2019 HPRCT Conference

Purpose: To encourage participants to view their current training and operating experience (OPEX) programs through a different lens. This session looks to provide a fresh perspective in reshaping and/or strengthening some common defenses (flawed or not) used throughout many high-risk industries; Training and OPEX. We’ll explore the question “Does your training and OPEX program provide enough impact to help your workforce store and retrieve the operational information they need in order to conduct their job more safely, effectively and productively?” The brain is like a massive haystack, capable of storing billions of pieces of information (needles). In and of itself, this is pretty impressive. However, it’s easily argued that the ability to retrieve the correct needle and pin an un-wanted event to the board of “Not Today”, is equally impressive. From the available research, we know the cognitive ability one uses to encode, store and retrieve information is directly related to the emotional connection an individual has to that information. This session looks to enhance your existing training program by discussing some of the available psychological and cognitive tools you can implement to change your stereotypical training session from “boring” to “memorable”. Summary: Today we are inundated with information coming at us in all directions. Getting your work force to effectively store and retrieve the information required to perform their job at a higher level may often be a daunting task. Oliver Wendel Holmes said, “A person must get a thing before they can forget it”. So how do we help them “get it”? Using some of the fundamentals of cognitive psychology discussed by Dr. Fischer (Florida International University) and Dr. Geiselman (UCLA), and current research from developmental molecular biologist, John Medina, we’ll look at some strategies one can use to help strengthen existing training programs and make them more memorable and operationally effective. Mark Spitz once said, “We all love to win, but how many people love to train?”. We’ll also take a look at some memory techniques used by Grandmaster of Memory, Kevin Horsley. During this session, participants will discover how a drift in training practices and operational excellence led to the unfortunate events of the USS McCain (DDG-56) and USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62), culminating in well over $500M in U.S. property damage and the immeasurable costs associated with the death of 17 sailors.