Writing a Book about the Process Enneagram

August 10, 2026 By Leave a Comment

One of the unexpected pleasures of this season is knowing that my latest book endeavor (co-authored with Sebastian Wolf Siebzehnruebl) is soon to be on its way to a publisher.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to co-author this book about the process enneagram, not because it marks an ending, but because, at 91, it represents another step in a journey that has occupied much of my professional life and I enjoy lifelong learning.

For many years, my work has centered on a question that continues to challenge organizations everywhere: How do leaders solve problems that seem too complex, too interconnected, or too deeply rooted for conventional approaches to work?

That question led me to develop a practical framework for complex problem-solving – one designed to help leaders of organizations untangle issues that often resist traditional solutions. It is called the Process Enneagram. Time and again, I’ve seen leaders use this approach and facilitated framework to make progress on challenges that once felt overwhelming, producing results that are both meaningful and sustainable.

This new book brings together many of those years of learning, observation, and experience. My hope is that it will make these ideas more accessible to leaders and organizations seeking better ways to navigate complexity and address the “critical problems” that so often stand in the way of lasting success.

As the publication process unfolds, I’ll share more about the book and the ideas behind it. For now, I’m simply thankful for the opportunity to continue this conversation – and to contribute, in another way, to helping leaders solve the problems that matter most.

new book about the process enneagram

Some details on the book…

Sebastian Wolf Siebzehnruebl and I are co-authoring this new book, titled “Navigating Complexity: From Control to Flow Using the Process Enneagram.” We will be submitting the draft to Routledge Publishers in August.

Sebastian lives in Berlin, Germany and was the recent Curator of the International Federation of System Research which enabled him to know many of the leading thinkers in organizational development (OD) theory and ideas. When he became interested in the Process Enneagram, he realized that it provided a unique bridge between theory and practice.

The OD theory goes back in a continuous stream to Mary Parker Follett in about 1920. A large part of this theory, much of which has never been applied to practical situations, is supportive of and incorporated into the Process Enneagram helping us to understand how and why it works so well in helping organization to solve complex problems. The Process Enneagram is a very powerful, practical complexity tool.

My connection with the enneagram figure goes back to 1985, while I was a Plant Manager in the DuPont Company. My creation and unique development of the Process Enneagram occurred simultaneously with the development of chaos and complex adaptive systems theories, which I learned from Margaret Wheatley and others since 1996.

The Process Enneagram is very accessible to people in that it uses regular English; no technical language is used. I have used it successfully with people at all levels for over 30 years in many different kinds of organizations in many different countries, for solving complex problems.

(Note: The Process Enneagram is NOT the enneagram connected to or used in personality distinctions).

About the Process Enneagram

We see organizations as living systems with almost all the knowledge the people need to solve their problems is already there within. It is scattered among them, so when we open up the consequential conversations, they discover they know a lot and take the initiative to solve their own problems. They move from the top-down control of organizations treated as machines to the flow of self-organization systems in organizations treated as living system. Decisions are made by the people closest to the actual work.

I call the approach I take with organizations “Partner Centered Leadership.” In using the Process Enneagram with organizations, to help them solve their problems, I have seen them make big changes, sometimes in even just one day. These problems can be in arenas like safety, quality, effectiveness, innovation, turf wars, etc.

In looking at performance in 6-month after-workshop reviews, we see injury rates, for example, dropped sharply after several workshops beginning the day after the workshop was held. The process has to be sustained by the leaders, of course, after the facilitated workshop ends, and that follow-up is easily taught.

The safety, as well as all other dimensions of performance, improve. They move from compliance to excellence in their performance. However, our focus is not just safety; it is the whole system. The people discover that everything gets better when they see their system and decide to change how they work together.

lifelong learning keeps our minds sharp

Final Thoughts

“Every so often, we’re given an opportunity to look back and see how years of work have quietly come together.”

At 91, I’m overjoyed for this book development. Our new book will help you to learn more about this approach. My former book, “The Leadership Dance”, written in 2002, will also help you to understand this work. The Leadership Dance is available on Amazon.​

It will be interesting to see how our book project develops as we move forward. I’m excited for this to happen! Please stay tuned. I’ll let you know when this new book is ultimately published.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business, The Process Enneagram© Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Beyond Compliance: Safer Workplace Culture

July 10, 2026 By Leave a Comment

Our safety industry is huge and makes a lot of good contributions across millions of businesses to help to make workplaces safer.

There is no question that thousands of safety people are trying their best for a safer workplace.

It seems to me that with all this effort we should see fewer injuries and deaths, but over the last 10 years the number of people being killed and injured has not gone down and is stuck at about 5,200 fatalities and 2,500,000 injuries year (based on BLS statistics). Everyone agrees that this is NOT okay – yet even with focused effort there has been no breakthrough. Why?

The safety industry is currently working with organizations as if they are machines with linear work processes that can be taken apart and have the parts optimized. There have been thousands of change processes trying to do this, but successes have been limited. This approach is okay for simple situations, but our challenge is with complex systems where many people and parts are interacting all the time. In this situation, trying to fix a part like safety does not work because the whole system pushes back and spoils it.

a safer workplace is important to employees

When I was a plant manager, I found that in two different plants that shifting from seeing and working with the organizations as if they were a machine to seeing and working with them as if they were a living system made a huge difference. In learning to lead this way, the entire organization changes for the better.

This approach is based on the belief that most people want to do better and that they are intelligent and can make good decisions about their work. We created the conditions where it was safe to think and talk together, share information, and encourage them to make decisions close to their work. The whole system changed for the better, not just the safety (the injury rates dropped by over 90 %).

When I moved into my 30-year career of helping organizations to improve, I have seen similar progress. Not only did the performance improve, it happened quickly.

Making the Safety Shift…

Each organization can begin to make the shift and do this. The site managers and leaders need to be on board. The safety people can be a major help in this shift since they work across the organizations having access to many people at different levels. They can tell the success stories and encourage people to begin to work together in new ways.

This begins with treating people with respect, listening to them, and learning together. The people working close to the work have a lot of valuable information to share and build upon. Managers shift their focus from trying to control the work to trying to support the shift in culture.

Right now, for example, safety people can begin to work this way by having focused conversations with the people about how to handle heat stress in their workplaces. What ideas do they have to improve their working conditions? What can they do to make things better? You can encourage and support them to do the needed work.

work together to make a safer workplace

There is Help Available for a Safer Workplace…

I have developed a way of working with the people in organizations which I call Partner-Centered Leadership. My book, “The Leadership Dance,” available from Amazon, is a place to start. I also have some YouTube videos that will help.

You may also like to read this article, Faces of EHS: Richard Knowles on Being People-Focused.

If you concur that it is NOT okay for workplaces to be killing 5,200 people every year and injuring 2,500,000 people too, and want to make sure your workplace isn’t among the statistics, please connect with me at RNKnowles@aol.com or call me at 716-622-6467. I’ll share with you how your organization can achieve business and safety excellence at the same time.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business, Safety Partnership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

YOU are the Reason…for safety in the workplace

June 10, 2026 By Leave a Comment

There’s a reason – a very good reason for practicing Safety: YOU! Your life, your eyes, your ears, your fingers, your toes, your arms, your legs, your brain.

At its core, the purpose of safety is not compliance for its own sake. Compliance is a means to an end. The ultimate goal is to protect people – YOU… employees, supervisors, contractors, vendors, visitors and the public – from injury, illness, and fatality. It is about preventing serious incidents before they occur and ensuring that everyone returns home safely at the end of the day.

When an organization embraces this purpose, compliance becomes the foundation upon which a stronger culture of care, responsibility, and operational excellence is built.

Compliance establishes the minimum acceptable standard of performance. Safety excellence is achieved when people voluntarily do what is right, even when no one is watching, because protecting one another has become part of the organization’s culture and values.

safety in the workplace is for your safety

In a previous post, I shared how the number of fatalities (people being killed at work) is around 5,200 every year in the United States. Unfortunately, that number has fluctuated very little from year to year. If we have more safety professionals, more training, more audits, more regulations, more data, and more oversight than ever before, why do workplace fatalities remain relatively constant? What is being missed?

The next frontier in safety is not doing more safety activities; it is ensuring that safety activities influence the decisions, behaviors, and conditions are focused on the real outcomes we want.

The purpose of safety is not to create more safety programs – it is to prevent harm to people. So, to make sure that we’re really doing what we should be doing in the workplace, what are we really measuring?

  • Do workers trust management?
  • Do supervisors feel pressure to prioritize production over safety?
  • Are workers comfortable to stop work, for a valid safety concern?
  • Are critical hazards understood?
  • Are we watching for warning signs of a catastrophic event being ignored?
  • Why, after all our investment and effort, do serious injuries and fatalities continue to persist? What’s the root of this?
  • If our current approach is producing the results we see today, and the results are not good enough, then how should we be thinking differently now?

How about beginning to shift our focus:

  • Instead of asking if people are following the rules—how about, “Do people really understand the hazards?”
  • Instead of asking who made the mistake—how about, “What conditions made the mistake possible?”
  • Instead of asking how many audits we completed—how about, “What are the few things most likely to kill someone, and how certain are we that they are controlled?”

people need to practice working safely

Compliance seeks certainty through rules. Safety Excellence seeks resilience in the face of uncertainty.

For years I’ve been sharing about the Partner-Centered Leadership process because it works. It keeps people safe and fosters relationships, plus a healthy culture – Yes, your organization can become world-class in safety.

The Safety Leadership Process(TM) described in “Partnering for Safety and Business Excellence,” helps leaders to lead their respective organizations beyond compliance, to safety excellence, with virtually zero injuries. Huge costs are saved as the waste of human suffering, injuries, and lawsuits and bad press are avoided.

You can order a copy of “Partnering for Safety and Business Excellence” on Amazon and learn more about the five simple steps to get you there!

 

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Process Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Changing Safety Culture

September 18, 2014 By Leave a Comment

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.

safety excellence in business leadershipMost 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.

To learn more about this topic, see my blogs posts on Safety Excellence.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , , ,