We are in a high period of change for many families as the schools and colleges have all opened and are under way. Patterns of behavior at home are changing as demands on our time are changing. The ways we depend on each other are changing.
New responsibilities, opportunities and challenges are popping up. It is more clear than ever how much we depend on and need each other. The networks in our lives are always changing.
The patterns at work are also changing as the business activities and demands are changing. There are not enough good, trained people to fill all the openings so the pressure on everyone is going up. Everything at work happens through people so it is critical that we keep everyone engaged in helping to achieve our successes. We need to open up the trust and build interdependence among everyone to keep the information flowing freely. It is clear how important genuine engagement is within our workplaces.
The Need for Building Strong Interdependence
The networks of interdependence spread across our business life as well as our personal lives. When there is a break or disruption in the network, it can have a broad impact. We need to remember that we are in networks and that we need to better understand our roles in them. Everyone depends on us to keep the networks in our organizations and families strong.
One area that is especially vulnerable is safety. The pressures to get the work done quickly pushes people to do a lot of things quickly – cutting the safety corners. This puts a lot of people at risk. Every day on LinkedIn I see pictures of people doing really creative, very unsafe and frightening things. For example:
- A man stands on the forks of a fork truck to get lifted up to a reach high place;
- A man lifts a fork truck with another fork truck to reach a higher shelf;
- Step ladders are used unopened to substitute for a regular ladder;
- Step ladders are placed on stairs and make-shift scaffolding;
- Fork trucks tip over having unbalanced loads or loads that are too heavy;
- Cranes tip over because of poor positioning, or an unexpected shift in the lift;
- People are standing under loads as they are being lifted;
- Materials fall unexpectedly from overhead, narrowly missing a man on the ground;
- A man falls from a beam as he tries to walk across it;
- A woman is killed jumping onto a fork truck to prevent it from tipping over under the huge load;
- Unsupported trenches collapse unexpectedly trapping and killing the people;
- Etc.
I expect that there are lots of things going on that lead to repetitive motion injuries; these just don’t show up in the Linkedin videos. There is also probably a lot of process safety management work being short circuited. For example, I wonder about drift in the technology and hope people are staying on top of it.
People are putting themselves at risk in all sorts of ways. I keep asking why and what are they not thinking about. Most people are not stupid or trying to get hurt. They just are going off in a half-baked way to get the job done in any way they can.
They are totally unconscious that they are an important part of networks at work and at home. Many are the bread winners and if they get hurt or killed, they will cause their loved ones terrible hurt and trouble. The indifference of so many people in supervisory or management positions to this sort of behavior is terrible.
More OSHA rules and regulations do not seem to be the answer. There are already plenty of rules and regulations which managers, supervisors, and workers disregard. There is a whole safety consulting industry offering all sorts of ideas, classes, training, etc., yet this unsafe stuff just keeps happening. Some businesses have taken responsibility and do not have this sort of behavior, but how do we get all the rest on board?
I wonder what would happen if the spouses and children of those doing these sorts of unsafe behaviors could see their loved one putting themselves at risk. Do you suppose that they would speak some sense to them and help them to understand their full responsibilities? People are taking lots of videos so there is material that could be sent home.
The rapid growth of active shooter incidents was one of the main areas of concern. The FBI and other experts gave talks about this, with their main focus on the active shooter incident itself. Most active shooter situations are conducted by men. Most of these occur in places of business. There is no typical profile for these people who come from all walks of life.
The more people who are involved in thinking about, looking at and helping each other, the more likely that the organization’s safety performance will be outstanding. A key to having the people come together as partners in helping each other begins with respect. I think that most of us want to be treated respectfully and feel valued by each other; I know that I do. We all have jobs to do and our work quality and productivity need to be as good as we can do. We each need to be held to high standards and keep learning and growing in our knowledge and understanding. We can achieve this while treating each other respectfully, honestly sharing our knowledge and insights, asking for help when we need it, and giving a helping hand.
We help to knock down the walls that have grown up between people and groups so that the arguments and fighting stop and they learn to value and help each other. We help to drill holes in the silos of production, HR, maintenance, and finance so that people can talk to each other to get the information they need to do their jobs. We help to remove the barriers that are restricting the up and down flow of critical information, improving its accuracy, so the organization can function more easily. We help to remove the barriers between the people writing rules and procedures (the work-as-imagined) and those doing the front-line work (the work-as-done). We help people to see that most of the injuries and incidents are the result of patterns and processes that need improvement and shift away from a culture of blame and criticism.
Changes are coming fast and furious. President Trump is moving ahead on deregulations and removing barriers to improve our businesses, so we’ll probably see a lot of changes show up in our workplaces. Some will be positive and others will not. It is our responsibility to work together and make all these changes as good as possible.
Almost every day I see people post on LinkedIn, engaging in awful safety practices. Some are so ridiculous that they could be funny – except that people are getting hurt. Some workers seem quite content to endanger their lives and co-workers seem to be so unaware of the risks around them – that it is unbelievable!
A recent Gallup study conducted over several years, covering about 150 countries, revealed that only about 15% of the people were actively involved in their work and that another 15% were actively opposing their managers and supervisors. The other 70% must be just doing as little as possible and not helping or looking out for each other. We are better in the USA, but not by much.
One of the most effective things that I did in stressful and changing times like these was to follow these three rules:
There are three important things that everyone needs to do to help to keep the safety performance and productivity high:
In your tool box meetings or shift start meetings, consider expanding your thinking to imagine how someone could get killed in work planned for the day. This is beyond what most groups do, but is an excellent way to prevent an unlikely tragedy. Talk together about how a fatality could happen. Even the most unlikely scenario will happen one day. Talk about what is in place that will prevent the fatality if the event should happen. Then ask yourselves if these preventative measures are good enough to really protect you. If not, then consider what you need to do so that you will be protected from being killed if the unlikely event should happen.
A wicked question is one where it is so complex that there is no final answer. We work to the best solution we can, which works for some period of time, then we have to revisit it again as conditions change. (The wicked question keeps repeating, sometimes reminding us of a bad penny – that keeps showing up at inopportune times!)
We need to approach this from the whole systems perspective since everything is connected to everything else. Experience shows that if we try to just fix one part of the system or another, we will wind up making other parts worse.
Recognize Einstein’s Words of Wisdom: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.“
OSHA recently reported that there were about 5,190 workplace fatalities in 2017. This is almost a 7% increase over 2016. I expect that this partly reflects the higher levels of business activity and more people who are working. Still, every single number reflects a personal tragedy – the death of a worker.
In 2001, Jim C. Collins wrote the best-selling management book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t. It described how companies transition from being good companies to great companies and how most companies fail to make that transition. The author found that focused leadership, clear expectations and alignment, and staying true to their field of major competence was key. There were other factors about greatness that showed up too – like Leaders being humble, and high employee engagement – employees being in tune with the company’s purpose, mission, endeavors, goals – not just the business side of things, but on the people side of the enterprise. Line organizations integrated information; people were involved, included and respected – because getting the right people in the right places was deemed as essential too. Entire organizations were communicating, collaborative, and cooperating.
