Human & Organization Potential with Ivan Pupulidy and Crista Vesel, 3/9, 2024
- Sep 4, 2024
- 3 min read
If you’ve heard of the acronym HOP before, you probably know it stands for Human and Organisational Performance - a systemic design and organizational philosophy about safety. If you are a real safety nerd, you also know that some of the persons behind the philosophy are Professor Sidney Dekker, Todd Conklin and many others.
In their book “Human & Organization Potential” (2023), authors Ivan Pupulidy and Crista Vesel (both Sidney Dekker students from Lund University) have introduced another meaning of the acronym HOP – this by focusing on the emergent potential in organizations of learning and understanding how safety is created and maintained. The book is meant to be used as a practical guide to making that change happen in our systems, cultures and minds, by giving real life examples of the HOP theory and experience-based tips. Previous SÄKU guests like Clive Lloyd and Carsten Busch have recommended the book. David Woods and Todd Conklin have done the same.
SÄKU was happy to invite SÄKU members to a webinar and conversation with Ivan and Crista about HOP – their way!
90 minutes wasn't enough to go through every concept in the book, but Ivan and Crista dived a little deeper into some of the concepts of the book. We also received the good news that Crista and Ivan are in the midst of writing a follow-up based on the Learning Review process. We wish them the best in making that book appear as a physical artifact sometime in the not too far future.
As always, we had a Q&A part to end the webinar.
The webinar was held in English.
About Ivan Pupulidy, PhD
Dr. Ivan Pupulidy developed the Learning Review, a process that replaced serious accident investigation in the U.S. Forest Service and offered a new way to view accidents and normal work. His ability to integrate academic research with real world application comes from his varied life pursuits, which have included work as a mine geologist, exploration geophysicist, and a U.S. Coast Guard pilot for rescue and law enforcement missions. Ivan was an accomplished Forest Service aviation firefighter and served in the U.S. Air Guard and Air Force Reserves as a C-130 pilot, Safety Officer, and MAFFS tanker pilot on wildland fires. He developed the Office of Human Performance, Innovation, and Organizational Learning for the Forest Service, to help focus on understanding risk in complex adaptive systems and foster a culture of learning in the agency.
Ivan is currently a Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham where he teaches learning-based safety and human potential for the Advanced Safety and Engineering Management master’s degree program. His courses, like his career, focus on risk and safety in complex systems and high-risk environments, such as wildland firefighting, aviation, military, and medicine. Ivan earned a Master of Science degree in Human Factors and Systems Safety at Lund University, Sweden, under Professor Sidney Dekker, and completed his PhD in organizational transformation, at Tilburg University, Netherlands.
About Crista Vesel, MSc
Crista Vesel is an Adjunct Professor for the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she inspires master’s level student practitioners to view safety as a synthesis of relationships, culture, and communication, and move toward a language of learning in their workplaces. As a human factor’s specialist, she has helped Government agencies and companies around the world conduct accident investigations, Learning Reviews, and Language Reviews.
Crista has a B.A. in Communication and Philosophy from the University of New Mexico and earned a Master of Science degree in Human Factors and Systems Safety under Professor Sidney Dekker, who introduced the ‘New View’ of human error to the safety world. Her research on the importance of language in workplace safety has added to academic and practical knowledge in a variety of industries. She is currently pursuing a doctorate degree in education and organizational leadership.
Together Ivan and Crista assist organizations with Learning Reviews, which offer a new way to view accidents, incidents, and normal work in complex environments, and can lead to learning from the system, the organizational culture, and the people in its care. This approach focuses on prevention through learning and advocates for a shift in how we look at events of all kinds, including ones that diverge from work as imagined or designed.
Material
Presentation
The presentation can be downloaded HERE.
Curious to read the book?
Crista’s and Ivan’s book can be found at Amazon, using this link: Human & Organization Potential
Contact information
If you want to get in touch with the presenters, you can contact them using:
Crista Vesel: dynamicinquiry@hotmail.com
Ivan Pupulidy: pupulidy@me.com
Recording
A recording of the webinar can be seen on SÄKUPlay (Youtube) below.