by Developmental | Sep 20, 2026 | Business Improvement
What a Formula 1 crew and a children’s hospital can teach us about work design
Photo: “2012 Italian GP – Ferrari pit” by Francesco Crippa, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (resized)
In one second, two seconds, perhaps a fraction more, a Formula 1 pit crew changes all four tyres on a car, a feat that’s impossibly slick and vital to the success of the team.
What if that amazing system became a model for your business? How do they achieve that magical process where you can hardly see the individual movements? The team functions as one entity while the process simply flows.
Look closely at a pit stop and you’ll see the ‘spotter’, someone who appears to be doing nothing at all yet is absolutely vital to future success, because that person knows every step of the process intimately and can see when milliseconds are lost.
The fast car is king and the driver gets the kudos, while the team makes it happen because their systems are so well designed.
From the pit stop to the operating theatre
The room was wowed when Dom Thurbon told the story of paediatric cardiac surgeon Professor Martin Elliott, not just because of the many lives he saved but because of his ‘Ah ha’ moment when he likened an operating theatre to a Formula 1 team in the pits, surrounding a car that needs ‘treatment’.
Photo: RDNE Stock Project, Pexels
Babies at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital were too often in trouble during the transfer to intensive care, so Martin turned to the Ferrari team to help work out why. Long story short, the problem fell back on the team: the culture surrounding a senior surgeon had stifled the complaints that might have provided insights, because there was no psychological safety to raise them. Ferrari were scathing, pointing out that their own success was founded on truth.1
The redesigned handover that followed made a measurable difference, with technical errors falling from an average of 5.42 per handover to 3.15, while omissions of information almost halved, from 2.09 to 1.07.2
Nothing about the doctors’ skill had changed; the difference came from how the work was designed and whether people felt safe to speak up.
This really resonated with me, because it’s a powerful reminder that we need to fix systems, not people.
What this means for your workplace
If you want your team to be at the top of their game, it’s time to look at the systems that help them to be ‘in the flow’:
- clear work design pathways that still acknowledge the need for flexibility
- a curated employee journey, from the wording of the job ad through to ongoing mentoring and the appraisal, so that growth is a slick, productive process rather than something left to chance
- a ‘spotter’ who sees the whole system, noticing what’s slowing the team down without judgement and teaching others to notice it too
When I work with a team, I take on the spotter’s role as facilitator, then teach people to take it over themselves, so the system keeps running smoothly long after I’ve stepped back.
When I’ve used the F1 model in my presentations, I’ve watched the ‘Ah ha’ moment arrive for lots of people in the room. There’s a recognition that underpinning success is the care and attention given to the systems that carry everyone through the working day.
Presenting at the AHRI WA Conference 2026
Six systems that prevent psychological harm
My white paper, Systems that Cause Harm in the Workplace: How to Redesign them for Psychological Safety, draws on 22 interviews and four case studies, including my own pilot study, to pinpoint six systems that, working together, can prevent psychological harm.
Who’s your spotter?
A pit stop doesn’t happen by accident, since hours of design, practice and review sit behind every two seconds on the track. The same is true at work, where the systems your people rely on every day will either carry them through or quietly wear them down.
Who in your team can see the whole system, and is it safe for them to say what they notice?
If you’d like to explore the six systems in more depth, the executive summary of my white paper is a great place to start.
Get your Free Executive Summary
Sources
- Dom Thurbon, To Be Honest… (Major Street Publishing, 2026). Story used with permission.
- K. Catchpole et al., ‘Patient handover from surgery to intensive care: using Formula 1 pit-stop and aviation models to improve safety and quality’, Paediatric Anaesthesia, 2007, vol. 17, no. 5, pp. 470-478.
Cover photo: “2012 Italian GP – Ferrari pit” by Francesco Crippa, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 2.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0). Image resized.
Operating theatre photo: Dave Garcia, Pexels. Hospital team photo: RDNE Stock Project, Pexels.
by Developmental | Feb 11, 2021 | Podcasts
Bullying can be subtle or overt. We can adopt the role of victim just as easily as we take on the role of perpetrator or step back and allow it to happen as one of the bystanders, thinking, thank goodness that’s not me. Recognising bullying behaviours is the first step to effect change and create a Safe Workplace.
What does bullying at work look like?
Do you recognise more than one of these behaviours? Do they happen often?
Gossip or rumours
- Being humiliated or ridiculed
- Being ignored or excluded
- Insulting or offensive remarks
- Persistent criticism of your work
- Excessive monitoring of your work
- Threats of violence or abuse
- Having important information withheld from you
- Ordered to do work below your level of competence
- Being exposed to an unmanageable workload
- Repeated reminders of your mistakes
Changing behaviours is possible when you become aware of what’s happening.
Chat to Elene about how you can support effective change.
Being bullied can make you feel quite hopeless because the bully is in control and you never know when they’re going to do or say something to put you down. It’s the uncertainty and the lack of control that makes you feel as if you’re drowing with now way out.
by Developmental | Feb 11, 2021 | Business Improvement
Let me show you how you can empower both your team and in turn yourself to excel in your performance this year. It only takes small focused strategic corrections to see major improvement.
FIVE TIPS for managing performance
‘How can I be PROACTIVE when things aren’t going well?
Resilience is defined as ‘‘the capacity of a group of employees (read players), within a team to manage the everyday pressure of work and remain healthy, to adapt to change, and to be proactive in positioning for future work challenges’’
- Set boundaries.
When pressure was building for James, because a client was very needy and ringing at all hours, he had to set boundaries, step away from his computer late in the evening and tell the client that he wasn’t available until the next morning after a meeting. This gave him space and time for some ‘self care’.
- Have a self care routine
That could be several glasses of wine but that might not bring the benefits of clarity which helps to improve your focus. Exercise increases those lovely endorphins that make us feel good so try to make time for exercise or even a meditation.
- Talk to a friend or colleague
Talk about how to move forward rather than going into victim mode. The blame game might make you temporarily feel better but the feeling doesn’t help you to grow. Be aware of the habits that make you feel good about yourself in the long term.
- Take a few long deep breaths
In fact, take more than a few. See how few breaths you can take in 30 seconds. If you really want to get technical, time your heart rate before you begin and after 30 seconds. I bet your heart rate will be lower. Lower heart rate = feeling calm. Lower blood pressure – living longer.
In the old days we would say, ‘Just count to ten’ and that actually works too to slow down the heart rate and reduce the damaging stress hormones.
- Be kind to yourself
Don’t get into the thought pattern of, I should have done this or that. Acknowledge that there are some things you just can’t change and instead focus on what you can do now.
Winning or Losing
Events last year in the AFL finals (or quarter and semi finals to European
folks), have shown the dramatic effects of the mind games professional players experience with two top Aussie teams getting absolutely hammered recently when it came to their big day. Now with the all important final only one sleep away, which team has got their act together mentally as well as physically?
What difference does your mindset make?
Resilience really jumps out at you on the playing field when your team is down on points but if you stay focused and don’t lose your temper or lose faith in the power of your team mates, you’re more likely to come back on top. Staying focused on the positives and self belief, are the dominant mindset of successful people and successful teams.
Changing the Neural Pathways
Positive thinking and a healthy perspective on change are things that you can grow with a bit of training. That’s not to say that you’ve got rose coloured glasses on but you can train your mind to engage the neural pathways that make the highway to success bigger than the highway to failure. Don’t let your thoughts get sucked down that black hole every time something goes wrong!!
Resilience is defined as ‘‘the capacity of a group of employees (read players), within a team to manage the everyday pressure of work and remain healthy, to adapt to change, and to be proactive in positioning for future work challenges’’
Con- fidence
Improving performance is founded in self-belief and the knowledge that whatever happens, things will turn out fine in the end. If you constantly ‘catastrophize’ and think the worst, that might well be what you get!! We are who we think we are How can we put a stop to the erosion of our true selves and see ourselves in a positive light? I wrote the word confidence with the emphasis on the Con for a reason. The mind controls the body, controlling how the body reacts, and how we feel so we can Con the mind into believing what we want it to believe Accentuate the Positives During a workshop last week, I asked the participants to write down five positive things about themselves. They found this quite challenging and struggled even more when I asked them to say to themselves, “I am wonderful.” Most of the things they wrote were about what they were good at – like – “I am good at cooking.” though one woman was able to say, “I think I’m a good mother.” Can you see the difference? We really struggle to say nice things about ourselves and worry that other people might think we’re self centred and ‘up’ ourselves but there can be a middle ground where you’re quietly confident about who you are and able to say nice things about yourself. The Brain doesn’t know when you’re acting It may be that you don’t actually say negative things but you think them all the time. That’s where the CON comes in! We are who we think we are. You can Con your brain into believing stuff just by thinking it so learn to say nice things to yourself, beginning with thoughts and then say it out loud. If this is a tough thing to do, imagine that your in a TV ad’ or a play and you’re acting a part and practise. The good news is that the brain doesn’t know you’re acting!!! If you pretend to laugh, the brain reacts to that event as if you are really having a good laugh so it releases the good hormones – the endorphins to calm the body Studies were conducted where people had to imagine that they were lifting a weight with their right arm and after a number of sessions, the muscles in that arm were bigger!! Can you believe that!! Amazing.
by Developmental | Feb 11, 2021 | Business Improvement
It only takes small focused strategic corrections to see major improvement. Let me show you how you can empower yourself and in turn your team to improve your performance in 2019.
Your perspective influences all of your decisions.
What will it cost you to lose a key worker? Do you know how productive – or not – your staff are? How do you measure productivity? What are the blocks to productivity?
People are your number one resource and everyone is different. Your manager may be good at their own job but hopeless at developing their team. You like them and don’t want to stop them doing their job but how do you build employee engagement and support growth? Your manager is costing you money because the team needs to become more productive.
Awareness training will go a long way towards identifying behaviours that don’t promote growth but to really get down to the nitty gritty, to identify what’s holding you back I’d recommend the ‘Working with Resilience’ toolkit.
Learn more…..https://elenalennox.com/process/
Estimated cost of replacing staff 20% of annual salary for mid-range positions (earning $30,000 to $50,000 a year). For example, the cost to replace a $40k manager would be $8,000.
Up to 213% of annual salary for highly educated executive positions. For example, the cost to replace a $100k manager is $213,000.
Can you afford to lose a key worker?
What is the value to you to have your team all on the same page, working productively together?
Michael Malone, founder of iiNet said that in order to be creative, we need to be prepared to learn from failure. Positive people recognise that a failure doesn’t mean they suck. They can rationalise the outcome and keep growing but that only happens when employees feel they are listened to.
Fostering a ‘sense of belonging’ means improved Employee Engagement Can you afford to lose staff?
Find out how to work with your team and improve productivity. Call Elena OR -> Just open the chat icon on the right if you have any questions.
Get your team excited. Give them a chance to compare where they are ‘at’ and where the team leader ‘sits’. Find out if they really have that ‘sense of belonging’ using the 180 Resilience at Work evaluation.
