The 5 Principles of Human Performance

A Contemporary Updateof the Building Blocks of Human Performance for the New View of Safety

By: Todd E. Conklin PhD

Narrated by: Todd Conklin

Conklin’s audiobook is an interesting and informal discussion with the listener about the five principles of human performance; principle by principle, section by section.

These five theories about how humans perform in organizations are principles, the building blocks of human performance, through which we have established a new way to think about safety and reliability in our worlds...and changing the way we think about work is a vital step toward improvement.

Work never stops and work is never normal. This idea would scare a merely mortal manager, but an enlightened leader knows the power of continuous learning and improvement. Work is constantly in motion, therefore learning must continue. Work is never the same, therefore we never really know how work is being done. If we don’t know how we perform work, how will we know how we can improve?

The five principles of human performance are, in a sense, a repository of the central values of human performance. Keeping these principles at the core of our thinking, training, and practices will allow the basic building blocks of this philosophy to help organizational programs reduce the normal philosophical drift that is present and predictable in all safety programs. Having these espoused principles keeps us all honest and keeps our human performance effort on track and successful.

©2019 Todd E Conklin (P)2019 Todd E Conklin

Very good approach to human performance

At the beginning I almost left the book because of the political rant related to the border issue. The author does not have a clear understanding of the complex issue of border security, nor have knowledge about the number of simulated families using abused kids as tools.
I decided to keep listening to the book and it was worthwhile.

Very informative

It was a pleasure to listen to his views and knowledge a worthwhile listening experience!

A must read!

A fantastic book on human organisational performance concepts that is essential for organisations and so fun to read. This book makes this world a better and safer place.

Human Performance based programs are the future

This book along with Dr Conklin other book “PreAccident Investigation” will change the way we view and do safety.

New eyes on Human performance

I liked the listen experience of this book.
The first and second principles agreeably amazed me, even if it is very closed to my management practice. Indeed peoples do make mistakes, and blaming seems so easy and world wide.
The News are full of people blaming leaders, countries, weather, economic, like Jim Rohn blaming checklist. It’s really easy to blame that think about the solution.
As a quality improvement expert, I was also very interested by the principle about learning and improving, which makes sense to me. Indeed as learning is intentional, improvement also need a good dose of motivation. The DEMING improvement approach promote learning process with field workers. I also like that workers are the solution not the problem, which is what DEMING promoted

A must read for leaders looking to strengthen culture!

A transformational listen on Human Performance built on decades of research, and presented in a manner that is easy to understand. The five principles are foundational and can be applied across all areas of leadership. I have listened to it several times and refer to it often. We can ‘learn and improve, or we can blame and shame’ but we can’t do both. If you want to build a culture of learning this book is for you. Well done Todd Conklin! Thank you!

Such simple ideas that are mind blowing

You do not have to be a safety person to enjoy this book, in fact it is meant probably more for management and leaders. The preface caught me off guard. And that was the point. The concepts discussed are ideas that are right in your face so, they are easily missed. I loved the simple approach and the wonderful stories and asides. I found myself rewinding constantly. This is a story about learning to listen and learning to reevaluate bad or old habits about our workplace and work force. Very powerful.

Bien (that's French)

Todd, you mentioned the Oscar Wilde quote at the head & tail of the book. If you were to consider the organization (prisoner) as a whole as workers within a larger system (prison), what would that conversation look like (CEO the sharp end of a larger stick)? Worth a snippet of time in a future podcast...? Kudos on making this available to the Audibulls.

Phenomenal

I always appreciate a self-narrated book. Todd’s work an synthesis of human performance principles make them easy to understand, relate to, and apply.

Great Addition To The Topic

Todd does it again! Excellent work! I love how you distilled it down and made it practical at every level.