We are coming to the end of another decade of change, turmoil and uncertainty.
Artificial intelligence and robots, block chains and bitcoins, the opioid epidemic, political strife, and workplace violence, international worries and potential conflicts are some of the challenges facing all of us. There is a critical need for people, in all walks of life, to come together to openly and honestly talk about our challenges, share our thinking and learn together. We do not have to be blindly swept along. We can make decisions and do the things that we need to do to help to make the world a better place.
We can make a marked difference!
One important challenge that we can do something about is in improving the safety performance in our own organizations.
For the last 4-5 years, the number of people getting killed at work has been holding steady at around 5,300-5,500 people. Lots of safety professionals and other people are working to improve safety in many ways, but we are stuck at the level of safety compliance. We have to shift our thinking in order to break out of this box and significantly cut the numbers of people getting hurt and killed.
This is not about blaming the people and seeking root cause. It is not about just working on safety. In our complex world, there is so much more going on and there is no single root cause. Organizations are complex, adapting, self-organizing networks of people so our thinking has to shift to fully grasp this complexity and do the things we need to do.
Partner-Centered Leadership
The best way to improve the organization’s safety performance, beyond compliance, is in using Partner-Centered Leadership©, which I have been developing for over 3 decades. I used this approach when I was a Plant Manager for many years and together, the people cut our injury rate by 97%, our emissions dropped by 95% and earning rose by 300%. I further developed this approach in my consulting work over the last two decades. Everywhere this approach is used has resulted in rapid, significant improvements in the organization’s total performance.
In building on the base of safety compliance, the focus of our work is on developing more effective leadership and improving the total performance of the organization. Safety performance is just one aspect of the organization’s performance so when the entire organization improves, safety improves as well.
When I talk about safety. my thinking goes well beyond the traditional safety numbers, training and procedures. It includes ideas about respect and how everyone has agreed to work together. It includes ideas about personal responsibility, integrity and dedication to helping everyone improve. It includes openness, honesty and sharing information abundantly. It includes ideas about the deeper, often hidden patterns of behavior which have a profound impact on the work environment and drive much of the behavior. It includes the fact that the managers and leaders have the largest impact on their organization’s performance. It includes the understanding that managers focus on reliability, stability, predictability and control as they try to maintain the status quo and that leaders focus on the people, change and the future sharing information abundantly, treating people with respect and helping people find meaning in their work. Both good leaders and managers are needed.
It includes spending a significant amount of time in the workplace with the people holding both casual and formal conversations about how the people are doing, asking them how I can help to improve their job, looking for feedback on my own performance, seeking better ways to do things as well as talking about the things that are important for the business to succeed and prosper. It also includes the need to maintain high standards and operating discipline. I spent five hours a day in the plant when I was the Plant Manager, every day for 5 years.
Keeping the Continuous Conversation Going is Key
These conversations are a very important part of building the metaphorical container that holds the organization together and provides guidance for everyone. Sometimes these conversations can get quite intense as we all are searching for the truth and better ways to do things. When people have a good understanding, the vision, the mission, the expectations, the standards of behavior and performance, and their own role in building the success of the whole organization, they have a sense of this container, and they are able to make the decisions they need to make regarding the details about how they can best improve their own work as well as the business. The container, which I call the BOWL, provides the order and focus for the organization and the freedom for the people within the BOWL to learn, grow and improve.
Improvement and change come one conversation at a time. As we talk together, listen and learn, everyone gains new insights and a better understanding of how things are going. As this thinking swirls around the ideas begin to synthesize into concrete pictures and new possibilities emerge. The people co-create their shared future. Everyone is growing and learning together.
Partner-Centered Leadership is the best approach that I know about that is proven to help us break out of compliance and move into much better levels of total organizational performance. Call me to learn more about this way of working and the central tool we use which is the Process Enneagram©. If you really want to make a difference then call us at 716-622-6467.
(We are on the cusp of a New Year, so as you draw up your strategies for improvement in 2020, know that the old way of doing things won’t get you to where you want to be…Give us a call…We’ll get you moving forward to better safety performance.)
This begins with the leaders deciding to create a culture where it is okay and encouraged that people genuinely talk together, listen, help each other, look out for each other and learn together. This is a culture that helps people to be the best they can be and for the organization to get a lot more profitable. It all begins with all of us treating each other with respect.
This is the sort of culture that Eric Hollnagel is talking about in his Safety II work, which is intended to move the organization beyond the traditional top-down safety management. (I’ve written about Safety II in previous articles – it is all good!)
There have been five fatalities since the project began. All five of the fatalities have been “struck-by” incidents. The most recent occurred about October 1st, when a beam slipped off a piece of equipment and struck a worker on the head. One person was hit by a dump truck. Another died when he was hit by a piece of steel equipment. The fourth person died when a rebar cage fell on him, and the fifth person was killed when he was hit in the head by a pipe.
Our businesses, our schools and hospitals, our governments, and not-for-profits, at all levels, are fractured and coming apart. Change is coming faster and faster. So many people seem to be trying to cope by pulling into their shells and trying to push the turmoil all away. The trust levels among all the various groups is very low. So many loud voices are pushing their version of the “truth” that it is almost impossible to tell who is being honest and should be listened to. How do we find the truth?
In thinking about your own place of work, what do you suppose it would be like if people did some of the things mentioned earlier in this newsletter? Do you think that you could begin talking with others about building a more respectful environment? What do you think it would be like if you could openly talk together about the important issues like improving the safety of your job? What would it be like if the managers and supervisors talked frequently about with everyone about how the business was doing the challenges from the competition? What would it be like if you knew that someone was looking out for your back? What would it be like if you felt you were in an environment of trust? What would it be like if people really asked important questions and talked about them? What would it be like if people in upper management asked you for your honest opinion and really listened? That’s called breaking the iceberg and engaging in authentic conversations!
For example, the workers on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform received good recognition for outstanding occupational safety performance (the slips, trips and falls sorts of incidents) just a day or two before the explosion on April 20, 2010, that killed 11 people and injured 17 others. The pressures from top management to get into production led to failures of their process safety management (PSM) systems and processes. Communications were limited because management did not want to hear of more problems; they were driving the production schedule. The fine occupational safety performance masked the PSM deficiencies which are more subtle and invisible to upper managers, unless they are keenly aware of the needs for excellent PSM.
Now we have another example with the mess at Boeing and the 737 Max crashes. Top management was feeling the pressures for market share from Airbus and putting terrific pressures on cost reduction and faster production.
One director of a large organization of various businesses was completely unaware of the problem among their members. This is amazing since the statistics show that problems like bullying and sexual harassment are occurring in way over 50% of the organizations in our country. Apparently none of the businesses in this organization feel it is important to think about and discuss.
There seems to be an interesting disconnect here. OSHA does focus on falls, but what about roadway deaths and homicides? These are serious workplace problems as well. What about the whole problem of workplace violence that begins with the lack of respect (bullying, harassment), and that can lead to serious business problems like poor productivity, high absenteeism, fighting, injuries, murder, and suicide?
This is quite attainable with authentic, courageous leaders who take a stand that this is the sort of place they want to lead. The knowledge and technology are available and broadly known by lots of people so I want to share my own experiences.
This all began with my determination to work on improving respect, civility and safety. As I built credibility and trust with everyone, people began to make improvements in many other areas. Everything got better.
In 2017, Gallup, Inc. published their “State of the Global Workplace,” looking at the levels of productivity around the world. They were concerned about the decline in productivity and wanted to develop a better picture of the situation. High productivity is a key to having a good quality of life, and this relates to how involved people are in their work. They found that worldwide, only about 15% of the people are highly involved. This varies from country to country with the highest levels of involvement in the USA and Canada at 31%. Those businesses in the top quartile of employee involvement in their global study are 21% more profitable and 17% more productive. They also have 70% fewer safety incidents, 40% fewer quality incidents, 41% lower absenteeism, and 59% lower turnover. The positive impact of employees being highly involved is huge.
Most people in management positions focus on systems and processes like running a payroll or production line. They want reliability, predictability, control, and stability, which are important for much of the business. But when they apply this approach to people, things go downhill. This approach results in 71% of the people globally being unengaged and 19% being actively disengaged. Morale, safety and engagement are a mess. Managers engage in managership, and this will not solve the problem of building higher levels of engagement.
The way in which we think about and work with all the people is a key shift that is needed.Leading thinkers like Eric Hollnagel, Tom McDaniel, Beth Lay, Carl Stent, and Ron Gantt are searching for better, more effective ways of engaging with everyone to build on the good things people are doing.
