I am becoming more and more focused on changing the safety culture of organizations. There are lots of training programs and fine instructors teaching all aspects of safety technology. Yet our organizations still have to deal with a lot of people getting hurt.
Most people don’t come to work expecting to get hurt. Most organizations want people to work safely. I think a large part of our challenge to moving towards safety excellence is the way our organization’s culture influences how people decide to work together, or not.
Most of the safety people I’ve come to know approach organizations as if they are mechanical things to manipulate. Organizations are structured in functions. Knowledge is structured in pieces. People are narrowly skilled. Motivation is based on external factors. Information is shared on a need to know basis. Change is a troubling problem. People work in prescribed roles seeing only their part of the work. If change is needed people are moved around like chairs. Training is provided in abundance. Safety programs are set up as step-by-step processes where things are arranged in a prescribed sequence.
There is a big emphasis on teaching people what to do and then expecting them to do only as they are told…as if they checked their brain at the locker.
In my experience, organizations are not mechanical things to be manipulated, but rather they behave more like a living system. Knowledge is seamless. Organizations are seen as a whole system. Work is flexible and without boundaries. People are multi-skilled and continuously learning. Motivation is based on links to the whole system. Information flows openly and freely. Change is happening all the time, and seen as an opportunity for improvement. People work beyond their roles. People see their work in relation to the whole, knowing and doing what needs to be done. People work safely because they want to go home safe at the end of the day. They understand the larger expectation of the business.
Organizations are complex adaptive systems. The tools to work in complex adaptive systems are different from those that work in organizations seen as machines. When the tools of complexity are used, things work much more effectively, people become engaged in working towards the success of the whole system and change can happen quickly.
When I began to learn about chaos and complexity science, I saw that this was the way to handle the high level of change. As we shared more and more information, helped people to really understand the nature of the business and their important roles in its success, and as we built more trust and interdependence, people began to step forward to help us take on all the changes that poured into our organization. I did not have to do everything myself, which was a great relief.
It was fascinating to see the contrast between the usual, linear, mechanical approach to safety and The Complexity Leadership Process (CLP) that I discussed at my display table. A large number of people talked with me at my display table about The Complexity Leadership Process which was new to all of them. Many could not believe how quickly and dramatically the safety performance improved using the CLP. At one level the CLP looks like a simple employee involvement program, yet it is much more and also different at a deeper level than the usual employee involvement processes. One fellow, who recently wrote a book about changing the safety culture to excellence just brushed the CLP aside as something he’d already seen. The approach to safety excellence he’s written about involves 43 linear steps that take 3-5 times as long as the CLP and require a very high level of persistence and determination over many years.
I’ll be participating as a sponsor for the Conference Program Brochure. I’ll have an ad in the Brochure as well as a display table. My tag line is “When safety gets right, everything else gets right”. Since I am not an official speaker, I am going to use my display table as an opportunity to talk with people about the 
This Blog is focused on my new book, The Process Enneagram©: Essays on Theory and Practice. I am the editor for this book that was just published by Emergent Publications. It can be purchased directly from their 
Overlap: All three of these areas of safety are often lumped together as SHE, EHS or HSE. When we lump these all together we can miss things so I think it is useful to see these three overlapping, interacting areas of our safety and health work. There is some overlap between Occupational Safety and Occupational Health like the proper selection and use of respirators. There is some area of overlap between Occupational Health and Process Safety like preventing chronic exposures to toxic chemicals. There is some overlap between Process Safety and Occupational Safety like locating trailers and offices away from operating areas using large quantities of flammable and explosive materials.
