, or a socializer, yellow, red, that their error rate is between 10% and 50%, they will say, so I've got a 10% probability of failure. That's a 90% probability of success. I'm doing it. Identical risk, tell a blue or green, green or blue that. They'll say, 50% error rate. I ain't doing that.
and they'll be standing right next to each other. So a lot of times we call people cowboys or they're out there just, you know, they're complacent, they're just out there doing this. That's not what's happening. What's happening is their brain instantaneously processes risk. The perception of that risk for those fast paced people, yellows and reds, the doers and socializers, happens very quickly. And so if we don't teach them at the error rate
could be 50% and let them believe it's only going to be 10, then they're going to do it, even though the error rate is still between 10 and 50%. So in the book, I do cover how the personalities then impact why we need to talk about error rates the way we do.
Skot Waldron (19:10.262)
Okay. What, what are the mental models?
Rob Fisher (19:14.565)
So the first one is called skill-based. That's when you do something out of habit, not thinking, lower no conscious thought, brush your teeth, something that you've done more than 50 times over a short period of time, and it's gotta be less than seven steps long. So our brain can develop a habit on it. The next one is rule-based, and there's a very low error rate. There's a one in a thousand error rate on this. The next one is rule-based. That's when there's a rule and we know there's a rule.
We don't necessarily have to know the rule. We just have to know it exists so that we can go get it. The error rate's about 1% on that. And then as we document those rules, the error rate goes down. So if you have a set of rules and you document them and they follow them, the error rate gets better. But the one that is particularly interesting is called knowledge-based. And that's what they named it. But it's really about a gap in your knowledge. And I'll just give you your.
viewers and listeners a tidbit here. When someone says, I think, I believe, I'm pretty sure, or I'm almost certain, or they scratch their head or their chin, they look up for information, they're actually telegraphing that there's a gap in their knowledge that their brain knows about, but they don't know about yet. Their error rate is between 10 and 50% on that piece of information. So they can either stop and get help, and that can put them in rule-based so that they...
reduce the probability for making a mistake, or they can wing it and operate at a 10 to 50% error rate. So instead of there being six or seven billion mental models, there's really only three. And we float in and out of them all day long on everything that we do. The question is, do we manage them on tasks that have risk? And do we use that as an individual control?
So that's kind of what the book is about. It works at home, at work, at play. It doesn't matter whether you're talking to somebody about mowing the yard or talking to somebody about working on high voltage. The understanding of the mental models works. And when you talk about it enough, the next thing you know, your kids and grandkids are parroting it back to you because they don't want to make mistakes when they realize that they're standing there looking at their algebra book scratching their head.
Rob Fisher (21:43.253)
So it's kind of a generational pass down, both in the company and in the house.
Skot Waldron (21:51.126)
Okay. So what's the, what can I do with this information right now? Right. What, what is something practical that I could do that listeners could do, um, to apply something from this.
Rob Fisher (22:02.729)
Yeah.
Rob Fisher (22:06.973)
So I would just say that you listen for those trigger phrases. I think, I believe, I'm pretty sure I'm almost certain. You watch for those physical triggers of scratching the head and scratching the chin. And if you find yourself doing it, you need to stop and get some outside information to make that decision. And the outside information, because you can't think your way out of this. You can only justify what you want.
And so by slowing down and getting some outside information, you can reduce the probability you're going to make a mistake in whatever decision you're making by a factor of 10. So people that say, you know, I think this is the right way to go. OK, well, you got a 50-50 chance. And we laugh about that. That may not be so bad if you're just driving around.
but it may be a lot worse if you're trying to figure out how to split up your money in a way that is most beneficial to you and your family, and you're winging it, saying, I think we should do this and I think we should do that instead of actually going and accessing the information that would tell you what the right thing to do is.
Skot Waldron (23:21.55)
That's, that's good. All right. So when I hear those phrases, that's a trigger for me to go get more information. Stop and wait, stop and think, Hey, I think we need to get some more information. Uh, I can see where some people may go. Well, no, we don't need to go get more information. They'll argue back to you. Nope. No, we don't like I know, get that push back. Um, well, what's, what's going on there?
Rob Fisher (23:30.785)
Correct.
Rob Fisher (23:47.922)
Yeah.
So one of the things that I talk about in the book is that very thing, that if it's taught right and you then accept that error rate that I'm talking about belongs to Scott, you'll probably do something about it. So you have to teach both the condition and the probability that a mistake is gonna come from that. If you can teach it in a way, and this is what I try to do in the book, teach it in a way that get people to buy it.
you have then shifted their paradigm. That paradigm's now more powerful than the one that says, ah, it's okay, I'm pretty good at thinking my way out of things. And so for me, when I was an operator, I didn't do anything with this until I realized that the error rate they were talking about belonged to me. Not that person over there, not that person over there. It was mine. And I said, well, I'm not gonna do something if I know my error rate might be 50%. And then that made me stop.
And so for others, we've developed this, for lack of a better way, a tool called personal intervention. And personal intervention says just picture a pause button on your wrist and whenever you get those triggers, just reach down and push that fake pause button. And we actually develop wristbands that we put the pause and play button on.
So that would be a physical reminder to do something. And that personal intervention gives your brain enough time, especially if you're a fast paced thinker, gives your brain enough time to slow down so you can make the decision to get that outside help.
Skot Waldron (25:31.938)
Did you just call that a risk band?
Rob Fisher (25:36.041)
You know I didn't Scott but golly gee I probably should. It's a it's a personal intervention wristband but by golly I think it's gonna be called a wristband from now on. Yeah. You did. You did. That's fantastic. I don't know how we missed that one.
Skot Waldron (25:38.012)
You didn't?
Dude, Rob!
Skot Waldron (25:49.71)
From now on, see, I did it. I taught you something, Rob, and then gave you an ah-hah thing.
I don't know either. I was like, did he just say wristband or risk band? And I was like, oh, that's so good. Oh man, that's good. Cracks me up.
Rob Fisher (26:04.318)
Ha ha ha!
Skot Waldron (26:12.158)
I want to know, so you've got, you've got an online site that you created, um, an online tool, uh, improve with fit. So it's online.improvewithfit.com. So that's online.improvewithfit.com for those of you out there listening. Um, tell us about that. How did it come to be? What is it? Et cetera.
Rob Fisher (26:36.329)
Yeah, so, fit online is what we call it. And if you type in FIT and then space online, it comes up as well. But fit online was a brainchild of, we, I used to sit on the board for the International Conference for Fatality and Serious Injury Elimination. And most people that die in workplace fatality, that have a workplace fatality,
are in companies under a hundred people to the tune of about 80%. They, those companies really don't usually afford you or I, they don't have the, the capacity for bringing in consultants in to help them get better. They have the risk, but they don't have the systems in place to prevent that risk from creating bad outcomes. So my dream, um, our, our mission.
is improving companies and lives. That's everything we do, we weigh against that. So when COVID hit, we said, we need to take all the things that we've learned for big companies and scale them so an individual or a small company can learn from all the things that we've learned from the 400 plus deployments of human error reduction that we've done around the world. So we started creating videos and a lot of them are between two and five minutes long.
So a lot of micro learnings on how to make better decisions, on why won't people stop when they're at risk, on using tools like the essential leadership cycle and other tools that leaders are given. We even do one based on National Lampoon's Christmas vacation about error traps in the holidays.
So there's all these micro learnings, plus all of the webinars that we do, the speeches that I go make, if they video a speech, then I'll take that and we'll post it up on Fit Online. And really it's a way to take all the things that we've learned over the years and give them in digestible chunks to people that need them.
Rob Fisher (28:58.089)
that really can't afford to have us come out and consult for the whole organization. Um, we also have paid courses on there and I'll just tell your listeners, if you find a paid course on there that you want, if you'll send us an email, we'll give you that course just so you can see what it looks like. Um, that's just an advantage that will, will provide your listeners. Um, but we
Skot Waldron (29:21.701)
Oh, that's cool. Thanks.
Rob Fisher (29:25.357)
Everything from how does an organization analyze why people deviate from things? How do you write better? Procedures, how can you do a cause analysis? These are all two to three hour Lessons that once you take the lesson you can then go back ad nauseum and Keep doing it keep learning it go back where you stopped So it's not a one and done on it on anything and then and then of course
course we've got about these 300 pieces of free content that just help people in their organizations and in their life in general.
Skot Waldron (30:02.742)
That's fantastic. That's really cool. And, and I will say, and we talked about this earlier that became, that came as a result of COVID putting a damper on the consulting business you were doing in person and then saying, how are we going to, how are we still going to thrive as a company and how are we still going to provide value as a company online tools and things erupted at that time. And you took advantage of that opportunity.
and made something out of it. And that I'll praise you for it because there's a lot of companies that sat on their hands and waited and you didn't, you took the initiative and did it and it's still there. Um, there's a, like you said, a bunch of free resources for everybody out there. There's some paid stuff. Thanks for gifting them that if they want to get in touch with you, they can. And, and they can take advantage of that. So we've got that resource. We've got a understanding mental models. It's out. Uh, people can get their hands on that. Okay. Everywhere you want to buy books, that's, that's available for you. So.
Rob Fisher (30:35.367)
Thank you.
Rob Fisher (30:54.889)
Yeah, available on Amazon.
Skot Waldron (31:00.898)
Um, go check that out and anywhere else. Rob, if people want to find out more about you personally, or they want to hire you to speak or do other things, how do they get in touch with you?
Rob Fisher (31:11.497)
You can get ahold of me on LinkedIn, Rob Fisher. You can email me directly, rob.fisher at improvewithfit.com. You can go on to improvewithfit.com website and contact us and we'll get back to you. That's probably even the simplest way to do it. There's just a lot of different ways to get ahold of us. We do publish a lot on LinkedIn.
We publish a newsletter every month. So if you want to get on the newsletter just go to our website improve with fit.com and Contact us through the through the contact page and you can get a newsletter on all this stuff for free every month
Skot Waldron (31:54.658)
Rob, this has been cool. This has been really like, it's interesting to me. Of course, I study a lot of personality stuff and dynamics and things. So this layer of it, I've never looked at before and it's been eyeopening for me. So again, thank you for delivering. I hope my audience got something out of it. I know I did and appreciate and good luck on your journey. Thanks, man.
Rob Fisher (32:16.957)
Well, thanks for having me. I'm really glad we came across each other. I appreciate what you're doing, and I'm looking forward to future interactions with you and your audience.
