Super Human Performance

Super Human Performance

I have sat through many human performance (HP) classes, lectures, and online training. I have taught HP classes. I am very familiar with system 1 and system 2 thinking. I have read and taught the error precursors that lead to errors; delved into understanding rule based, skill based, and knowledge based errors. I have seen error statistics, and six sigma blackbelts have taught me how to predict. I have also been told that multi-tasking is impossible for human beings. Notice I didn’t say, “taught”. When I have been taught something it means that there is a method and a level of instruction that has steered me in the direction to believing what is taught. Even later finding out the information was false, I was still taught to believe it. I know for a fact that muti-tasking is a thing and there are those who can do it and those who cannot (same ones that even say multi-tasking doesn’t exist). Fifteen years I have had a stake in the game for passing on what I had learned in my brief time as an operator on a nuclear vessel, a commercial nuclear plant, a transmission system operator. In those fifteen years I have learned so much more.

A Transmission System Operator is an individual who maintains the electric grid and watches for trouble to prevent the trouble before it happens. When you don’t have lights in a town that’s most likely a storm. When you don’t have lights in most of your state, that’s when the Transmission System Operator is most needed, a thinking one anyway.

I train them to deal with these situations, not to cause them. Additionally, I have been an error investigator at some points, but I got “Taproot”ed out of that because I became too busy with actually creating and delivering training. These newer programs for error investigation dilute the problems instead of helping to pin point and correct them I believe, and fits in with the Power Clerk line of thinking. All these do is result in new procedures that further dampen the thinking part of the job and increase cognitive disconnect.

There are two schools of thinking in the world of keeping the grid stable, and on a local level, keeping people’s lights on. I will keep it simple: Old School, and for lack of a better term, we will just call it Power Clerk school of thought.

Here is my idea of what is being fed to us (and why) by what I imagine to be bloviating Ivy League scholars. To err is human. Therefore, if you are human you will err. We have to assume that if we can err we most likely will and do it all the time. There are statistics that show that we err a lot when it doesn’t matter and life is not hanging in the balance. So with that important statistical tidbit it is safe to assume that errors where life is in danger will happen all the time, and why they don’t has got to be some miracle. We must eliminate errors through carefully devised check lists based on the best practices of industry experts who must be engineers or scientists as a prerequisite. These experts can also craft procedures and wallet reference cards that can always show us the way. They can also right pre-written procedures that direct us how to remove any component we need to repair or maintenance.

This is what I call a Power Clerk philosophy, and many companies have bought into this thinking. Actually almost all power companies have. I have noticed that the error rates with this philosophy, since I have witnessed this industry for over 20 years, have gone up appreciably. The government and the establishment, whomever they may be agrees with this philosophy whole heartedly. I guess we could call them Academia. They don’t like independent thinkers. “Follow the damned textbook, clerk.” While independent thinkers may think of clever and innovative solutions we cannot predict they always will. So we have to assume that they won’t ever (even though they do). That’s academic thinking. When a crisis comes, public (mob) sentiment will allow Academia to replace them with automation. Control of power will be concentrated into less and less hands, hands that don’t specifically get paid to keep your lights on. That is where I believe we are going: government controlled and owned utilities with much automation and smart grid-ness. If you can imagine what it’s like with YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other elite controlled platforms, then we can honestly predict that if we obtain demerits for wrong thinking our power will be shut off. That’s a grim prediction, I know.

I will now get back to reality and an analysis for anyone who wants to make the grid reliable and stable. Programmed responses to a list of things that could go wrong is the way our industry is going. When this comes to full fruition the operator becomes a clerk instead of an operator. Critical decisions then get pushed up to supervisors, but eventually they will fail us by design as well. These humans will eventually be taken out of the equation with automation and engineering ways to respond without thinking people. If there are any clerks left and they don’t follow the prescribed flow chart they will be punished even if they perform correct actions to maintain the safety and stability of the grid. Their crime: thinking.

Old School philosophy from my experience in the industry was responsible for keeping the lights on consistently for over one-hundred years. Induced pressures, I believe, are the cause of the various blackouts that have occurred within the last 50 years and not necessarily the operators. One I know of in particular was a setup to fail scenario. Evil agendas and politics typically are at odds with Old School.

Explaining Old School, now here is a difficult task. How can I tell you we need to go back to something if I cannot explain it. I guess you can start by looking up quotes from Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, Mark Twain quotes on habits, the book of Proverbs, and Psalm 119 Mem (verses 97-104). I was an operator in the Navy, not a good one. I was an operator at a commercial nuke plant, became a good one. I was a System Controller/Transmission System Operator, was a good one. I don’t say this to boast. People have told me that I was good. It’s why I am teaching now. I say this because I had certain traits that cannot be easily learned, but must be lived. These traits are a questioning of authority bordering on and crossing the line of insolence, a questioning attitude, a multi-tasker (a real one), a philosopher thinker, a respect for human life, and in most cases an inner integrity that most executive level employees have not. One who takes responsibility with the authority they are given, and doesn’t ever say, “I don’t know” or “it’s not my job” or “it’s not my fault.” If they don’t know, they find out. How did we as people get this way? I don’t know how others did it. I can explain through some of my life for this part.

How do you get an individual the likes of which I describe? Mind you, this is to get the raw material. They still have to learn the job once you get them. My mother ingrained in me to respect authority, but to not believe what they say until I can prove it to myself. My step-dad got annoyed at me mindlessly saying, “I don’t know”. He was so adamant about it that I stopped saying it and tried to find out what I didn’t know.

In 8th grade Math class, Mr. Bailey taught us that cast outs can achieve more than chosen ones. I was supposed to learn general math. Mr. Bailey got us through that in 2 months. We then proceeded to learn algebra and beat the advanced placement class to the end of the book.

In the Navy, Chief Meadows taught us to improvise, adapt, and overcome. Chief Buelk’s evil eyebrow raise taught me to dig for the real answers harder and not come up with bovine excrement when I am asked what I have learned. First Class Petty Officer Mike Brock taught me through example that you don’t have to have a British or Northern American accent to be smart. You could sound like a dumb red neck and have more wisdom and intelligence than those who teach at U of M or Princeton.

Commercial nuclear taught me that people like to make themselves look better by putting you down. The only person you can rely on to defend you is you through good watch standing habits and following procedures to avoid any show of weakness. It also taught me to combat arrogance with arrogance. Believe it or not, this is the place I found my confidence halfway through my five years there.

My boss at power control mentored all of us and made sure we participated in every facet of the utility. He once asked me why I had the audacity to think something was wrong with a switching order (which there was) when 12 people had checked it already. I told him I didn’t look at who checked it. He liked my answer. Mike Murray, my number one mentor, taught me his philosophy, one I still have in my heart to this day. You have a job to do, you own it. You don’t blame someone else for what’s under your watch. He said to me once, “Power Control used to be able to call up the president of the company at two AM in the morning if something wasn’t right and there were management obstacles in the way.” I paraphrase. “The CEO would call whomever was in charge of the idiot who was blocking me from doing my job and remove the block. That’s what Power Control used to mean.” Of course this was before the mantra about working with our partners to make a better future.

This control room I just mentioned was one that went a few years without a switching error from any of the operators (controllers), and sparsely few the other years I worked there. How did we do it without all the analysis tools and metrics measuring we have now?

Short answer is the control room culture. We knew our components capabilities from the biggest breaker down to the smallest knife switch. We learned and were taught how to switch knowing the capabilities of our equipment and the consequences of what our operations would cause if we did it wrong. We were grilled on what-if scenarios that we had to explain on the fly and not use pre-written procedures. We had procedures, but they were protocols of what and how to operate the component parts of the system, tools for fixing overloads, undervoltage, single phasing. This was not a step by step codex on how to fix every possible single phasing in every part of the system, every possible fault and location. That, even though it is being attempted now in the industry, leaves you with holes in action and doesn’t require knowledge and wisdom of how the electric system operates and what it’s idiosyncrasies are in different situations. We acted as if the system belonged to us, and for certain hours (our shift) we did own it. Many couldn’t do the job. That was okay. It didn’t mean they were stupid. It just meant it wasn’t the job for them. Storms were a great way to weed out the ones who couldn’t do the job. We could tell who had the raw materials to mold, and who couldn’t be molded.

A lot of our successes were based on good switching and tagging habits, good operator practices. We never blindly read a procedure and performed it. That would take someone’s mind off the consequences of their actions, the system, and being able to cope with the unpredictable. When we worked to maintain these habits, it became easier to focus on trouble that was unexpected. Our mentors constantly drilling us crafted us into mentors that drilled the next generation the same way. Problems that were random and unpredictable had successful outcomes with minimal errors in this knowledge based activity. If you must know, knowledge based errors are the highly more likely.

I have heard it said that humans are not perfect. Only one human was perfect, and stop trying to be like him. He was perfect so you don’t have to be. What they miss though is that He told us to emulate Him. We cannot be perfect. That is a true and correct statement, but in our quest for perfection we will find excellence. One final thing on this note; I wasn’t perfect, my partners and leads were not perfect, our field crews and substation crews were not perfect. If we were all chasing perfection and being excellent then together we did achieve perfection at long stretches of time. To use a phrase my training partner uses, we had checks and balances that caught errors before they happened. If my eyes are checking things like they own something and acting like someone is setting them up for an error, most of the time at least one of the many eyes caught it before it became an official and potentially fatal error. Mike, a substation operator who worked with us, caught a group of us from really screwing up. I was at the trigger when Mike, the lowly field guy (not so lowly to me/ higher in my estimation than me actually) asked me if I really wanted to close in a 345,000 volt breaker with station grounds still closed. I told Mike that I did not, and it would be a great idea to open the grounds before proceeding.

Each of us knew our component capabilities. Each of us field and control room knew our relays. Each of us took ownership of the system individually and collectively. Each of us actually went out and toured our system from time to time, the hundreds of miles that it was. Each of us went through hours of storm trouble together. Each of us together could achieve perfection while apart we could not. To go back to Old School takes care of our part, asks questions when we don’t know, watches out for our team, and takes responsibility when they let the team down. We were free thinking individuals unified for common purpose, but questioned the hell out of each other when we perceived something was wrong or could be, not caring if we disagreed with a co-worker, supervisor, manager, or director. To sum it up, no one person can have Super Human performance, but together we can.

Will we ever migrate back to Old School? Barring some collapse and rebuilding of civilization, no we won’t. We can be such an ache in the posterior as to delay the inevitable though, maybe save a few lives in the meantime.