Error Traps, Learning from Normal Work & Marcin Nazaruk’s new book

Are your workplace observations calibrated to error traps and workplace design, or just superficial behaviours?

A couple of extracts from Marcin Nazaruk‘s new book ‘Learning from Normal Work’.

This part reflects on a well-intentioned, but rather shallow, workplace observation from John (using the Walk-Through / Talk-Through method…this method and others will be covered on my pod soon):

· Image 1 highlights John’s first attempt, which shows some insights into error traps

·        Error traps are situations and conditions that make work more difficult and/or increase the chance of errors

·        Providing feedback on John’s findings, Sarah remarked, respectfully and carefully “The error traps you’ve listed, lack of awareness, not paying attention, selecting the wrong tool, these are not actually error traps. They’re more like behaviours”

·        And these types of observations are “a common mistake for people doing a walk-through talk-through for the first time”

·        For instance – “Instead of saying ‘lack of awareness’, think about what process might lead to that lack of awareness … [like] does the training cover everything the workers need to know?”

·        Or, for not paying attention, “ask yourself what might be competing for their attention. Is there someone asking them questions while they work because they need help?”

·        Or “Using hands to push the suspended load is certainly an unsafe behaviour, but why do they put their hands there? Maybe it gives them better control over the load”

·        These reflections are argued to help push the focus to understanding context – why work is done in a certain way, away from purely “what they’re doing wrong”, or doing in a literal sense

·        Image 2 covers John’s second attempt – he reflects that while “dangerous behaviours, like pushing the spool during lifting, would usually result in disciplinary action”, but “after his walk-through talk-throughs, he could see that these actions were simply adaptations to get around the error traps of the job”

· And therefore, instead of “punishing the workers, he needed to understand these error traps and offer improvements and solutions instead of discipline”

Ref: Learning from Normal Work. (2025). Marcin Nazaruk.