Have you ever thought about shifting the perspective of how you view the world or even cognitive diversity in general? In this episode of Incorporating SuperPowers, host Justin Recla talks about viewing the world through a wider lens with former Coast Guard pilot Dr. Ivan Pupulidy. He believes it is important to bring more eyes to bear in specific situations and put several minds to work together to superpower it. Listen in to know more about cognitive diversity and how it applies to almost every situation we face day-by-day.
Welcome back to another episode of Incorporating SuperPowers. The conversation we’re going to have today, folks, is going to be one that will hopefully help you shift perspectives and how you view the world. My guest today is Dr. … I’m to butcher it, I know. Dr. Ivan Pupulidy, who is … Did I get right?
Yeah, perfect.
Awesome. So Dr…
You did it better than I did, I’m going to use your pronunciation.
Perfect! Dr. Pupulidy is a former Coast Guard pilot. He’s also the former director of … I got it right here, of the U.S. Forest Service Human Performance and Innovative and Organizational Learning the concept of human performance issue. And folks, Ivan’s got a plethora of experience, not only the Forest Service but the Coast Guard, the Air Force, a geophysicist, right? And those stories that he was told right before the show here and how it translates and how the universe is working through him to bring about change is just awesome. I actually love the synchronicities of how it all works out.
And so today we’re going to be talking about cognitive diversity and how that applies to pretty much every situation going on, every problem that we are facing in the world right now. And I think this is a killer topic. Ivan, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
So, you’ve done a thing or two, and you had these experiences, and we were talking about how your experience as an accident investigator, right? Looking into all these accidents that were chalked up to the human error, whether they be aircraft or within the Forest Service, looking at them and going, “How do we … “As you said, it was the very first line of the manual, right? That everybody-
Very first line.
The very first line, human error. Why take it any further? But you had the insight, you had the gall to stand up and go, “There’s got to be a different way.” What is that different way? Can you explain what cognitive diversity is?
I think I’ve got to start with why we had to have a change. And the reason that we had to have a change was because of a sense of injustice in the system. So, if the system is delivering things that are outside the expectations of the populace, that’s one thing, that’s okay. But if the system is delivering something that is fundamentally unfair or felt to be unfair, such as labeling every single aviation accident as pilot error or every ground accident is the failure to follow rules, regulations, policies, and procedures, then what we need to do is we need to start to understand something at a very fundamentally different level. And that level is to put ourselves in the place of the people who were there. Not to ascribe to them some sort of individual accountability that’s associated specifically with their disposition, but rather to look at the situation and understand the dynamics of the situation.
So this whole thing that happened, this sense of injustice, brewed up inside the Forest Service to the point where there was very little trust in leadership and very little communication between leadership and the field. And I’m in the situation with Human Performance, Innovation, and Organizational Learning that my job is kind of to bridge those two parts of the organization, get this side to talk to this side. Well, when they’re not even speaking, really, the same language and the fundamental means by which leadership looks at the field is through investigations and through accidents, we’ve got a problem.
We show up at this-
I’m going to chime in here because my wife led 25 years ago at ASU, and she helped found the Intercultural Relationships Center. It was a center, it was an organization, that stood up for 14 years. And I loved the fact that you bring that to the table now, but you do it through the lens of accidents, right? But the unjust … It is so important for us to take a look at this. Folks, if you’re not paying attention, this is not just applying to accidents, this is applying to everything that’s going on in the world right now.
Absolutely. Especially now. So one of the things that we had to realize is that the system that we were living in was not a simple system and it wasn’t a complicated system. Both of those things have linear explanations, have a limited number of answers for the questions that are asked. What we realized is we’re in a complex system, and in complex systems, because we’re adaptive human beings because human beings adapt in unfathomable and immeasurable ways, we have to honor that, we have to respect that space. So two things emerged from that.
One is respect for learners. We have to respect learners and we have to recognize that everybody in the system is a learner. And second, we have to realize that this idea of linear cause doesn’t exist. So let me give you an example. Let’s put you and I had exactly the same situation, right? Will we fail at the same point? Probably not. Because you bring skills and abilities in certain areas, and I bring skills and abilities in certain areas. We’re going to fail at different points because of the normal human variability. Now let’s go a step further. If I were able to create the same exact situation over and over again and puts you in it, would you fail at the same point?
Most likely.
Most likely not. Most likely you would have learned something.
Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Because if we’re repeating it over and over again, it’s like playing a video game.
Exactly.
Neva Lee Recla is on a mission to inspire 1 million kids to start businesses. Get the tools to inspire your young entrepreneur so they can go out and change the world. The book gives you the insights you need to support your child, while the monthly Messages inspire and support your kids on their entrepreneurial journey. Give your child the gift of Super Powers and join Neva in changing the world today!
You get to a certain point and you’re like, “Oh, that didn’t work. Oh, that didn’t work. Oh, that didn’t work.” And finally you get through it and you learn how to overcome it.
Exactly. And what you just described is what people do in a complex work environment. When they’re met with an anomaly, something they’ve never seen before, they try and make sense of the anomalous information, learn in the moment, and innovate solutions.
Now let’s take that to the superpower level. To superpower that, what we need to do is we need to bring more eyes to bear on that situation, more minds together. So we do this scenario in aircraft, we call it crew resource management, where we start to bring the folks on board the airplane together to solve problems. Now, are we always going to be right? No, we’re going to make mistakes, because what we’re dealing with is a system that is delivering the unexpected and we’re providing that system with innovation or an experiment. Now what we have to do is we have to watch very carefully to see what our interventions are giving us. Now we call this outside of an aircraft, cognitive diversity, where we bring a lot of minds to bear, as many as possible. And people are going to say, “Well, you’re working in fire, you’re working in aviation, do you have time for all that?” And the thing is, you can develop the capacity to do this rather quickly. You can also understand where to make time inside your systems. Most of the time, we’re so focused and fixated on time and efficiency that actually robs us of the ability to be deliberative in the space.
And effective, right?
And effective, yeah.
So, before we go, let’s take a quick pause. I want to give our listeners an opportunity to find out more, where they can find out more about you, and then I want to dive down this rabbit hole even further on the backside. Can you share with our listeners where they can find you?
Sure. Yeah, I’m a professor right now at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. So I can be found at [email protected]. And send me an email, I’ll be happy to talk with you.
Fantastic. Folks, go check it out. Stay tuned, we’ll be right back, and we’re going to go down this rabbit hole even further.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Podcast: Play in new window
