Putting Safety Back in the Line: Fuzzy Bitar on Proportionality, Supervisor Leverage & Point-of-Work AI

Fuzzy Bitar [00:00:17]:

Fuzzy Moussa, how are you doing?

Mousa Yassin [00:00:19]:

Thank you so much for being here.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:00:20]:

Thanks for having me.

Mousa Yassin [00:00:22]:

Background story. When I was 22, 23, I worked for BP and I used to work in their Iraq operation and I worked very closely with the operations team in Ramada. And your name would always come up, you know, Fuzzy Bitar would always come up in a. In a very positive, very positive way as someone who's been very influential on the business in general. And, you know, fast forward, what is it now? You know, 15 years later, having been able to spend time with you and really hear your journey and your story. And I became so passionate about safety in general because I got lucky to have spent time with the safety team when I was working in that operation. And, you know, every time I heard you speak, it taught me a lot and it helped center me and connect me back to why I am in the safety space. So I'm so happy and grateful that you found the time to do this with us.

Mousa Yassin [00:01:08]:

Thank you for being here.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:01:09]:

Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.

Mousa Yassin [00:01:11]:

Thanks, Fuzzy. And honestly, if you can share a few things about your journey, you know, like, how did you get into the space? You know, the passion resonates so clearly. How did you get here?

Fuzzy Bitar [00:01:22]:

Yeah, I mean, I think when you've been. I've been in the industry now, what, probably over 35 years and unfortunately, when, when you go through your work over this time, tragic things happen. And I've had, and I call these pivotal moments in your careers. And the first pivotal moment for me was when I was working in the Gulf of Suez in Egypt, and I was on a diving vessel overseeing a diving operation on the monitor. And we had a diver 50 meters in the water doing, working with subsea. And unfortunately, for whatever reason, his helmet came off and he started taking in water. And very tragically, you could see that he drowned in front of us. Of course, we immediately launched the rescue diver, but by the time he got to him, it was.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:02:14]:

It was too late. So when you see the impact that this has on, first of all, the widowed wife, the fatherless children, it's just devastating. And then of course, on the team itself. So I always thought of myself as a good leader, but my relationship with safety was completely transformed after really understanding the human impact of that. Now, of course, we don't want everyone to have to go through something like that to change their attitude towards safety. So our challenge as safety professionals, safety leaders, or leaders in general, is how do we achieve that without having to go through events like this?

Mousa Yassin [00:02:57]:

And it seems, I'm sure these pivotal moments, unfortunately, must have happened over and over again.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:03:04]:

Well, there's been three in my career, so that was the first one. The second one was when I was working in Indonesia. I was the project manager for our first LNG project in Papua. And we had something close to 10,000 people on the ground from all walks of life, from people from Japan, from Indonesia, from Australia, from the US, UK, and so on. One of our Japanese colleagues was working on one of the towers, and through a miscommunication, a language miscommunication, crossed a barrier and tragically fell through the open through an open grating. And of course, again, you see the impact that that left on the family and the team. And the final pivotal moment for me has been really, these all occurred under sort of my overall responsibility was in the North Sea. When I was head of operations, I looked after BP's global operations.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:03:57]:

And this was a fatality offshore on one of the installations in the North Sea. And they're just simply devastating events that really bring to life and to hone the human impact of safety.

Mousa Yassin [00:04:11]:

Yeah, thanks for sharing that. And you being someone who was in a leadership position, I'm sure you had a lot of time to reflect on the fundamentals of what's happening in operations that lead to these devastating events. And I'm sure throughout your journey, you're. Your understanding kept evolving and maturing. How would you describe what's happening that leads to these. What leads to these within organizations?

Fuzzy Bitar [00:04:36]:

Well, I think one of the most fundamental points is actually, when you think about safety leadership, it's actually not safety leadership, it's just leadership in general. And bp, as you. As you know, we've had our fair share of significant incidents. You know, whether it was Deepwater Horizon or whether it's Texas City. And these have been defining moments in our history, and we've learned a lot from them. And actually, we've shared with the industry many of the lessons learned because we felt it was our responsibility and duty to do so. But I think there's many things that lead to a disaster like that are tragic events. And my strong encouragement is to look beyond the individual, look more at the system.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:05:32]:

What broke down in the system? What broke down. What broke down in our culture that potentially could lead to incidents occurring. So I think the biggest learning over time is how do you create the right environment for safety to thrive. What is the culture that you need to do that? And then how do you design your systems? Because people, as we know, will make mistakes. But how do you design the system so that people, if you, like, feel safe? I don't like the word fail particularly, but how do they feel safe there?

Mousa Yassin [00:06:14]:

And why do you not like this word?

Fuzzy Bitar [00:06:16]:

Well, I think the word fail sometimes is absolute. You know, you, failure is not absolute. You know, I prefer the word maybe falling. When you fall, you get back up again. And I think that's the key with, that's the key here is, you know, we're going to make mistakes. We're human, we're fallible. We need to recognize that people do not come to work, to deliver, to do bad stuff. Right? And of course we're going to make these mistakes and then we're going to learn from them and we're going to get up and we're going to keep going.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:06:45]:

You can't keep dwelling on the past. You have to learn from the past. But you can't keep dwelling on it.

Mousa Yassin [00:06:52]:

Particularly for the individuals who shouldn't feel guilty or like they should be able to get back up and help solve the problem.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:07:00]:

I mean, I do like a little bit of tension, okay, in the system. I could be criticized for that by some people, but people should feel a responsibility when something goes wrong. But I think again, where does that responsibility, accountability lie? We should not always go to the site, to the individual, because often those mistakes are a symptom of a greater…

Mousa Yassin [00:07:25]:

Challenge that's going on, like a greater root cause. I love what you said at the beginning when you said safety. Leadership is just leadership and something like the team and I always talk about, it's like within the world of safety, when you frame things around safety, the mistake or psychological safety issues or errors that happen can cause major incidents and fatalities. But everything that applies to safety is completely relevant when it comes to normal office operation. You know, like the things I learned, I'm like, that's what I did. And it caused psychological problems, like people weren't psychologically safe. And these errors started happening within the business and we started, you know, moving in the wrong direction as a team as well. It's, it's, it's always something that I, that I, that I realized.

Mousa Yassin [00:08:12]:

It's like you're in such a critical area, you're in such a critical realm when you're talking about safety and operational activities. But everything that's learned there is extremely valuable for the organization as a whole.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:08:27]:

It is and I think this is part of the challenge when talking about safety. There's pros and cons to everything and a lot of it depends on the maturity of the organization. The reality is good operations are good safety. So I actually like to think that just safety is inherently part of running a plant operationally, sound, rigorously, what you would call perhaps operational excellence. And of course when you put safety on the side, you could tend to sort of take away sometimes accountability from where it should belong. That is it belongs with the safety team or the safety professionals or whatever. But actually safety is first and foremost a line of accountability. Of course the supporting teams like HSE have a role, but you want safety firmly owned in the line.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:09:23]:

So the con of course is if you don't talk about safety separately, it gets de-emphasized or people don't see it as a priority because you're going to talk about production, you're going to talk about cash costs, right? And if you don't talk about safety, sometimes you do need to sort of have this big focus on safety. So I think you need both, indeed you need that strong line ownership. But also I do feel we need to emphasize safety. Very few organizations I think will shift to a place where it's just inherently built into the day to day of what you do.

Mousa Yassin [00:09:58]:

You know, an interesting thing to explore with you as you're talking about this. We're in a lucky position where we work with oil and gas, but then we also work with companies that are operating data centers, you know, where it's a much faster pace environment, much lower emphasis on safety policies. And of course you start seeing the spectrum of cultures that are embedding safety and everything they talk about, etc. And it sometimes tilts more towards it's outside of operations. It is becoming a bit, a bit like overly maybe emphasized and it being a core part of operational excellence in a way that's part of the culture. And then you see areas that are completely disconnected from thinking about it or caring about it. They're just operational. And what's interesting is it seems like they will eventually move to a place closer to the middle.

Mousa Yassin [00:10:54]:

Do you have a take on that? Like if you think about industries outside of oil and gas, do you see that eventually everyone has to hit a certain level of maturity and safety culture?

Fuzzy Bitar [00:11:04]:

I think, you know, the most important thing is to ensure that whatever you do is proportional to the risk. Because I have seen and I've worked with industries outside of oil and gas as well and sometimes you can over process for example, in activities that perhaps do not need such a high level of checks and balances of control. Okay. And actually, that can make you less safe.

Mousa Yassin [00:11:38]:

As complexity to your operations.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:11:41]:

It’s complexity. You see risk assessments upon risk assessments, and you think by adding paper and process, you're getting safer. But actually, my strong belief, and I have seen this, you know, I've spent a lot of time on the front line myself. I've seen this, is that actually all you're doing is you're making certain you're feeling comfortable with the signatures. But actually, are we managing paper or are we managing the risk? So I think you want to just ensure that whatever, particularly whatever hits the front line is proportional to the risk, is as simple as possible. And one thing to guard against is that when something goes wrong, and as we just talked earlier, inevitably it will, our natural reaction is to add something. Yeah. More and more.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:12:26]:

And I think, you know, someone. I forgot the name, but a pilot once said, you know, perfection isn't when you keep adding stuff, it's actually taking away stuff until there's nothing left that you could take away. And it's as simple as possible. I love that there. So I think the biggest learning for me is just ensuring whatever you do is proportional to the risk. And it works both ways.

Mousa Yassin [00:12:52]:

I love that. And honestly, something that I find interesting, I spent a lot of time with the team at bp, you know, Clint, Craig, Skinner, Graham and their team. And I love the way they frame safety. It taught us a lot as an organization. And they always say they think of it as a pyramid, where you have to start with leadership, make sure there's a culture that's set. Leaders understand that, you know, people will make mistakes. They understand the human principles, they understand how to communicate. And then focus the organization on SIFs, and then kind of start focusing on the people on the ground that are doing the work, the frontline workers.

Mousa Yassin [00:13:25]:

And the majority of the time it's contractors, not internal resources, in a huge proportion. Maybe you can share kind of your philosophy when you think of that. And I'd love us to go a bit into the front line, because especially when it's a very large organization and you have so much happening in parallel, it seems like the people that are operating at risk are these frontline workers. And I want to zoom into them after you share your thoughts.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:13:48]:

Yeah, no good. I mean, you're right and Clint and the team are right that it does start with leadership, because leadership sets the tone that leads to the individual beliefs and behaviors and ultimately the culture of the people in the company. Because I always say leadership drives behavior and behavior drives culture. So the tone is set from the top. And of course that's very important. But also what's critically important is the leaders at every level. Particularly I would even say the site level. Right.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:14:22]:

Because the site level is probably the site leadership, whether it's the site manager or the supervisors. More importantly, because the supervisors are the interface between the front line.

Mousa Yassin [00:14:33]:

Absolutely.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:14:33]:

And management. And they need to have that trusting relationship where there's that connection where you could pass information up and down. Okay. They're where the rubber hits the road. So I think it's all important messaging. But I am, you know, one thing I've learned is choosing the right site leadership is critical to a successful operation because that then defines how you work with the front line. And really the tone and culture of that very localized site. You will see different cultures.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:15:10]:

In BP across the world, we have inconsistency in our cultures and a lot of it is defined by local leadership.

Mousa Yassin [00:15:20]:

Absolutely. A very interesting thing when you talk about supervisors. You know, we're trying. When we keep asking ourselves the question of how we can actually add value to the people on the front line because they're the ones who are at risk. And a lot of what happens in the world today through technology as well, is so far removed from the frontline workers. You know, be it like you're monitoring the contractor himself, the contractor organization, or you're looking at procedures and policies, or you're doing a one size fit all training. But the interesting thing about the supervisor, as you were saying, is creating enablement programs focused on them. You know, how do they understand their level of impact on the team they work with, you know, how to.

Mousa Yassin [00:16:01]:

How their communication can impact culture and psychological safety and what that can do. But also giving them tools where suddenly imagine if that supervisor can record their toolbox talk and that information gets analyzed and broken down and he can be given feedback. Hey, you didn't involve your team enough or did you notice this risk and you have that communication funnel between the organization and the person on the lead in the front line. It sounds like more love and more work needs to be done there, if anything. But do you have any thoughts around that?

Fuzzy Bitar [00:16:31]:

I do, actually. I've thought about this a lot because one of my biggest regrets when I looked after operations globally in BP was that it perhaps did not invest enough time or capability building with the supervisor. So if you think of a site, a typical structure would be you have the site Leader, the site manager. Very important. You have the supervisor and then you have the operators, technicians. Right. And I think we focused on the site managers a lot and that was hugely important. But actually I think even more important and I think many studies have shown that, you know, where you have that strong capability at that supervisor level, actually you make a big difference.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:17:22]:

So I think you're onto something when you want to focus on building capability. Are providing enabling technology to the supervisor to allow them to do their job better is great. Now what we're seeing actually is perhaps a little bit of the opposite is, you know, perhaps we're putting more administrative tasks onto the supervisors, which is taking away time from them being able to spend it with their teams on site.

Mousa Yassin [00:17:50]:

Absolutely.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:17:50]:

Managing the risks. So I think anything that actually frees up their wrench time.

Mousa Yassin [00:17:55]:

Absolutely.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:17:56]:

To focus on, on the day to day supervision, the day to day interactions, the better.

Mousa Yassin [00:18:02]:

Absolutely. Interestingly, the team created this prototype and they said they went to supervisors with some of the customers we work with and they said, just record your toolbox. We've done quite a bit of discovery to think of exactly what you said. How can we do something that they want versus something that's pushed top down to them? And what we told them is once you record it, you're going to see this page that summarizes it, just transcribes it with AI and says, based on the activity that you mentioned, did you consider the following risks? But then the more they do it, it gives them points and shares it with the site manager. And we wanted to do a few per company we worked with and every one of them when we stopped, kept doing it consistently and saying like, has the data been shared? Like just the excitement of them being seen by the site manager and their work being recognized and observed created this motivation and excitement where they wanted to keep going with it, which even made it seem like they're less, they feel less observed or less heard in some cases. I don't know if that's true in your opinion?

Fuzzy Bitar [00:19:05]:

No, I mean again, I think so. I like what you said. There is, first of all, that the user is very much involved in the development of the product because often we produce products thinking what the users want, but actually it doesn't end up being useful to them. So starting with the user is the right place in my view. The second point I would say is whatever you do that, you know, when you have these observations that get reported somehow are used, you know, sometimes they could be used in a way to drive compliance in a disciplined way. And I think that's a mistake. I think, and I've seen it both where you have cameras and so on and, but actually if you do it in coaching and a development way, far more, far more impactful. And then the final point, the real test, the real test of your, of a product is a sustainability of use.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:20:06]:

Often I've seen many products that come out and we get excited by them. You know, VR would be an example of one of them. But actually then do you say, have they been adopted at scale?

Mousa Yassin [00:20:20]:

Exactly.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:20:20]:

And if they haven't, then actually you start questioning is it really impactful or are we just fabricating success 100%?

Mousa Yassin [00:20:29]:

Yeah, I mean VR is a very, very good example. In the very early days when we started working with BP, we quickly killed the VR. Like right now I think like 3% of our customers probably use VR and it was very clear that how can you utilize the beauty of stuff, storytelling and visual cues in a way that's way more scalable. And now mobile is the most used product. But again, like even with that, even with pre job training being where you add value, it still feels like the most impact. We quickly realized that as a team, that's why we're investing. The most impact we can have is if we provide value to people who are at the job. Because no matter how much I train a supervisor or the supervisor learns or we get complacent, things get lost, we forget things.

Mousa Yassin [00:21:11]:

And if you have technology with you or you can identify information on the spot, you can have summaries of SOPs or be able to get microlearning stuff to talk to your team about and be like, look, this is something that happened in an incident a couple months ago and just be able to give them tools to enable them on the job. I think that's the future of learning and value with what AI is bringing to.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:21:34]:

Yeah, I mean I think AI will, I, you know, when before AI, Digital analytics, advanced digital analytics, I think it was useful, it was helpful, but I never really saw it unlock the potential we thought it would. Now I think AI, I think AI will do that or it certainly has the potential to already see evidence of that occurring mainly so far in sort of productivity gains, you know, searching lessons learned and databases, summarizing it, as you say. But actually beginning to see AI adopt to identify unsafe hacks and take action in the moment is also coming on. So I think back to your point though is the key, I believe would be, you know, how do you simplify things as Far as possible, at the point of execution, which is the operator and technicians so that we don't clutter them up. Whatever they get is relevant for what they are doing at the moment. So I think that the key is to simplify at the point of execution.

Mousa Yassin [00:22:43]:

Around them and them actually choosing when to use it. It's a tool that's there to support them, that trusts them, etc. Absolutely. And then if we take a step back, what's on the horizon for you now, Fuzzy? So what are you focused on? What are things you're trying to switch to spend time on?

Fuzzy Bitar [00:22:59]:

Yeah, I mean, I think we have to. One thing again I've learned in operations mainly is that stability of agenda is important and stability of organization is. Is important. But of course companies go through org changes, you know, sometimes, constantly, sometimes too often, some more than others. But I guess the point I would make is when you put an agenda, a strategy together, it takes time to deliver it and sometimes we're impatient, okay. And we want to change it before it has had time to yield the value. Now some people might say, you know, fuzzy, you're old fashioned and you don't like change. But I think what, you know what I've.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:23:51]:

And of course you have to keep updating yourself and you have to keep developing yourself, but you do need to let things simmer, have time, like to take something to embed it. The workforce I had was 40,000 people with contractors and subcontractors trying to embed things like life saving rules or process safety fundamentals takes time and often we're impatient. So I think right now my view would be look and in BP, we are going through some work changes like many companies and again, just value stability, more of an agenda and structure, let it yield its value and then keep updating yourself. Now we do need to be open to new technology like AI and we are and we're bringing a lot of that in and trialing it and seeing what works and what success. Successful with some success. So it's finding the right balance in all of this. Yeah.

Mousa Yassin [00:24:48]:

And by the way, I wouldn't say old fashioned at all when it comes to that. Literally the team we were talking about, we were on off site yesterday, leadership off site. And they call it the shiny object dilemma or the shiny object syndrome. And if you try a new feature, you build a new feature very quickly because you're in a rush in a product business and you deploy it. And naturally when you deploy it, you have to obsess over why it's not working well and keep iterating on it. But the fact that there's another interesting feature you can build, it's very easy for people to say, okay, this didn't yield the things that we're really excited about. Let me just push this new feature out.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:25:25]:

Yeah, Sometimes you have to keep incrementalizing to get it to the right place, 100%.

Mousa Yassin [00:25:31]:

And that's why our product lead says that very well. He says that's why vision is so important, though. Like, if we don't have that anchor of vision because it allows you to say, no, I need to keep iterating because I need to. That's where I want to get to. Versus. I'm just trying to follow successes that might work horizontally and then you're kind of walking, you know, around the mountain without really moving upwards to the goal, you know, from base camp to base camp. But I wouldn't say that's old. If anything, as long as the vision is clear and the objective is, for example, standardization and alignment across the company, it's, let's keep going at it.

Mousa Yassin [00:26:07]:

And at some point you just really see the results and you really understand that it's a product that works. And in your perspective, when it comes to. It's something that I'm always fascinated by when it comes to very, very large organizations. What are the fundamentals that you learned that I'm sure you made many mistakes as well? What did you learn as the approach that you need to follow to make sure of that?

Fuzzy Bitar [00:26:30]:

Yeah, I mean, I have a rule of thumb that I use generally for large organizations. And it really goes around structure, people and process. And first of all, you need to choose the right organizational structure again for the context you're in. There's no perfect organizational structure. Okay. You will choose the one that meets the context that you're in today and the scale and size and complexity of your company. Right. So that's what we certainly learned after Deepwater Horizon and BP in Upstream.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:27:08]:

We went to a functional organization because we needed to do that for the scale and size that we were in and where we were in our journey. The second thing on process is you reach a point of scale where you need a management system, an operating management system to run. And this needs to be more than a book on a shelf. It's got to be something that you live, that you apply day to day, that you monitor yourselves against, you check yourselves against. Are you delivering on the requirements or the standards that you have set yourself, whatever they are. So I think having a robust Management system that is actually implemented rigorously is the second thing. And then the final thing would be our people. And that really is around capability and culture.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:28:00]:

Making sure you've selected the right leaders, the right people, and actually have you set the right culture for both operations and safety to thrive would be key. So I think that's the rule of thumb that I think has stood the test of time for me. Others may have different formulas and I respect that, but those are some of the learnings I certainly took away.

Mousa Yassin [00:28:19]:

Great. And as you were talking, the one thing that I was like, I'd like to understand a bit more. Do you feel like you have to have a certain number of reporting lines at a maximum for this to be successful, particularly when the organization is massive? Or can you apply these management systems to large groups of people?

Fuzzy Bitar [00:28:38]:

You can apply managers to large groups of people and people, you know, and I don't think there's a right or wrong number of reports, but there's again, pros and cons on everything. So I've seen us go through cycles, like many companies where when you have less number of direct reports, you sort of have that control structure. Okay. Now if you go for a large number of direct reports, a flatter organization, it tends, if you'd like, to be more free. But actually one of the downsides is you create a lot more interfaces and interfaces can introduce complexity. So you have to find the right balance. Again, depending on the context that you're in.

Mousa Yassin [00:29:21]:

Yeah. Great. Fuzzy. Honestly, this has been amazing. I really enjoyed every part of the conversation. I know you're spending a lot of time, something you're really passionate about, something you brought up a lot today is leadership. As we close out, what do you recommend an organization like us or any other organization digs into, be it, be it a particular book or philosophy or in our. In our journey to become better leaders and improve our culture within the organization.

Mousa Yassin [00:29:48]:

What advice do you have for us?

Fuzzy Bitar [00:29:50]:

Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure I'm one to give advice, but I think one thing is we never stop learning. You know, I am the. I have learned through my own mistakes or the mistakes that we've made in bp. That's how we are. And we continue to make mistakes. So I think you have to be humble enough to, you know, continuously learn. Recognize that things will go wrong, but you have to learn and make sure that those mistakes teach you what to do differently next time. Okay.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:30:27]:

Is the first thing. So having that learning mindset and that humility to learn, but then have the Confidence and the conviction to achieve your goals, your missions, your agenda, your vision, as you said. So something I would call perhaps confident. Humility is something that I think is a good formula to set as an organizational tone for success.

Mousa Yassin [00:30:55]:

And resilience. I feel I'm not giving up. I mean, with all the failures, it's. It's easy for people to sometimes say, you know, doubt themselves or doubt the vision or doubt the goal. That feel like resilience sticks that comes in with that confidence piece.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:31:08]:

Resilience is important on a personal level, but also on an organizational level. You know, our industry is going through massive change right now. Massive change. And many people are impacted in many different ways. Right. And it's hard, right, because these are, you know, there's a human, human connection to many of these people who are impacted. So I think it's, how do you manage this as elegantly, as gracefully as you can? And you have to watch out for that organizational resilience. Because in my experience, when you have serious accidents or something, it can often be linked or not directly linked, but I would say indirectly linked to perhaps the disruption, the distractions that you're going through.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:31:59]:

We often look for these numerical leading indicators to tell us where the next incident is coming. But actually, I would actually encourage people to think, where is there uncertainty in the organization? If you're divesting an asset, you should think, oh, maybe I'm at higher risk of something going wrong there, for example. So I think you have to look at this more broadly than the sort of technical leading indicator. So. So organizational resilience and of course, your own resilience are critically important.

Mousa Yassin [00:32:28]:

Yeah. Amazing. Fuzzy, thank you so much for joining. I really, really enjoyed this. And yeah, we'll keep in touch. Hopefully we'll talk to you in the near future after a lot of things evolve and you go through the next phase of travel and events.

Fuzzy Bitar [00:32:42]:

Mousa, thank you very much for having me. I hope it was useful today. Thank you.

Mousa Yassin [00:32:46]:

Thank you, Fuzzy.