168. Company Culture With Eve Purdy

Welcome to another episode of Professional Builders Secrets. In this episode I interviewed Dr. Eve Purdy. Eve is an emergency medicine physician and an applied anthropologist based on the Gold coast in Australia. She brings a unique perspective to our conversation, drawing on her experience with team science and the high stakes coordination of emergency medicine. Her research and leadership approach is all about understanding how team dynamics are and setting clear priorities can drive performance in any industry. So keep listening if you're interested in some practical strategies to keep your team aligned under pressure and see how teamwork can help you strive towards your goals and drive the company forward. This episode of Professional Builder Secrets is brought to you by Apparatus Contractor Services. Apparatus provides full scope end to end QuickBooks, Precision Construction accounting and and CFO services for residential builders. If you feel like you can't completely trust your weekly and monthly financial reports or you feel like you're flying blind, Apparatus Root will rebuild and operate your QuickBooks accounting system and give you precision construction accounting capability you can trust. Learn more@apparatusteam.com or on the APB Rewards Partner Directory.

It's actually the sense that people feel like they can contribute without fear of being humiliated. All of a sudden we' set a goal that is pretty lofty. It's one that we're sharing altogether, but we also feel like it's all of our responsibility to try to make that happen. Sometimes we can rely on what we know, but sometimes we've got to build something together. Things like after action, reviews and huddles, set our team up for those moments when we've got to build a new mental model together.

Welcome to Professional Builder Secrets, the podcast for building company owners wanting to grow safely and securely. I'm your host Will Blunt and today I'm joined by Eve Purdy. Eve, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me. Glad to be here.

Very excited to have a chat with you today. It's a little bit different than our usual guests and your experience I think is going to be super valuable to builder audience. But do you want to dive into a bit of that background and what you get up to with your life?

Yeah, you bet. I am an emergency physician. I work on the Gold coast in Australia. You probably hear a Canadian accent, come from Canada where I did all of my training but put that to use trying to look after people here in Australia. I also spend a lot of time researching teams in the hospital and how they can work better together to look after patients.

Well, whereabouts in Canada are you from?

A bit all over the place, but Nova Scotia would be home now okay, cool.

Yeah, my wife's actually Canadian, so I got married in Vancouver. She's from Toronto actually. So, yeah, I get over there a fair bit myself.

There you go. A bit colder there now than here.

It is, it is, but it's a beautiful part of the world.

Yeah, certainly.

And you've just been traveling as well, like you're a professional speaker, right? You've just been across in Denmark, is that right?

I've been spending the last month or so in Norway. Yeah. And have been doing some workshops with teams over there who are trying to actually use city simulation or kind of a mock up of our clinical environment to help us figure out how we can make the hospital and teams work better. So working with a variety of teams over there.

Yeah. Really interesting. What similarities do you see between emergency medicine and the residential construction industry? To the average person, they're polar opposites. But I feel like you've got a different opinion on that.

Ah, yeah. You know, I feel like there's more similarities than there are differences. I've got a tiny little insight into that world. My brother is an architect who I'm sure drives many of your clients up the wall all the time. I hear from him in certainly my own experience in houses and places that I've lived in, you know, the immense coordination that it takes for projects like this to work. There's so many moving pieces and there often is. Is a common goal, but there's a lot that gets in the way of accomplishing that together in a way that is timely and safe. And to be honest, that's what happens with us in the hospital all the time as well. There's a bunch of people who are trying to do a good job, but with a lot that gets in the way sometimes. So I think although the problems are different, the challenges that the teams face are actually quite similar.

Yeah, that's a great point. Actually, you talk a bit about. I think you've mentioned it before when we caught up around team science. Can you and you take a very scientific approach to a human aspect of business, which I think is fascinating. Can you talk to me more about what that is and how it impacts performance?

Yeah, I guess the broad brushstrokes are that we should be using evidence to help us make decisions about the way that our teams work. And I guess if we think about it in construction, we actually just know that there's some materials that hold up over time better in circumstances because we've looked at that over time and we've had practice with it. And so when we're choosing to build a new house. We choose materials not just because we feel like it, but because there's a reason to do it. And I guess when we think about team science, it's the idea that we actually have a lot of evidence to make decisions about the way that our teams and people interact together. And we should be applying that just in the same way that we apply evidence about other decisions that we make. And so thinking about how do we coordinate and organize our team, how do we communicate, who needs to know what when? These are really decisions that can be deliberate instead of accidental. So in the hospital, I feel very strongly that our team should work together by design, not by accident. Just think about applying some of the best evidence to make that happen.

When you talk about science and evidence and knowledge that we've accrued over time, what are you referring to? Is there one piece of work that you feel like is the best practice in terms of behavioral science when it comes to teamwork?

Look, that is a great question. I think, for the listeners out there. If I was going to read one thing that really helped summarize the science around teams, there's a framework by Eduardo Salas and Matthew Tannenbaum. These are two really nerdy researchers who've spent their entire lives thinking about teams, but in different contexts. So they've studied restaurant teams, they've studied construction teams, they've studied healthcare teams, and they have written a book recently that brings all of the kind of studies that have been done over the past number of decades together and summarized it in a book called Teams that Work. And really, they summarize that there's seven drivers of team effectiveness. So there's kind of seven things that really impact whether teams work or unfortunately, don't work sometimes. So if. If your listeners are going to read one kind of bible, I guess on teamwork, that would be the one that I suggest.

Yeah, I apologize if there was any clicking coming through my microphone then, because I was just jotting it down myself to get it on the reading list. But, yeah, no, that's great advice. What are some of those drivers? Are they something that you apply yourself as well, or. I mean, you mentioned it's a more recent book. Is there other things that ties into the way you operate with teams?

Oh, yeah. Look, one of my favorite parts about being an emergency physician is that every day I walk into work and it's like a little laboratory of teamwork. I'm showing up with different people again, trying to work towards a common goal, but it never plays out. Exactly the same. So the types of things that they talk about are communication. That's an obvious one, but not just communication broadly. They think about how do we get the right information to the right people at the right times. And that's a little bit different depending on what you're doing. So if I'm resuscitating or looking after a really sick trauma patient, my communication might look very different than if I'm looking after a patient who is a little bit more stable or they're, you know, they're just coming in with a sore ankle. In the same way that in a construction project, if there's a deadline that's fast approaching and some problems with coordinating the delivery of the goods needed to work on the project, communication might look a little bit different than if you're in the early, early planning stages. So one of the things that they really suggest is that we've got to titrate our communication to the situation that we find ourselves in, and so it won't look the same in every moment that our teams are together. The other thing that they talk about that we spend a lot of time on, honestly, is how the team is feeling. And so what are the types of things that we can do to impact the mood of the team so that people are motivated, so that they feel like they're contributing, so that we're most likely to get the most out of people on the team? So little things that I do are actually just, just. I'm usually the boss of my emergency department. I deliberately introduce myself to the people on the team because I know that it makes it much more likely that they will come and find me later in the day if there's an issue or problem or they've got a bright idea that might help me with what I'm doing. So, in the same way, if you are in charge at a construction site, something as simple as introducing yourself to the person that is maybe just doing some of the heavy lifting of materials can pay off down the road.

Yeah. What's interesting that I'm hearing there is, whilst it's scientific and there's a structure you can follow, for example, introducing yourself to someone, that could be natural to a leader or it could be something you actually plan to do, you know, ritualize it. But what you were saying is the timing of the communication and things like that play a part into its effectiveness. So how much of it is also understanding having instinct or understanding the art side of science as well?

Oh, I think. I think you're right there. I think that the ability to read a situation and read a team is something really powerful that particularly leaders can do. I'm sure some of your listeners may have seen Ted Lasso or any number of other great movies that talk about inspiring coaches. And largely, those coaches are just good at reading people and knowing what motivates them. It's funny, a lot of the work that I've been doing with teams was kind of in parallel with Ted Lasso, and, well, you see that he's just good at reading people. He also does a lot of things quite deliberately that we know, foster people's sense of being able to contribute, that foster a sense of belonging and really are the things that help teams perform cohesively. So while he makes it look easy, there's probably actually a lot under the surface that they're doing. And I think we can all put ourselves in minds when we've been on a team where we really feel like we belong and we feel motivated to contribute. And then there's probably times where we've worked with groups of people that don't even feel like a team because you don't feel like you belong. You don't feel like you're contributing to a shared goal. And so thinking about what are the really deliberate ways that we can make people feel like they belong, it's a little bit of a Jedi mind trick, but it works.

Yeah, I guess to your point as well, if you understand the science behind it, then you can be more deliberate about things. And if that's paired with natural leadership skills and things like that, it kind of works together. Ted Lasso, one of my favorite shows, actually. It feels like some of the things he does are almost by accident, though.

Yeah. Yeah, I think he'd like you to think that, but I think he's a bit smarter. I bet he's a bit smarter than that. The real life example of that is Popovich, who is a college coach in the States who has won, you know, more games than anybody. The similarities are uncanny in terms of making people feel like they. They belong.

Is that a football coach as well?

Yeah, a basketball coach, actually.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Because I was on a podcast with someone the other day talking about John Wooden, actually, who's one of the most famous basketball coaches in American history. I thought he had the best college record of all time, but maybe Popovich is overtaken now. I don't know. But I think it's fascinating to me with the coaching side of things, that it can be so applicable across sports and business as well. Do you see those Parallels and how they work?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the things that I think both construction and medicine have going against us is the instability of teams. So a lot of other groups, if you work in an office, you have the luxury of showing up and working with the same people every day. In construction and medicine, we're often, you don't really know who's going to be on site, what day, who's there, what's happening. And in medicine it's the same. I in general don't ever work with the same people every day. And so thinking about what can we take from across contexts that might apply in our own, I think is really relevant. So when I learned to be an emergency physician, I learned lots of medicine and lots of, you know, medical skills. Who needs what treatment and what procedure. But I didn't learn a lot in terms of leadership. That's not a part of the medical curriculum. Yet it is so integral to how I do my job every day. And imagine it's the same for people who are trying to lead a team of people getting a residential project up and ready for people to move into.

Yeah, that's a great reflection actually. How do you generate good team morale and display good leadership skills and build rapport and everything with people that you might have only met that day, whether it's a new subcontractor coming into a work site or something like that? Because my interpretation of leadership and building team morale comes from trust as well.

Yeah, I mean, certainly in the evidence we know that team familiarity is really critical and is one of the best ways for teams to perform at their highest level. So if you can find ways to do the same work with people over and over again, that's probably really beneficial. But if you don't have that luxury like a lot of your listeners or like me in the resuscitation room, we've got to find ways to get just in time familiarity and build just in time trust. So in the emergency department, that's what I spend a lot of time thinking about. How do I get this team that's working together for the next. Maybe it's just an hour or maybe it's eight hours. How do I get them to know each other and trust each other? I actually learned a little bit from the construction industry, believe it or not. I live along the Esplanade in burley. There's about 10 or 12 big high rise projects on the go right now. And I looked out the window one morning at about 6am when everybody was showing up to do Their job. And there was a little huddle happening. So there was a group of about 15 or 20. This was all guys. There was also a dog there. I don't know why there was a dog there. But having a conversation, clearly, in the morning about who was going to do what, who was helping with what tasks, and some introductions for the team. And that is something in that moment, I went, holy smokes, this is what I need in the emergency department. I've started doing it with my teams in the ED ever since. So we carve out five minutes to meet each other, figure out what skills people have, and set some expectations for how our team is going to work for the day. And it's been a transformative practice that I was lucky enough to see in the parking lot across the road from where I live.

Yeah, I mean, that's amazing. But do you have a set structure for those huddles that you do before?

Yeah, because a bit like construction, we don't want to spend all day having these conversations. We try to stick to a pretty simple structure which is just going around the room with an introduction of people's name, what their role is for the day. And we particularly see if there's roles that people would be willing to take on if a really sick patient comes in. So, like, if something bad happens, what roles will people take on? And then I think probably most importantly for our huddle, I really try to focus on, is there something that individuals want to do or learn? Today we're a teaching hospital, so I really want to make my team feel like I'm invested in what they want to do or learn. For other teams that I've worked with, that question changes a little bit, and it might be something like, what do you need help with today? So is there something that somebody on this team might be able to give you a hand with that you need help with? So I think finding one kind of small question that links people together can be quite helpful. So instead of it just being all coordinating our work, thinking, is there actually a piece that ties people together and might make some connections for people?

Do you have any other touch points? Like, I mean, you said sometimes it might just be an hour, so there's probably not a lot of time. But if you're working along the shift with a group of people, do you ever have other touch points that come back to what you've spoken about in the huddle?

Oh, yeah. So oftentimes we actually identify in the huddle that somebody wants some feedback on a specific task for the day. So as the day progresses, we'll try to make that happen. So I might go observe what they're doing and then give them some very specific and directed feedback about how that went. I guess what that allows is for kind of this idea of continuous growth and development for individuals. But we also try to do that at the team level. So if we have a particularly sick patient or a case that's a bit challenging, we try to come back together as a team and do what we call as an after action review, which actually comes from the military, again, stealing liberally from other places. But this idea that our team can actually just talk about what happened, why it happened, and if there's anything that we might do different next time that hopefully allows for some continuous growth. So you could very easily imagine a construction team doing this. I know it's something that a lot of groups in the oil rigs do, but either at the end of a day or let's say, if something goes wrong on site, or there's a particularly kind of challenging task that the team needs to come back to, continue to try to work on tomorrow, then just finding five minutes as a team to come together and say, you know, where are we up to? What could we do better? And it also gives people the sense that they've got an ongoing commitment to each other. And again, for these transient teams, it might be less that we're actually all going to come back tomorrow. But at least like the organization and the group cares about me and I then feel more invested in kind of in this project. So I'd say the team briefings at the beginning of the day and then the after action reviews kind of as needed or at the end of the day are probably the, the key things that support high performance. And again, not just in medicine, but in lots of other industries as well.

How do you know that what you're doing is working?

It's a good question. There are some hard metrics that you can think about. We could look at things in the, let's say the emergency department, like, what is the number of times that we're successful putting a breathing tube in really sick patients? And one group looked at this and they had pretty low rates of success. They were having some real challenges with it. If you're a patient that needs a breathing tube, you don't want that to. You really don't want that to be the case. And so this team recognized, oh, this is a problem. So they said, look after every single intubation that we do, putting a breathing tube in, we're going to come together and we're going to talk as a team. And what they did is they just measured their performance. How did they improve? And actually a year later they went from this working about 50% of the times on the first try to over 90% of the times. So they just, you know, incredibly improved their performance. There's some other measures that we use with teams as well, which is actually thinking about are people enjoying their work, do they want to come back to work the next day? In healthcare, we're having a lot of trouble retaining staff. And so if we can think about actually some higher level things like do people want to continue doing their job and do they want to work for me again or work with me again, Those can be some pretty powerful measures as well.

How important do you find some sort of measure is to, I guess, keep improving as well?

Yeah, I mean, I think people like measures and like numbers. I'm a little bit less invested with them. I think that if we apply the theories that we know are tried and true in other places to our own work, that's better than what we're doing now, which is just kind of haphazard and hoping something works. So I'd be inclined, at least if we could just start applying a bit of theory to our practice, then that would be, that would be a good starting point. The other measure that I have, and I think this is probably, would probably be the one that's most of most interest to your listeners, is when I do these things, as somebody who's the leader on my teams, I usually find that the rest of my day is way easier. So there's not a surprise bomb. So, you know, somebody doesn't not tell me about something because they're worried about how I'm going to react. They actually come to me earlier with problems that then we can, you know, we can try to solve together. So my marker usually is, is my job easier today than it was yesterday? And usually when I do these types of things, it is because there's less conflict in the team. People are motivated and trying to work harder. They're asking for help when they need it instead of when it is well past due. And so, yeah, selfishly, a lot of it is about making my, my own job a bit easier.

Yeah, I recently did something with my team in the marketing team. We have regular huddles, daily huddles with the whole team. And on Mondays we have a kickoff and we have the benefit of work. I work with the same team every week. Right. So it's not like in emergency medicine, not construction. But one thing I implemented after reading some research about it was I used to host every huddle and I would fill too much of the space. So I really wanted to encourage the team members to fill more space. So what we implemented a couple of weeks back is I would still host the kickoff on a Monday to set the tone for the week. One other team member would host for the rest of the week the huddles, and then they would rotate to the next team member the week after. I've been blown away by how much it's changed the dynamics in the team actually, like in terms of just good vibes, energy, more contributions coming from everyone as well. So really happy with how that's played out.

Yeah, it's amazing. This opportunity to inject a bit of kind of autonomy for people can go a really long way. And you're right, this is one of the advantages of a team that has some stability, is all of a sudden you can push the boundaries on what that huddle is doing for your team. For me and for a lot of your listeners who are on site, you know, this is serving a pretty basic function of just introductions and some really baseline level of trust and familiarity. But the opportunities for your team to really develop actually higher levels of trust and interest in each other is pretty profound and certainly exciting. But I think highlights that with each of these interventions, whether it be a huddle, whether it be an after action review, whether it be the structure of the team, all of these things are pretty context dependent. And what we do with one team in the emergency department might look very different than a team that is working in the maternity suite, for example. There's different contexts and different things that contribute to how teams work together. And so while you might start with a huddle, that looks like one thing you may realize I'll look for this team, this is actually the. They have different priorities, they have different things that they really need to be aware and attuned to. But I think starting somewhere is a pretty good, pretty good step.

Yeah. The common theme I'm hearing from you though, which I think applies to both scenarios, whether or not they're consistent teams or, you know, it's a once off, is that the huddle is showing care in the people within the team and it's setting a ritual that they are expecting how their day is going to play out and how they're going to work together, which is consistency. Even if the team's different.

Yeah, yeah. And I think when we think about what are Some of the nerdy theories that underpin why a huddle works, there are a few things. So Amy Edmondson is one of the scholars in the States who's written most about psychological safety. And psychological safety is not like, oh, everybody feels nice on the team. It's actually the sense that people feel like they can contribute without fear of being humiliated. Actually creating a space in which people feel that way, especially if this isn't a team that works together frequently is pretty hard. And the huddle, it actually ticks off a number of boxes to help with that. So actually, just baseline reduces the threshold to talk to people. So if you've spoken to somebody once, you're much more likely to feel like you can talk to people with them again. And then I think what you highlight is it set some really clear expectations, so I can actually set some really high expectations for my team that day. But they know what they are, and so they, you know, they're likely to meet them. And they also know that I want to support them in helping with that task. So, you know, like, let's say you're on a building site and you say, we could say by noon, we want this part of the project to be installed or done. What do you need from me to help make that happen? All of a sudden, we've set a goal that is pretty lofty. It's one that we're sharing altogether, but we also feel like it's all of our responsibility to try to, you know, to try to make that happen. And makes it much more likely that that group of people is going to be able to. To work together and troubleshoot if it's. If it's not going well. So I think you're right. There's some degree of kind of care. There is some shared expectations, and those expectations can be really high. And then the other thing that we think about a lot that supports teams to do their job well is creating a shared mental model for what we. How we're going to operate and maybe even what those goals are. So in the emergency department, there are times when it's very. Everybody knows exactly what we should do. So if you come into the emergency department and you're having a heart attack and it's really clear that you're having a heart attack, our team could almost say nothing to each other. We almost wouldn't need to communicate, and you would get exactly the care that you need because we've got this shared mental model for how we're going to look after that. And that might be the same in construction, there might be some parts of the construction process that are really straightforward that we've got a really strongly shared mental model for, you know, strong shared mental model for. But there might be other parts of the construction process, like maybe the person whose house this is has ordered like a super weird lamp that is at high risk of breaking and costs a bajillion dollars. And we've never put this up before. All of a sudden our team is going to have to work hard to come up with the solution for how we're going to do that together, because we've never done it before. In the same way that sometimes when I'm working in the emergency department, at least once a shift, a patient comes in with something that I have never seen before in my life and I have to work with my team to sort out how we're going to best care for them. And that requires a lot of explicit communication and building a new. A new mental model in real time. So sometimes we can rely on what we know, but sometimes we've got to build something together. Things like after action reviews and huddles, set our team up for those moments when we've got to build a new mental model together.

Yeah, I don't think anyone on a job site, well, at least not regularly, is dealing with the same level of extreme emergency that you guys are in the emergency ward, but like from a heart attack point of view and those kind of things. But I think when you refer to mental models, builders are referring back to their processes and systems for building or for running the business, you know what I mean? So if they've got them documented in manuals and it's really clear in the training and everything like that within their company, then that's what they fall back on. And a lot of the things come second nature because you've got those in place.

Yeah, totally. I mean, we have, in the hospital, we have a guideline for how to look after patients with heart attacks. A lot of us just know how to do that. Where it gets a little bit different is if parts of our team are new and maybe haven't worked in the emergency department before, it's their first time working with us, we might have to identify that and then bring them up to speed. But even for your builders, it's thinking about how do we develop strong mental models, which is an investment in training and working with the same people, in having some clear processes when you can. And then also how do we have a team that is flexible enough to adapt when needed and to adapt when something doesn't fit perfectly into this way that we usually do things, and that's the kind of constant tension in emergency medicine is that a lot of what we do, we do the same every time, but when we need to shift gears and we need to problem solve and we need to adapt, we usually need to do that pretty quickly. And how do we build teams that have this flexibility to adapt as they need to?

Yeah, tell me more about that. Because my interpretation of emergency medicine, high pressure, very complex as well. But the beauty of it is, to your point, it needs to be flexible but also calm in the moment to be able to deliver those things. And I think if you can work in a high pressure situation on a complex task, very relative to any industry, any business. So how do you keep teams aligned? How do you keep things working in the right direction with such high pressure and complexity?

Yeah, it's funny that you should ask to be super nerdy. I'm actually just in the beginning phases of my PhD that specifically asked this question. How do teams respond to stress? Because we actually know a fair bit about how individuals respond to stress, but we know less about how teams respond to stress. And it seems like there's a few things that are really stressful for teams. So one is when we're not familiar. The other is when there's just a challenge that is really hard. The next is when there's uncertainty or ambiguity, when the kind of even the problem isn't clear. That is really hard for teams. And then there's a few others. But the last one is actually just the combination of all of these things together is quite stressful. So most teams can deal with one or two stressors, but as soon as they start adding up and adding up, when we start to see a degradation in performance or things going totally awry, we've all been in that spiral before where we can feel that this is not going well. And it turns out there's probably a few things that are protective for teams. Ability to adapt and flex and meet challenges head on. One of those things is mental models, which we already talked about. So do we have some mental models that we can rely on? Another thing that can be helpful is building those just in time if we haven't had time to create them beforehand. So when you're recognizing something is going wrong, actually stopping the team and coming up with a new plan, something we call a recap or a briefing of the team. So the day started and midway through. Holy smokes, Things aren't going well. Let's regroup let's come back together, let's think about how we're going to proceed from here. And then there's some really key leadership behaviors that impact the end affect of the team. And I think that's what you're talking about, kind of the mood of the team. And it seems like leadership behaviors specifically are pretty important for managing the mood and the affect of the team. So how you're treating people, you know, not getting immediately frustrated, offering support, being vulnerable in your, in yourself. So it does seem like team leaders are particularly important. And then one of the pieces that I'm really interested in is this concept of the backup behaviors which any team that's performing really highly does, whether they know it or not. It's this sense that we can actually identify when somebody else on our team needs help. Either offer them the coaching that they need, the knowledge that they need, or actually step in and help them with that. But that requires one, that we have the capacity so our teams actually have enough kind of people and resources to flex like that. But it also requires that there's an expectation on the team that we help each other out. And that is sometimes lacking is just this actual understanding that a part of our job is helping other people with their jobs. And that in high performing teams seems to be a real kind of way that people think about their work is that this is our work together, not my work that I'm doing. So that's a crash course in how teams respond to stress.

I've got so many follow ups questions, but I'll try to start simple. Interestingly, the stresses you named the three main stresses there, two of them are probably a constant in emergency medicine. So certainty, which is the third one you mentioned, is as much certainty as you can provide. Sounds like it's extremely important.

Yeah, and it doesn't even have to be certainty, I guess, about what's going on. So for example, in emergency medicine I might not know what the diagnosis is. So if somebody comes into the hospital and they're feeling short of breath, I may not actually know what the diagnosis is. But even sharing that I don't know that is helpful for my team because it removes the uncertainty about whether I know or not. So I could say, look, we don't know what's causing this, but I'm going to create some certainty around the next 10 minutes or 20 minutes or 30 minutes for what our next steps are going to be. So I think while we can't always create certainty, we can create some certainty around what our team is going to do. And I think that is often how we see high performing teams manage that uncertainty is they, they, you know, they bring it into bite sized chunks about, okay, we don't know what's going on, but this is what we're going to do. And that's what we saw. I don't know if you've seen any of the amazing videos of how they got the chilling coal miners out of their basically in this blocked mine shaft. And that's just what they did. We don't know how we're going to do this, but today we're going to focus on these three solutions and give it a go. And really creating these little micro goals that allow for some certainty in the team and just recognizing, even if with the team that uncertainty is uncomfortable. And I'm sure your listeners are quite used to this with clients. No, I don't know when the wood paneling is going to arrive, but this is what we're doing in the meantime. It's a very similar kind of similar strategy.

Yeah, that's a great point. Certainty in sales conversations is massive in this industry. But your point around you can't have certainty over the outcome, but you can have certainty around the process that you're going to get there, which I think is really, really powerful.

Yeah, I think that is one of the biggest things that teams can do together is create certainty and comfort around the process and probably even less so in medicine than in construction. Oftentimes our outcomes are not related to our performance. So I can think of a few situations where patients have unfortunately died where our team has actually performed at the top of their abilities. The performance was amazing, but the outcome was not what any of us would hope or want. And actually delinking the outcomes from the performance for the team is hard but pretty necessary when you're actually thinking about how do we improve, how do we analyze our performance. And so I think that's a really good, great point that the process and the outcome aren't always tied together.

That's a really good point. In terms of recognizing things within a team actually. Do you recognize the outcome or do you recognize the process?

Oh, it's one of the biggest challenges for our team specifically actually as it relates to after action reviews. So in medicine, debriefs or after action reviews have had much more trouble than other industries in gaining foothold as a way to improve performance because they've largely historically in our profession been linked to things that have gone really wrong. Just like we see in the construction industry. You know, when there's like big disasters that happen, we all need a debrief. And so there's a lot of this kind of like emotional guilt often associated with bad outcomes in medicine, even when it's not linked to performance. And uncoupling that link is a. Has been a real challenge and is something that we're continuing to work on. So actually one of the strategies that I've had around helping teams think about their performance is just doing this for the mundane tasks. So not the big things that happen, but one of the most challenging things that happens in the hospital is if we've got a really sick patient who is attached to a breathing machine and attached to lots of bags giving them medicine, and there's a million cables actually transporting them from one part of the hospital to the, to another part of the hospital is a really hard thing to do. But. And it's something we do a lot of. And so we've actually gone and said, well, why don't we actually just have a talk every time we do that about what could go better the next time and what went well this time. And it really removes some of that emotional aspect related to outcome and really focuses on the process. And I found that to be helpful and I imagine the same would be in construction. If you. If the only time we talk about our performance is when something's gone wrong, when something's late, when it's delayed, when it's over budget, we actually are missing out on a lot of the times that things go right. We might actually even make changes that are counterproductive to things that go right. So one of the things I'd encourage your listeners to do is to think about what are the things on site that happen all the time, that are very regular, that we could actually think about and talk about the process and improving that process as opposed to just waiting for a bad outcome.

Yeah, there's a. That's a great point. I mean, the other thing for them to consider is not just the on site side of things. I mean, they're running businesses where they have a sales process, a marketing process, an administrative process for hiring, and all these different things as well. So there's so many processes within their companies that they can, they can review to your point and look at it from that perspective. You've mentioned mental models a number of times and I feel like we've skimmed over it a little bit too much. I want to dive into what that is and how someone out there listening today can actually apply that to what they're doing day to day.

Yeah, a mental model is probably the best way to explain it is kind of like a team brain, or at least one part of a team brain. And so it's this idea that we can all have a shared understanding about what the goal for something is, how it's going to get done, and who's going to be involved. So there's kind of different aspects of a shared mental model. The, you know, who's doing what, whose roles are involved and what are each of them going to do. What is it that we're actually trying to accomplish and how are we going to get there. And for some things, we have a very clear shared mental model. I'm just trying to think of an example of that might be.

You can just use a medical example if you want.

Yeah, yeah, medical example. Or I'm just trying to think like, of a daily life example example even, because we all have mental models for all sorts of things. So let's say your partner says to you, can you get the kids ready for bed? Hopefully you have a shared mental model for what that includes, which includes a bath and three bedtime stories and teeth brushing. And so with very few words, they can tell you something that you both share together and understand. But if, let's say there was a babysitter there who came in and your partner said, can you just get the kids ready for bed? The babysitter might not actually know what that means. And they might give them a shower instead of a bath. They might only read one book, which then leads to chaos because the kids are screaming and everybody's upset, and they might not realize that nighttime is when they brush their teeth. So that's probably the best example of a mental model that I can come up with, which is just the shared understanding between a group of people about how something is. Is going to go. And you can see how that could go wrong at all, all sorts of different points. So if you have instability in a team, oftentimes there's troubles with mental models. If you have an uncertain problem, not, you know, we actually haven't had our friends, I mean, our child's friend over and we don't know what bedtime means for him or if you've got, I guess, kind of surprises that come up along the way that can be a challenge to the mental model. So it's kind of like a. A shorthand script for something that we should all understand. And one of the ways that teams get into the most trouble is when they assume that there is a shared mental model amongst a group of People, when really it's not quite shared, people are thinking slightly different things, which then can lead to conflict.

That's a great point. In the example you gave, if you think there's only meant to be two stories and your partner thinks there's three stories and that causes the chaos and then it can create conflict and, and go from there.

Yeah. And then it's rapidly spirals out of control. If it's not, especially if we don't realize that that was the part of the mental model that broke, that broke down. You can see how, how this could rapidly, rapidly spiral. And that's what we see. That, honestly, is what we see in, in teams. So in the emergency department, let's go back to our heart attack example. When a patient comes in with a heart attack, I know that there's three drugs that we usually give them to help out, but if there's a new nurse that comes onto the team, I might assume that she also knows those three drugs. And so I'll just say, oh, can we get the medications ready? If I haven't created the conditions where they can say to me, I don't know what you mean by that. Can you be more clear? If they're a bit nervous about saying that, if they think, oh, I'm a bit silly, I should know this, they might just get the wrong medications out or not drawn up in the correct doses. That's actually all of our. That's all of our responsibility in that moment to get right. But if I'm working with a really seasoned emergency nurse and he's been there for 20 years, he'll probably have the drugs ready before the words even come out of my mouth.

Well, Eve, you've provided a ton of value today on team science and how the building companies or anyone listening today actually out there can drive better performance from their teams and just be more aware of it. Any final advice, any practical steps that you think people can take after listening to today's show?

Yeah, there's a few things. So, first off, when you go to work tomorrow, I would think about how you can facilitate some belonging within your team. A huddle is a great, a great option that might look different in different contexts. Think about where and when you're going to discuss performance as a team and how you're going to just try to get 1% better every day. That is a huge way to make people feel like they belong and be motivated to return the next day. And then I guess the, the next piece would be just to read more about teams and how they work. I already mentioned the book Teams that Work by Eduardo Salas and Matthew Tanenbaum. But another super easy read that is quite entertaining is a book called the Culture Code by Daniel Coyle. It's kind of a pop nonfiction book about teams and how they work, and I would put that on the top of the list. Some reading if your listeners can fit that in their busy lives.

Yeah, absolutely. That's some great tips. I'll share the links to Teams that Work and the Culture Code in the show notes. Also worth checking out evepurdy.info and following your journey, Eve, because I think, as you've pointed out today, there's a lot of similarities in team performance across industries. And sometimes it's worthwhile just looking outside the box of what you're doing to try and get some good insights on how you can improve the performance of your team and your company. So, yeah, I really appreciate that.

And I would be remiss if I didn't say, wear your eye protection, your hard hats and your steel toe boots. I don't want to see you in the emergency department anytime soon.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, yeah, we didn't even go into that. You've probably had a few builders over your time come into an emergency.

Oh, yeah. Not too many, though. Not. Not too many. I think you guys are probably further ahead in safety standards than we are.

That's good to know. That's good to know. Well, avs, thanks so much for coming on the show today. I really enjoyed it.

Yeah. Thank you.

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