The Human Factor in Knowledge Curve and Process Reliability

I have always heard about the gap between exact and human sciences, something extremely challenging to correlate and even more complex to understand chronic issues when it comes to people development, knowledge and leadership. Once, I was challenged by one of my leaders to clearly demonstrate to a highly technical senior leadership how a knowledge gap could significantly impact the reliability of a production process. Depending on the turnover situation, its complex to explaining why a standard organizational structure or standards plans is not feasible to support a production process, this is the opportune moment to establish a flexible system capable of addressing uncertainty moment.

Throughout my career, my work has always been related to the technical area, but with direct management and influence with people. For me, the best path is always achieving results through people.

My study correlates the knowledge curve and the probability of failures in an asset or production process based on human behavior and knowledge of the process. It is based on the work of Charles Handy, Dunning Kruger Effect Curve, Complex Curve, and Learning Curve. Additionally, it incorporates insights gained through my leadership experiences spanning the last twelve years.

Initially, in what we call the Slow Learning Phase, we have the initial onboarding and training processes, and there is usually sponsor or godfather program to guide the new hire. One of the main failures in recruitment and selection processes is that they often end at the exact moment the new hire starts the job, leaving the responsibility to direct leadership to guide the onboarding process. This usually lasts only a month, and sometimes the leadership is not qualified or equipped to guide this process. This is the moment when up to three operational people are typically used to cover at least one in their development process, with support, explanations, training, and coverage in error/learning processes. Errors that should normally occur in an industrial process can be catastrophic or have a very high failure potential, requiring operational support. In a high turnover process, extra attention should be paid, and an extra-functional team should be used to address demands that do not add value, allowing the operational group to support the technical process and development of new hires. This trajectory should last at least six months to meet all expectations and ensure that the new hire can perform activities with some autonomy, leading to the Slope of Enlightenment.

A crucial point after this is the confidence peak, where the first major errors can occur that may affect the trust of the new hire. Leadership must be much more directly connected to these individuals at this moment, supporting and deeply understanding the causes of failures, engaging in joint investigations with the newcomers and helping them develop solutions.

If this process is not well developed, a drop in performance and adherence to the process can occur, leading to knowledge loss and increasing the level of failures in a production process. This generates emotional exhaustion with only two alternatives: the new hire gives up or is dismissed for poor performance.

However, if the entire process is well developed, we reach the peak of proficiency and a knowledge plateau, reaching the possibility of overlearning, generating significant value for the business as a whole and supporting continuous process improvement.