Richard N. Knowles | Safety Excellence For Business

Caring for Each Other: How to Hold Those Meaningful Conversations!

August 12, 2016 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

In my June 29th presentation at the American Society of Safety Engineers 2016 Professional Development Conference, I discussed the fact that one of the best ways for the safety professional attending the talk to help to improve the safety performance in their workplaces was to show the people that they cared about them and to enable them to make decisions about their specific work. I want to elaborate on these ideas in this newsletter. This is not just for the safety professional. This is for every team leader, supervisor, and workgroup leader. Going into your workplaces and opening up the conversations is a journey; each time you do this it gets easier and more effective. (Caring, Understanding and Openness!)

Meaningful caring to me means that we treat each other with respect as adults.

As managers and supervisors we get out of our offices and go into the workplace.
Help people to see that it is okay to talk together and be open with each other.
We sit down together in their work place and have a cup of coffee together. We are not in a hurry just trying to make some specified number of contacts.
We share the truth together as best we can knowing that today’s truth may be different than the truth for tomorrow because the world keeps changing, and reminding them that you’ll be back tomorrow if things have changed.
We ask about how we each are doing. How is the day going? What good things are happening? What have we learned today or over the last few days? We listen to what we each are saying.
We try to build on each other’s good ideas.
We talk about how the business is doing? We talk about the contributions we are making to the success of the business.
We discuss problems together sharing our viewpoints and seeking possible solutions. If people ask you questions which you can’t answer, tell them you do not know and will get back to them…then do it. We pay attention to the dynamics and do not over stay our visit.

As we get to know each other better we begin to explore what is really going on around here.

Are we really doing what we say we want to be doing?
How can our communications get clearer and better?
What is the rumor mill saying? Talk together about the rumors and clear them up.
Do you see better ways to go after the problems around here than we are doing? What are we missing?
Are there hidden elephants we need to be addressing?
When we have made a mistake, we own up to it and say we are sorry. We ask for their help.
Are there better ways that you see to get your job done well?
What information do you need to get your work done more effectively? Let’s talk some more about your good ideas and see if you can make some improvements.
What is going on over and over that is really bugging you?

As you get to know the people even better, there will be opportunities to inquire about how the family is doing. You can ask…how the kids are doing in their sports and schoolwork, ask if there are things that you can be doing to help them, ask how everyone’s health is, etc. You need to use good judgment as you get into these personal conversations and not push things too far into their privacy, by accident.

These are the kinds of conversations that most of us would like to have with our own managers. How many times have you wanted to talk together with them to share an idea or problem and have not had a chance to do it? How often do you get to talk with your boss’s boss? What is important and good for you in talking with your boss is about the same as for you talking with the people in your organization about the things that are important to them.

We are all partners in making our workplaces to become healthier, physically and mentally, and helping the people in them to be the best they can be. This is a key element of Partner-Centered Safety!

Filed Under: Safety for Business Tagged With: injury-free workplaces, leadership, safety

Conceptualize “Caring” in Your Workplace! Then Conceptualize “Tragic Fatality” in Your Workplace!

August 10, 2016 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

Eighty (80) pages and counting…that’s how far I got while perusing the numerous pages for the 2015 fatalities logged on OSHA reports – there were still many names and circumstances yet to read.

Each one of the entries represents a real person – who has a name, a family, a job, and was doing a task within his/her workplace. I also looked at the OSHA count for 2014 and the total fatalities in the workplace that year numbered 4,821.

Think about this tragic loss of life. 4,821 is a big number made up of 1+1+1+1 + another, another, another, and each single number is not just a number…it is connected to a personal name. Having recently visited the 911 Memorial in New York City, it really drives home the importance of an individual – a named individual. The visual has such meaning.

Making a living shouldn’t have to cost you your life. As Dr. David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health notes,workplace fatalities, injuries, and illnesses are preventable.

Employers and Employees share responsibility for safety. We say that we care. We know that we care deeply when we are touched by the closeness of a tragic injury to someone we know – we’re able to put a face and a name to the number. Yet, how many times have you tuned out during a safety meeting, thinking that the subject was boring, or giving only lip-service, believing it can’t happen here.

If only we all understood that every single safety rule has been written in blood. Meaning someone, somewhere, somehow was hurt badly enough that rules emerged to prevent a recurrence. Yet, the OSHA logs keep growing, showing real time statistics. We have a lot of caring to demonstrate!

Conceptualize real caring. What does it look like in your workplace? In the 80’s, there was something called a “Unity Triangle,” which was a useful model…to strive for commitment within a team structure in a way that demonstrates caring, understanding and openness (all three) so that individual growth is stimulated while team efforts are increasingly directed toward achieving safe workplaces, and organizational alignment of goals.

The learning is this:

Ponder this: We can have safe workplaces. We can have involved, caring, individual, safe-minded employees. We can understand that safety rules are written in blood and we can be open about connecting with our coworkers to keep learning and remaining diligent in keeping each other safe. We can be open to reaching out in ways we may not have done before; we can be open to achieving full Safety alignment…by everyone in the workplace, in our teams, individually and collectively.

That’s unity…that’s being aligned on the principle that making a living (anywhere) shouldn’t have to cost a real person his/her life…none of us are numbers. We are a Team, with named individuals, committed to the betterment of our collective workplace.

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

Shifting the Way We Look at Organizations

July 11, 2016 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

On June 29, 2016, I presented a paper at the American Society of Safety Engineers 2016 Professional Development Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. It was titled “Partner-Centered Safety: A New Leadership Approach for Safety Excellence.”

My message to those who attended my session was that the Bureau of Labor safety statics show the rate of improvement in reducing injuries in the workplace has slowed down since about 2009 and the rate of improvement for deaths has stopped; about 4,600-4,700 people are being killed at work each year.

The safety professionals and managers are putting a lot of effort into improving the safety performance in our workplaces, but we seem to be stuck. I think that the problem is that we are approaching organizations as if they are just complicated systems rather than as complex systems.

The complicated view of organizations has served us well, and a lot of progress has been achieved. Now we need to move forward in our thinking.

When we view our organizations as complex systems, a better description of the way organizations actually behave emerges.

While many people crave reliability, predictability, stability, and control for their organizations, this is rarely achieved. Our organizations are full of movement, feedback, changes, and surprises. Nothing sits still; everything is in motion.

When I learned to view my organization as a complex system, everything improved. Our injury rate dropped by ~97%, earnings rose ~300%, emissions dropped ~88%, and productivity rose ~45%.

My experience in leading the organization as if it was a complicated system was difficult and strenuous. I felt that I had to push everything to get the work accomplished safely, and we never achieved success. When I shifted to a complexity view of the organization, everything became easier to lead, my work was more effective and the improvements were dramatic. In working with the organization as a complex system, the people opened up, the conversations were more purposeful, and energy and creativity were released. All dimensions of the business improved and the people were pleased and proud of their achievements.

There is a lot in making this shift in perspective. I think that everyone can learn to work this way. I would be happy to talk with any of you about this and help you on your own journeys.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety Leadership Process Tagged With: business safety, complex systems, safety

Complexity & Change are the New Normal: Leading the Way

June 10, 2016 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

Those organizations that are achieving safety excellence recognize that they must:

Abundantly share all information about their safety, environmental and business performance,
Engage openly and honestly with everyone building trust and interdependence and,
Help everyone to get a sense of their collective whole and see their part in achieving total success.

The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in New Zealand is on the pathway to safety excellence. We worked with Carl Stent, the NIWA National Manager, Safety and Wellbeing, in a series of 7 full-day workshops involving over 100 managers and scientists to develop clarity and focus on the best ways to help their people working remotely, like in the Antarctic, to make the best possible decisions and work safely – every day, every task.

National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research

This (picture above) is their Operations Leadership Team who met with us in Wellington for two days at the beginning of our work with NIWA. We helped them to see that organizations are complex, adapting, self-organizing networks of people. Using the Process Enneagram©, our proprietary complexity tool for having the focused and disciplined conversations, they were able to effectively address their opening question, “How do we build and sustain an effective safety culture across our organization?”

The energy and excitement built during the day as information, ideas and breakthroughs emerged during the workshop. The Process Enneagram© map they created is serving as their living strategic safety plan.

We conducted workshops in six NIWA Centers across New Zealand, giving us an opportunity to meet a lot of outstanding people and to see a lot of their beautiful country. We also conducted one public and one private workshop which were also extremely successful in opening people up to the ideas of complexity and to approaching safety from this perspective. With Carl Stent’s ongoing, excellent support, NIWA is on the road to safety excellence!

Filed Under: Safety Leadership Process, The Process Enneagram© Tagged With: safety excellence process, The Process Enneagram

Brother’s and Sister’s Keepers

May 11, 2016 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

Hardly any of us can do our best work all by ourselves.

We need teammates to help us stay focused and be fully present to our work. None of us can see all that is happening around us so someone to be our keeper is critical to our safety. We need someone to remind us if we are hurrying or preoccupied. We can do a much better take-two pre-start-up check if we have someone there with us looking, thinking about and talking over the work before us.

Here are some things that we need to be doing as a Brother’s/Sister’s Keeper.

We can keep alert about someone being in danger because we notice that they are preoccupied.
We can look for potential safety hazards, and talk about them with our teammates.
We can check to see if our safety procedures are consistent and adequate for the job we are about to begin.
We can talk with our brothers and sisters about looking for some really unexpected event or condition that could kill one of us.
We can talk with our teammates about the elephants that are blocking us and messing up our work.
We can help to check the OSHA rules and procedures to be sure we are in compliance.
We can stop the job if we see it is going unsafely.
We can help to be sure that we have the right tools for the work before us.
We can ensure that we (alone or together) do not take shortcuts.
There are lots of things we can do as a Brother’s/Sister’s Keeper and we can be open and receptive to the Brother or Sister looking after us.

Sometimes the events can roll out like a string of dominos. Some little thing at the beginning tips over, bumping into the next domino and so on until we have a big, ugly event. Brother’s and Sister’s can help us to see these little events and avoid the big one that comes like a snowball rolling down a hill.

Being a brother or sister goes both ways – I look after you and you look after me. This is a deep responsibility for us to be doing so that no one gets hurt or killed and we all get the job done to the highest standards.

Brothers and Sisters are really important when we dig more deeply into the real issues behind an observed hazard. Two or three people who are looking for and thinking about the deeper issues are much more likely to find the real, basic problem behind the hazard and be able to eliminate or minimize it. They can also help to find the best ways to circumvent a hazard; two minds are better than one!

Being our Brother’s and Sister’s Keepers is a deep responsibility we all have. None of us have a right to work in a place where it is okay for someone to get hurt. Taking on the roles and responsibilities of being our Brother’s and Sister’s Keepers is a big step in moving the organization’s safety performance beyond compliance towards excellence.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: safety, safety culture, workplace safety

Buddy Benches

May 10, 2016 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

buddy-bench There was a video on Facebook a few weeks ago about Buddy Benches being placed in schoolyards. The video explained the importance of the communication and training that is essential to their use and effectiveness.

The essence of the Buddy Bench is for inclusion and safety. Kids who feel alone and have no one to enjoy their recess time with are encouraged to sit on the bench – as a signal that he/she is in need of a friend, a buddy, a playgroup to join. Conversely, when the Buddy Bench has a person sitting on it, the kids who are enjoying their recess time, are chartered to practice being a Buddy…by sharing friendship, to invite the person into their group, to ask what might be troubling the bench-sitter, to provide protection from a bully; the list of helpful acts extended from the community of kids towards the person in need of a buddy is heartwarming.Buddy Benches serve as a safe place for kids who are feeling bullied or for kids to make new friends.

In exploring Buddy Benches, I learned that they are multiplying; they are in many school districts across the country. Some Boy Scout troops are now making Buddy Benches for schools for their badge-earning credits. The Buddy Bench is a simple idea to lessen loneliness, to counter bullying, and to foster friendship and a sense of belonging. Buddy Benches provide the symbolic learning space for both asking for help and, in return, receiving the extended hand of friendship.

After learning about this uplifting idea, I thought about inclusion within our workplaces and about being our brother’s/sister’s keeper – simply because it is the right thing to do – ensuring we have each other’s back. I thought about OSHA’s workplace bullying guidance, the connection to the General Duty Clause, and knowing that escalating workplace bullying, harassment, and intimidation is linked to poorer safety performance as well as employee mental and physical wellbeing. And, of course, I thought about employee accountability – we are each accountable for our behaviors. I thought about the culture of our workplaces being strongly related to the worst behaviors we are willing to tolerate. I thought about that old book, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” by Robert Fulghum. Remember those simple truths?

How our work worlds would be improved if we all adhered to the same basic rules as children: sharing, being kind to one another, no hitting, cleaning up after themselves, learning together, etc. Maybe we need to place something like Buddy Benches in our workplaces. What do you think?

Filed Under: Safety Leadership, Safety Leadership Process Tagged With: business safety, safe work environment, safe workplace

Caring: Displaying Kindness and Concern for Others

April 18, 2016 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to hear Mark Breslin, a professional speaker, author and strategist (Breslin Strategies), talk about his approach to going beyond compliance in safety performance.

He made the point that the two most important things to people in the workplace are:

to be sincerely praised and recognized; authenticity is key
to be given the opportunity to make decisions; autonomy

People need to know that management cares. These important ideas are quite consistent with some of our ideas in Partner-Centered Safety.

construction safety In our Partner-Centered Safety realm, we go beyond this to having everyone (the people on the floor, the supervisors, the managers, and all the others) feel they are cared about. Caring means helping each other, listening to each other, sharing information, being respectful, asking for help and receiving it, looking out for each other, saying we are sorry when we make a mistake, and treating each other as whole persons. Just what caring means for people is something on which they should all agree. Management, alone, should not do it for their approach can often be quite patronizing – treating the people in the work place as if they are children. All the people, at all levels, together, need to come up with their ideas about what caring is for them. Management should not try to dictate the answers, but management needs to open up and lead this discussion about caring or it will not be addressed. Caring is visible; as is non-caring. Partner-Centered Safety is visible caring. Mistreatment of people is non-caring.

For example, in one plant making large pumps to fracture gas wells, there was a serious injury when a guy tried to hoist a 3,200-pound pump with a 2,000-pound rated overhead crane. The pump fell onto the employee’s hand causing serious damage. When I was talking about this with another man on an adjacent work table about 10 feet away, I asked him if he had seen what was happening. He said he had. When I asked why he did not stop the work, he said that he was not the other guy’s boss. They had never talked about caring and what it meant to them. This is certainly not caring! Being your brother’s/sister’s keeper was a foreign concept.

In another example, when we have bullies in the workplace, they cause huge destruction in shutting down communications. How can there be an authentic and caring atmosphere with bullies contaminating the environment by picking on people when they speak up and try to contribute. Sometimes, the bully is in supervision, which makes matters worse. Management must deal with them for they are extremely destructive. The culture is set by the worst behavior that is tolerated!

However, when the people all come together to talk about the various ways they want to show caring, treat each other, and agree on ways to work together, the culture quickly shifts towards one that is open, healthy, and where the communications can flow freely. This is the environment where there can be good learning, growth and progress towards safety excellence. This is the environment where people can talk together about their ideas, share opportunities to improve the work, and have the opportunity for making decisions about some of the things going on and how they are cared about and treated.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Self-Organizing Leadership Tagged With: management safety, safety, Safety culture and the Management of Change

We do “Safety” Because We Care

April 11, 2016 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

Bok-Tower-Gardens At one of the highest geographical points in Florida, at Lake Wales, is a large, 205-ft high, carillon tower. It is beautiful, as are the gardens surrounding this tower structure, made of glistening coquina stone. The tower and gardens were a gift from benefactor Edward W. Bok, who cared deeply about nature, beauty and sanctuary spaces. Millions of visitors have traversed this place of solace since it opened in 1929. Edward Bok was all about CARING for future generations – to be able to enjoy peace and beauty. His tribute signature is this:

“Make you the world a bit better or more beautiful because you have lived in it.”
~ Edward W. Bok (1929)

Our safety work (at R.N. Knowles & Associates) has taken us to many places over the last few months. We’re reminded, as we’ve interacted with many people, and visited many workplaces, that Safety is about caring deeply. Likened to Edward Bok’s inspiration about caring about the world of beauty and leaving his legacy, let’s substitute the word safety for beauty, and leave our positive safety legacy for our respective workplaces. What if everyone in our workplaces chose to care deeply about safety?

What if this statement became your chosen signature phrase?

“Make your work-world a bit better and more safe because you have lived in it.” (2016)

We all make choices – every day – as we live and work in our workplaces. We do “Safety” because we care deeply – stemming from a core concern for others.

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

Awakening the Third Force – In Safety – It’s time!

March 10, 2016 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

No, this isn’t about Star-Wars! And it is not about following the Jedi Path. This is a way of thinking with roots going back to Maslow around unifying forces.

For our workplaces, this is about the way we think about safety, the way we engage around safety, and the way we bring a third unifying force to the whole culture of safety.It’s the missing link in our respective workplaces. Without it, we tend to stay engulfed in a culture of compliance, yet despite trying and trying, we never reach excellence. Without it, we keep repeating the same mistakes – round and round we go.

With it, however, we intentionally move forward. We establish the culture that is committed to safety, inclusively cares about and connects with everyone, continually learns, and develops a depth of safety.

With it, safety has a constant aliveness. Without it, safety remains a by-the-way.

Read on to learn more about this “IT”…the Third Force of Safety!

The Awakening of the Third Force

I spoke at the American Society of Safety Engineers, Region IV, Professional Development Conference in Tampa, Florida on February 27, 2016.

I spoke about Partner-Centered Safety™ and the importance of this as the quickest way to achieve sustainable safety excellence. As many of you know, I have written and spoken about this many times over the last several years. The information and data I share clearly shows that this approach to leading safety is very powerful, producing improved results quite quickly. Many of you have seen the terrific results the people at the DuPont, Belle Plant achieved. This approach has a very strong scientific basis in complex adaptive systems theory.

It was exciting to see and hear one of the speakers at this PDC also beginning to talk about improving safety using a complex adaptive systems approach. This speaker had heard Sydney Dekker speak about this way of engaging the organization at an ASSE National PDC in 2014 and had gone to Australia to meet with Dekker. While they like the ideas of this approach, they do not have the tools to make the connections and bring the networks of people effectively connect with the physical work and come to life.

Several other speakers spoke about the importance of working more closely with the people, developing more trust and interdependence. There is developing excitement about this way of working together.

The Awareness is Growing!

There seems to be a growing awareness that working with the people makes a positive difference. While no one has developed the tools to actually engage and bring the people together into a highly focused and purposeful conversation as we do using the Process Enneagram©, a positive shift to fully engaging the people and achieving safety excellence appears to be starting to happen.

In my presentation, that was very well received, I introduced a new diagram about bringing the safety and business technology together with the people side of the enterprise releasing the Third Force (Partnering) to achieve Total Business and Safety Excellence. For over 100 years, the business, productivity, and the safety technology (the quantitative, rules, procedures, machines, etc.) of our work has driven our organizations. The people have often been pushed and driven to function like they were just parts of a great machine. When we shift our way of thinking and doing, we can effectively bring the people into the work using a complex adaptive systems approach and specifically the Process Enneagram Safety Excellence workshops, a whole new level of sustainable performance is created.

Total business excellence

In the Safety Excellence Workshops, using the Process Enneagram© (seeSafetyExcellenceForBusiness.com and RNKnowlesAssociates.com), the people discover and co-create new ways to work together and develop the excitement and commitment for sustainable safety excellence to be achieved.

The Third Force in Safety is Partnering – bringing the strengths of our business and safety knowledge and tools together with the goodness of and power of the people to achieve sustainable, excellent results. It is an active force, a compelling force – collaborative, focused, conversational, committed, and caring…and it works!

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety Leadership Process Tagged With: business safety, safety workshop, The Process Enneagram

Safety Culture…Is Yours Healthy and Thriving? How Do You Know?

February 17, 2016 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

When the Safety Culture is right…what do you see? What does Excellence look like?

People helping each other;
People looking out for others;
People are committed to caring about people, the work, the success of the Business; Aligned, Cohesive.
Few injuries;
Full Reporting;
Learning from all incidents; Collaborative.
Safety is talked about all the time – integrated into the work and the conversation;
Process safety management is respected and rules followed.
People understand the need for enforcement of standards & rules.
Good People treatment principles apply. (No bullies tolerated)
Litter-free workplace; (people care)
Problems are discussed openly; Differences are discussed, resolved.
Training is fully completed;
Employees regularly input what training is most important to their success.
Improvements are made in timely fashion;
Communications are open…up and down organizational lines.
People fully understand that the success of the business is tied to making a profit. Safety excellence and business success go hand in hand.
Safety excellence for business means that people understand safety and the business – information is shared; relationships are built; and people know the importance of their role to the Business.
Processes for healthy discussion/communication are prevalent and used.
Leaders are involved, inclusive, and open.
People feel good about their roles, their coworkers, their business success.

How does your team, business, or organization measure up to these? It is worth doing a very simple analysis. On a straight line, along this measure, where does your team stand on many of the above items listed? What does that tell you about where your efforts should be placed?

Not too long ago, EHS Today had a neat article about Safety Culture and Training…worth a look. Here’s the link.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business Tagged With: safety culture, training