There are people who teach you things, and then there are people who change the way you think. Jeff White is the latter. When I sat down with him for this episode of From Boots to Boardroom, I knew we'd cover human performance — the operating philosophy he's spent decades championing. What I didn't expect was how clearly his story would illustrate the very principles he teaches: that the best ideas come from listening, that systems matter more than blame, and that valuing people isn't just the right thing to do — it's the smartest business decision you can make.
I need to be upfront about something. Jeff White joined me at Think Power Solutions at what was, without question, the lowest moment in the company's history. We had been involved in an incident that led to a loss of life. We had just lost a five-year, $60 million contract with Entergy. Nobody — and I mean nobody — would have touched me with a hundred-foot pole. But Jeff saw a young entrepreneur who wanted to do right by his people, and he stepped in to help. The culture he helped build at Think Power set the stage for everything that followed, and his influence continues to shape KYRO to this day.
When I called him an expert on the show, he corrected me immediately: "Jeff White is not an expert. Jeff White is a practitioner." That distinction tells you everything you need to know about the man.
Jeff's career in the electric utility industry began in 1978 at Alabama Power Company. His first tools weren't lineman's pliers — they were a mop and a broom. He started as a "helper," which he cheerfully describes as "a real nice word for janitor."
He'd spent about a year and a half at junior college but went to work at the power company because they were paying significantly better than a coaching or teaching position would have. From there, he progressed through the ranks in a way that gave him an extraordinarily well-rounded understanding of the business: helper to tree trimmer, tree trimmer to truck operator, truck operator to apprentice lineman in both transmission and distribution, and finally to journeyman lineman in both disciplines.
While working as a journeyman — climbing poles during the day — Jeff decided to go back to school. Two nights a week and some weekends, for three years straight without a break, he sat in a classroom for four hours after a full day of line work until he earned a bachelor's degree in business. In 1990, there weren't many journeyman linemen with four-year degrees. That credential opened doors, and Jeff chose to walk through the one marked "Safety."
He spent 13 years in safety and health at Alabama Power before taking a supervisor role at Gulf Power in Panama City Beach, Florida — "a tough job, but somebody's got to do it," he joked. From there, he moved to Mississippi Power as manager of safety and skills training before being tapped by Southern Company leadership for the role that would define the next chapter of his career: introducing and integrating human performance across the non-nuclear side of one of America's largest utilities.
You'll hear several acronyms in this space — HP (human performance), HU (used in the nuclear world), HOP (human and organizational performance), and HPI (human performance improvement). Jeff thinks of them all as the same foundational idea: an operating philosophy that recognizes people make mistakes because we're human, and that examines a different way of thinking — away from blame and toward learning.
Here's a stat that stopped me in my tracks when I first learned it from Jeff: the average human being makes three to five mistakes every hour. Most of them are inconsequential — we don't even notice. But under stress, pressure, or fatigue, that number jumps to 12 to 15 mistakes per hour. When you're making that many errors, the odds of one cascading into something catastrophic increase dramatically.
As Jeff's mentor, Dr. Todd Conklin — one of the foremost minds in human performance worldwide — used to say: "You cannot give out enough gift cards to prevent a human from making a mistake."
The question isn't whether people will err. The question is what systems, tools, and culture do we build around them so that when they do err, the consequences are manageable?
Jeff walked through the foundational principles of human performance, and each one reshaped how I think about running organizations.
Humans are fallible. This is principle number one and arguably the most important. We will make mistakes. Period. The goal isn't to eliminate human error — that's impossible. The goal is to design systems that account for it.
You get great performance when you value employees. Encourage them. Reward them. Thank them. Involve them in decisions. Jeff shared something that stuck with me: throughout his career, he'd heard employees say they felt like "a gun was pointed at them with the hammer cocked," just waiting for them to make a mistake so they could be disciplined. Whether that perception was accurate didn't matter — the fact that employees felt that way directly affected their performance. You'll get enough work out of someone to keep their job, but you won't get discretionary effort from a person who feels hunted.
What the organization values drives employee behavior. In the utility industry, the company values getting the lights on and keeping them on — speed, speed, speed. Does that influence linemen's behavior in the field? Absolutely. There's nothing wrong with efficiency and productivity, but organizations need to make sure they also visibly value the wellbeing of the people delivering that performance.
You prevent future unwanted events by learning, not blaming. This is the principle that first hooked Jeff — and it's the one that should hook every leader reading this. Why do we see the same types of accidents year after year? Because we focus on blame and discipline instead of learning. Jeff's boss at Southern Company, Mr. Billy Ball, introduced human performance to the non-nuclear side precisely because he was tired of seeing the same incidents repeat. His insight was profound: "We've got great employees. They're making the same mistakes. It's not them — it's us. We're not learning."
Catastrophic failures can happen anywhere — not just in the field. Jeff made a point that broadened my perspective considerably. Human performance isn't just about lineman safety. A human error in accounting and finance can be catastrophic too. I can vouch for that — about five years ago, Think Power nearly lost $10 million due to exactly that kind of breakdown. HP applies everywhere humans work, regardless of industry or job title.
Jeff shared a story that perfectly illustrates the human performance philosophy in action — and it happened to him personally.
Late one night, he stopped at a gas station. His relative pumped the gas and went inside for a drink and crackers. While Jeff sat in the driver's seat, the man in the truck behind him honked his horn. Feeling the pressure to be courteous and move out of the way, Jeff put the car in drive and pulled forward — only to feel a tug. The gas hose was still in the tank.
Embarrassed, he went inside to confess. The attendant barely blinked. Turns out, this happens roughly once per month at every gas station in America.
Here's the human performance lesson: the industry didn't try to fix the human. They didn't put up bigger signs or station attendants at every pump. Instead, they fixed the system — installing breakaway connectors in the hoses so that when someone inevitably drives off, the hose disconnects cleanly, no gas spills, and the damage is limited to embarrassment and about $125.
That's HP in a nutshell. You don't try to eliminate human error. You design systems so that when errors happen — and they will — the consequences are minimized.
When Jeff described error prevention tools, he framed them around a counterintuitive idea: they're designed to slow you down.
From kindergarten on, we're trained to do everything fast — read fast, walk fast, work fast. Everything is measured by speed and time. Error prevention tools push against that instinct. A one-minute timeout before a critical task. A checklist. A pre-job brief. Even something as simple as putting your keys and wallet in the same place every night — these are all human performance tools.
The purpose isn't to make work slower. It's to create a momentary pause where your brain can engage, where you can confirm that what you're about to do is exactly what you intend to do — no more, no less. And the great disruptor of that pause? Distractions. Jeff asked a question that resonated deeply: "How many times have you been doing something perfectly and you got distracted, and then you realized you forgot to do something or did it wrong?"
In today's world of constant notifications, distracted driving, and information overload, that question has never been more relevant.
This is a question that doesn't get discussed enough. Safety and human performance fit hand in glove, but they're not the same thing.
Jeff illustrated the distinction with a powerful story from his early days as a lineman in the late 1970s and 80s. Back then, linemen did not put their safety strap around the pole until they reached the top — whether that was 20 feet or 100 feet. If you belted in while climbing, the other linemen would ridicule you. That was the culture. It took years of cut-out falls — linemen losing their grip and falling — before someone had the courage to say: "We're better than this. We can eliminate this type of accident entirely."
That's safety — identifying physical hazards and putting protections in place.
Human performance goes broader. It asks: in what ways can human error lead to unwanted outcomes across any function of the organization? It could be a lineman working energized equipment, or it could be a billing error that mistreats a customer. Jeff shared an example from Southern Company where every employee followed the book perfectly, yet the system was designed in a way that allowed a catastrophic customer service failure. No one was to blame. The system had gaps. It took a human performance approach — asking "how did we get here?" instead of "who did this?" — to find and fix the root cause.
I asked Jeff the question everyone who knows us has wondered: how did an immigrant from India who runs an AI company and a self-described redneck from Alabama who doesn't use AI work so well together?
His answer was classic Jeff: "I think we have a lot more in common than we have differences." Our mutual friend Kent Peterson, who introduced us, had warned Jeff: "This guy's from India, he's hard to understand, and he talks real fast — but he's really, really smart." Jeff said he was intrigued by my energy. I've always been intrigued by his wisdom and that unmistakable Southern dialect.
The truth is, our partnership worked because we practiced what we preached. We listened to each other. We valued what the other brought to the table. We didn't let surface-level differences get in the way of a shared mission: building organizations where people are valued, where learning trumps blame, and where everyone goes home safe at the end of the day.
When I asked Jeff what he'd do with a day in the Oval Office and full control of Congress, his answer surprised me: eliminate all taxes for seniors. His reasoning was thoughtful — by 65, most people have given a lot, they're often on fixed income, and the tax code discourages many of them from continuing to contribute even when they have plenty to offer. Having seen firsthand what Jeff contributed to Think Power and KYRO well into his retirement years, I can't argue with his logic.
And the one global problem he'd solve? Child trafficking. "I have a tender heart when it comes to children," he said quietly. "When you start hurting children, you start really bothering me." It's a reminder that behind the frameworks and principles, Jeff White is driven by something much simpler: a deep, unwavering care for people — especially those who can't protect themselves.
Jeff left us with a final thought that I want every reader to sit with: "Human performance is not smoke and mirrors. It is not the marketing ploy of the day or the month. It's not the magical one or anything. It's just a different way of thinking that recognizes that we're human. We're just human. And we're trying to do the best we can."
That's it. That's the whole philosophy. And in my experience — having built two companies on its foundation — it works.
Jeff White's journey from a mop and broom at Alabama Power to advising boardrooms and transforming organizational cultures is as authentic a Boots to Boardroom story as you'll ever hear. He didn't just climb poles and earn degrees. He changed the way an entire industry thinks about mistakes, blame, and learning. And he did it with humility, a Southern drawl, and a genuine belief that people — when valued and supported — will always rise to the occasion.
Thank you, Jeff, for everything you've done for me, for Think Power, for KYRO, and for everyone who's had the good fortune to learn from you.
From Boots to Boardroom shares the journey of those who power America — from the job site to the boardroom, leading with grit, tenacity, empathy, and vision. Not every leader sits in a corner office.
Listen to the full episode with Jeff White and subscribe to the podcast here.
To contact Jeff White for human performance consulting, reach him at jeffwhiteconsulting@gmail.com.
This episode sponsored by KYRO AI: Digitize work and maximize profits. Learn more at kyro.ai
There are people who teach you things, and then there are people who change the way you think. Jeff White is the latter. When I sat down with him for this episode of From Boots to Boardroom, I knew we'd cover human performance — the operating philosophy he's spent decades championing. What I didn't expect was how clearly his story would illustrate the very principles he teaches: that the best ideas come from listening, that systems matter more than blame, and that valuing people isn't just the right thing to do — it's the smartest business decision you can make.
I need to be upfront about something. Jeff White joined me at Think Power Solutions at what was, without question, the lowest moment in the company's history. We had been involved in an incident that led to a loss of life. We had just lost a five-year, $60 million contract with Entergy. Nobody — and I mean nobody — would have touched me with a hundred-foot pole. But Jeff saw a young entrepreneur who wanted to do right by his people, and he stepped in to help. The culture he helped build at Think Power set the stage for everything that followed, and his influence continues to shape KYRO to this day.
When I called him an expert on the show, he corrected me immediately: "Jeff White is not an expert. Jeff White is a practitioner." That distinction tells you everything you need to know about the man.
Jeff's career in the electric utility industry began in 1978 at Alabama Power Company. His first tools weren't lineman's pliers — they were a mop and a broom. He started as a "helper," which he cheerfully describes as "a real nice word for janitor."
He'd spent about a year and a half at junior college but went to work at the power company because they were paying significantly better than a coaching or teaching position would have. From there, he progressed through the ranks in a way that gave him an extraordinarily well-rounded understanding of the business: helper to tree trimmer, tree trimmer to truck operator, truck operator to apprentice lineman in both transmission and distribution, and finally to journeyman lineman in both disciplines.
While working as a journeyman — climbing poles during the day — Jeff decided to go back to school. Two nights a week and some weekends, for three years straight without a break, he sat in a classroom for four hours after a full day of line work until he earned a bachelor's degree in business. In 1990, there weren't many journeyman linemen with four-year degrees. That credential opened doors, and Jeff chose to walk through the one marked "Safety."
He spent 13 years in safety and health at Alabama Power before taking a supervisor role at Gulf Power in Panama City Beach, Florida — "a tough job, but somebody's got to do it," he joked. From there, he moved to Mississippi Power as manager of safety and skills training before being tapped by Southern Company leadership for the role that would define the next chapter of his career: introducing and integrating human performance across the non-nuclear side of one of America's largest utilities.
You'll hear several acronyms in this space — HP (human performance), HU (used in the nuclear world), HOP (human and organizational performance), and HPI (human performance improvement). Jeff thinks of them all as the same foundational idea: an operating philosophy that recognizes people make mistakes because we're human, and that examines a different way of thinking — away from blame and toward learning.
Here's a stat that stopped me in my tracks when I first learned it from Jeff: the average human being makes three to five mistakes every hour. Most of them are inconsequential — we don't even notice. But under stress, pressure, or fatigue, that number jumps to 12 to 15 mistakes per hour. When you're making that many errors, the odds of one cascading into something catastrophic increase dramatically.
As Jeff's mentor, Dr. Todd Conklin — one of the foremost minds in human performance worldwide — used to say: "You cannot give out enough gift cards to prevent a human from making a mistake."
The question isn't whether people will err. The question is what systems, tools, and culture do we build around them so that when they do err, the consequences are manageable?
Jeff walked through the foundational principles of human performance, and each one reshaped how I think about running organizations.
Humans are fallible. This is principle number one and arguably the most important. We will make mistakes. Period. The goal isn't to eliminate human error — that's impossible. The goal is to design systems that account for it.
You get great performance when you value employees. Encourage them. Reward them. Thank them. Involve them in decisions. Jeff shared something that stuck with me: throughout his career, he'd heard employees say they felt like "a gun was pointed at them with the hammer cocked," just waiting for them to make a mistake so they could be disciplined. Whether that perception was accurate didn't matter — the fact that employees felt that way directly affected their performance. You'll get enough work out of someone to keep their job, but you won't get discretionary effort from a person who feels hunted.
What the organization values drives employee behavior. In the utility industry, the company values getting the lights on and keeping them on — speed, speed, speed. Does that influence linemen's behavior in the field? Absolutely. There's nothing wrong with efficiency and productivity, but organizations need to make sure they also visibly value the wellbeing of the people delivering that performance.
You prevent future unwanted events by learning, not blaming. This is the principle that first hooked Jeff — and it's the one that should hook every leader reading this. Why do we see the same types of accidents year after year? Because we focus on blame and discipline instead of learning. Jeff's boss at Southern Company, Mr. Billy Ball, introduced human performance to the non-nuclear side precisely because he was tired of seeing the same incidents repeat. His insight was profound: "We've got great employees. They're making the same mistakes. It's not them — it's us. We're not learning."
Catastrophic failures can happen anywhere — not just in the field. Jeff made a point that broadened my perspective considerably. Human performance isn't just about lineman safety. A human error in accounting and finance can be catastrophic too. I can vouch for that — about five years ago, Think Power nearly lost $10 million due to exactly that kind of breakdown. HP applies everywhere humans work, regardless of industry or job title.
Jeff shared a story that perfectly illustrates the human performance philosophy in action — and it happened to him personally.
Late one night, he stopped at a gas station. His relative pumped the gas and went inside for a drink and crackers. While Jeff sat in the driver's seat, the man in the truck behind him honked his horn. Feeling the pressure to be courteous and move out of the way, Jeff put the car in drive and pulled forward — only to feel a tug. The gas hose was still in the tank.
Embarrassed, he went inside to confess. The attendant barely blinked. Turns out, this happens roughly once per month at every gas station in America.
Here's the human performance lesson: the industry didn't try to fix the human. They didn't put up bigger signs or station attendants at every pump. Instead, they fixed the system — installing breakaway connectors in the hoses so that when someone inevitably drives off, the hose disconnects cleanly, no gas spills, and the damage is limited to embarrassment and about $125.
That's HP in a nutshell. You don't try to eliminate human error. You design systems so that when errors happen — and they will — the consequences are minimized.
When Jeff described error prevention tools, he framed them around a counterintuitive idea: they're designed to slow you down.
From kindergarten on, we're trained to do everything fast — read fast, walk fast, work fast. Everything is measured by speed and time. Error prevention tools push against that instinct. A one-minute timeout before a critical task. A checklist. A pre-job brief. Even something as simple as putting your keys and wallet in the same place every night — these are all human performance tools.
The purpose isn't to make work slower. It's to create a momentary pause where your brain can engage, where you can confirm that what you're about to do is exactly what you intend to do — no more, no less. And the great disruptor of that pause? Distractions. Jeff asked a question that resonated deeply: "How many times have you been doing something perfectly and you got distracted, and then you realized you forgot to do something or did it wrong?"
In today's world of constant notifications, distracted driving, and information overload, that question has never been more relevant.
This is a question that doesn't get discussed enough. Safety and human performance fit hand in glove, but they're not the same thing.
Jeff illustrated the distinction with a powerful story from his early days as a lineman in the late 1970s and 80s. Back then, linemen did not put their safety strap around the pole until they reached the top — whether that was 20 feet or 100 feet. If you belted in while climbing, the other linemen would ridicule you. That was the culture. It took years of cut-out falls — linemen losing their grip and falling — before someone had the courage to say: "We're better than this. We can eliminate this type of accident entirely."
That's safety — identifying physical hazards and putting protections in place.
Human performance goes broader. It asks: in what ways can human error lead to unwanted outcomes across any function of the organization? It could be a lineman working energized equipment, or it could be a billing error that mistreats a customer. Jeff shared an example from Southern Company where every employee followed the book perfectly, yet the system was designed in a way that allowed a catastrophic customer service failure. No one was to blame. The system had gaps. It took a human performance approach — asking "how did we get here?" instead of "who did this?" — to find and fix the root cause.
I asked Jeff the question everyone who knows us has wondered: how did an immigrant from India who runs an AI company and a self-described redneck from Alabama who doesn't use AI work so well together?
His answer was classic Jeff: "I think we have a lot more in common than we have differences." Our mutual friend Kent Peterson, who introduced us, had warned Jeff: "This guy's from India, he's hard to understand, and he talks real fast — but he's really, really smart." Jeff said he was intrigued by my energy. I've always been intrigued by his wisdom and that unmistakable Southern dialect.
The truth is, our partnership worked because we practiced what we preached. We listened to each other. We valued what the other brought to the table. We didn't let surface-level differences get in the way of a shared mission: building organizations where people are valued, where learning trumps blame, and where everyone goes home safe at the end of the day.
When I asked Jeff what he'd do with a day in the Oval Office and full control of Congress, his answer surprised me: eliminate all taxes for seniors. His reasoning was thoughtful — by 65, most people have given a lot, they're often on fixed income, and the tax code discourages many of them from continuing to contribute even when they have plenty to offer. Having seen firsthand what Jeff contributed to Think Power and KYRO well into his retirement years, I can't argue with his logic.
And the one global problem he'd solve? Child trafficking. "I have a tender heart when it comes to children," he said quietly. "When you start hurting children, you start really bothering me." It's a reminder that behind the frameworks and principles, Jeff White is driven by something much simpler: a deep, unwavering care for people — especially those who can't protect themselves.
Jeff left us with a final thought that I want every reader to sit with: "Human performance is not smoke and mirrors. It is not the marketing ploy of the day or the month. It's not the magical one or anything. It's just a different way of thinking that recognizes that we're human. We're just human. And we're trying to do the best we can."
That's it. That's the whole philosophy. And in my experience — having built two companies on its foundation — it works.
Jeff White's journey from a mop and broom at Alabama Power to advising boardrooms and transforming organizational cultures is as authentic a Boots to Boardroom story as you'll ever hear. He didn't just climb poles and earn degrees. He changed the way an entire industry thinks about mistakes, blame, and learning. And he did it with humility, a Southern drawl, and a genuine belief that people — when valued and supported — will always rise to the occasion.
Thank you, Jeff, for everything you've done for me, for Think Power, for KYRO, and for everyone who's had the good fortune to learn from you.
From Boots to Boardroom shares the journey of those who power America — from the job site to the boardroom, leading with grit, tenacity, empathy, and vision. Not every leader sits in a corner office.
Listen to the full episode with Jeff White and subscribe to the podcast here.
To contact Jeff White for human performance consulting, reach him at jeffwhiteconsulting@gmail.com.
This episode sponsored by KYRO AI: Digitize work and maximize profits. Learn more at kyro.ai
Hari Vasudevan, PE, is a serial entrepreneur and engineer focused on AI-driven solutions for utilities, construction, and storm response. As Founder and CEO of KYRO AI, he leads the development of AI-powered software that helps utility, vegetation, and field service teams digitize operations, improve storm response and restoration, and reduce operational risk. He also serves as Vice Chair and Strategic Advisor for the Edison Electric Institute’s Transmission Subject Area Committee and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering with professional engineering licensure in multiple states.
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