Good morning from chilly (yes chilly) Phoenix, Arizona. Before I dive in, I wanted to take a moment to focus on the important stuff. Happy Thanksgiving! I hope this Thanksgiving finds you well, healthful, surrounded by those you love and care for, and with much to give thanks for.
This being the first post on the site (and really my first blog entry ever), I wanted to take a moment to tell you a little more about my purpose and dig into some of my plans for this site.
To begin, I’m here to make the world a better place to work. I believe that there is only one way to that goal – learning. Deliberate, deep, and meaningful learning; anything that hinders that is bad for us, our people, and our organizations.
Elaborating a little on who I am – I’m a farther, a significant other and a friend. I was born and raised in a small rural Appalachian town in southwestern Virginia; growing up in a mining family and later pursuing a short stint in mining myself. Professionally, I have spent the last decade working in safety, culture, and human and organizational performance primarily for large contractors and power utilities. I first discovered Human & Organizational Performance during the early formative years of my career working as a safety professional in commercial nuclear generation. It “clicked” with me; it was the voice that I had long been searching for. HOP was aligned with what I had been trying to teach for years – I discovered the voice, tone, and purpose I had long been seeking. As I continued my career in fossil and nuclear generation, in various safety and human performance roles supporting large scale utility contractors, and later working directly for utilities, I dove deeper reading the works of Dekker, Hollnagel, Conklin, Perrow, and Schein (to name only a few) and grew a greater understanding of what has now become my passion, obsession and purpose - helping to evolve as many organizations as I possibly can towards Human & Organizational Performance and making the world a better place to work. Intune with that purpose, and as for the site and my online presence in general, I hope to share as much information as I possibly can.
So here’s a few ways I plan on spreading learning around:
· This Blog – I will be posting content here weekly. This will be anything from basic HOP concepts to rants and rave.
· Question Form & Email – Everyone has near instant access to me through the question form and thehopnerd@gmail.com. If you need some input, have a question, or need my help, I’m here and can’t wait to nerd-out with you.
Future thing to watch for:
· YouTube – Yes, I plan on jumping on this bandwagon. I bet you can’t wait to see my ugly mug and hear my Appalachian accent?
· Podcast – I guess this solidifies my bandwagoneering.
Have a great holiday! Until next week….
The HOP Nerd