Traditional safety models treat incidents as a failure of compliance: someone didn't follow the rule. Human and Organizational Performance treats incidents as information about how the system actually operates under real conditions. That reframe changes what you investigate, what you train, and what you fix.
This isn't an afternoon workshop that fades within a month. It's a sustained shift in how your organization talks about incidents, discipline, and near-misses, reinforced through the same investigations, training, and management system work Black Swan does elsewhere.
Incident reviews that end at “the employee didn't follow procedure”
Safety culture surveys that measure compliance instead of trust
Leadership that sees near-miss reports as a discipline problem instead of free data
Training and discipline treated as the only two tools in the safety toolbox
“HOP provides a more useful way to understand how work actually succeeds and fails than approaches centered primarily on individual error.”— HOP Practice Principle
This lens runs through every engagement, investigations, training, and management system design alike.
That shift, from blame to conditions, is the foundation every other service Black Swan provides is built on, whether that's an investigation, an audit, or a training program.
Every HOP engagement follows the same sequence, moving from language to lasting practice:
Shift investigations, training, and culture conversations away from blame and toward conditions.
Train supervisors and leadership to ask what the system made easy, instead of who made the mistake.
Embed HOP principles into investigation methodology, training design, and management systems so it outlasts any single engagement.
This is a sustained HOP engagement, not a one-time workshop. Specifically, that includes:
An initial assessment of how your current program handles incidents, near-misses, and culture
Leadership and supervisor training on HOP principles and application
Support integrating HOP language into existing investigation and training processes
Coaching through the first few HOP-based investigations or conversations
A plan for sustaining the shift after the engagement ends
No, they answer different questions. Compliance defines the regulatory floor. HOP explains why people succeed or fail to meet it under real operating conditions, which is what actually reduces incidents.
Usually yes. Most existing programs aren't replaced, they're reframed, with the same infrastructure asking different questions.
The field draws heavily on researchers including Dr. Todd Conklin and Sidney Dekker, and this practice applies those principles directly to oil and gas field operations.
Language changes fast, usually within weeks. Genuine trust, where workers believe reporting won't be punished, takes longer and depends heavily on how leadership responds to the first few reports.
Both, and usually starting with leadership, since HOP only sticks if the people running incident reviews and discipline decisions are applying it consistently.
Todd Conklin's and Sidney Dekker's work are the foundational texts in this field, and we're happy to point you toward the material most relevant to your operation.
It works better with leadership buy-in, since HOP changes how incidents are discussed at every level, but a safety manager can start building the foundation and bring leadership in as results show up.
Every engagement starts with a direct conversation, not a proposal. Tell us what's happening and we'll tell you what we'd actually do about it.