Client Case Study — Westinghouse
Sometimes getting a new solution to patients starts with practitioners.
Westinghouse nuclear provides an example for how an intractable disagreement over a new protocol can become a collaboration.
A group of Westinghouse nuclear engineers were being asked to adopt new compliance protocols by management. They resisted the new protocols and it became a contentious issue. Management could not convince the engineers, and engineers could not convince management. When asked why, they said they did not think the new solution was better.
Affective Health interactive Validation and Insight was used to explore the issue further and find a way forward. Our methods emphasize ecologoical momentary assessment, a form of ‘in the moment’ thinking. Much like talking to a friend, these brief conversations help participants self-reflect in ways they had not reflected before, often leading to an insight.
This led to the discovery that the engineers were trying to protect the engineering practices from what they saw as unnecessary and distracting business practices not designed to contribute to safety. This had not been discussed, but once it was known, a solution emerged.
The new practices had been designed by a prior group of engineers who had experienced a rare crisis problem and had designed these measures to prevent a similar problem from happening again. Once the new engineers knew that these practices had been designed by other trusted engineers to support their work, they felt much better about the new practices and implemented them right away.