Safety for Business | Safety Excellence For Business

When the Safety is Right, Everything Else gets Right!

July 1, 2013 By Richard N. Knowles 1 Comment

I recently read a book by Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan, The Three Laws of Performance. They have studied leadership in many organizations and developed Three Laws of Performance and three Leadership Corollaries for these (P.212).

The First Law
How people perform correlates to how situations occur to them.
Leadership Corollary 1
Leaders have a say, and give others a say, in how situations occur.

The Second Law
How a situation occurs arises in language
Leadership Corollary 2
Leaders master the conversational environment.

The Third Law
Future-based language transforms how situations occur to people.
Leadership Corollary 3
Leaders listen for the future of their organization.

These three Laws and Corollaries are almost identical to what we do in Self-Organizing Leadership as we use the Process Enneagram© with the people. In using this tool in conversations with the people we co-create the future with everyone having a say in it. We spend a lot of time in the organizations talking with and listening to the people seeking new and better ways to do things.

For some people in leadership positions, talking with people, seems to be quite hard. Yet it is as simple as for example;

“Hi Mary, How are things going today? I hope everything is going well on the home front. You look like you really know how to do this task. I’ve never done it before, could you show me how you do it? What are the safety challenges and rules? Is there a better way to do this? Is there an easier way? Let’s talk about that. If I help you, can you take the lead to develop the idea and see if it really works as well as you think?”

This conversation shows how the Three Laws of Performance play out. Mary usually gets pretty pumped up as she is listened to, respected and asked for a better, safer way. This may be the first time she’s been treated this way by management.

As this simple interaction occurs, over and over throughout the organization, the culture shifts to becoming more positive, resourceful and creative. When the people see that management is really listening and trying, when they see the manager as real people things open up. Ideas about things beyond the safety arena emerge and big savings develop for the company.

When I was the Plant Manager at the DuPont Belle, WV Plant, working this way with about 1,200 people we made huge changes that endured for many years. For example, injury rates dropped >96%, emissions dropped 88%, productivity rose 45% and earnings rose 300%. Together we achieved world-class safety performanece with total recordable injury rates running at 0.3 or less. They maintained this excellent performance for 12 years after I left for another DuPont assignment.

Zaffron and Logan have a case study in their book about New Zealand Steel near Auckland, New Zealand. The mill was struggling and the management decided that they really needed to change the culture to survive and grow into their future. In just 2 years New Zealand Steel transformed themselves. Injury rates dropped 50%, productivity rose 20%, costs dropped 15-20% and return on capital rose 50%.

As I was reading the story I realized that I knew the people they’d named and that Tim Dalmau, my associate in this work, and I had led the transformational effort using the Self-Organizing Leadership approach. The Process Enneagram© was the key tool we used to help the people have the important conversations and discover their future.

These two stories of the transformations of the DuPont chemical plant in Belle, WV and the New Zealand Steel plant in Auckland, New Zealand clearly show that the work with the people to shift the safety culture is the leading edge of change for the entire organization.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business, Self-Organizing Leadership Tagged With: creating a safety culture, safety excellence, Safety Lessons for Business, The Process Enneagram, workplace safety case studies

The Case for making Safety a Priority in Business

June 4, 2013 By Richard N. Knowles 2 Comments

In my interactions with companies I often hear the people saying things like:

“If only my management really supported safety we would really get a lot better. If they say safety is number 1, then why don’t they behave that way?”

The people at the top probably know that they can have big losses, lawsuits and bad publicity if there is a serious injury, toxic chemical release or explosion. They may even wake up at night thinking about these things.

Yet safety is not their core business. They have revenue and earnings goals looming over them. Quality and production problems may be pressing them. In this environment safety is a pain in the neck, intruding at the wrong times. It is seen as more costs.

I think that we may have the safety messages backward. Rather than feeling under-valued and not supported by management around safety, let’s turn the picture around so that excellence in safety performance is the path to total business excellence performance and enhanced profits.

Everyone can play an important part in this. We achieve safety excellence by shifting the culture. We share all information, build trust and interdependence and help everyone see how they are important to the success of the entire business. We engage each other, listen for all the ideas, help people to solve the problems and challenges that come up. We ask for help because none of us can do this alone.

As the culture shifts, injury and incident rates drop thus saving a lot of money directly, people feel more valued and interested in the total business. As the credibility around safety is built, people begin to see other things that can be improved to help the business and they do them.

As we shifted the safety culture at the DuPont Belle, WV plant where I was the plant manager in the 1980s and 1990s the injury rates dropped by about 97% and earnings went up about 300%. People felt a lot better about things and focused at really making improvements. Not only did we save money with fewer injuries and incidents, people went after things like lowering the demurrage rates (the rent we pay owners of tank trucks after their deliveries were made and the trucks were left on the plant) by 75% in just a few months. We also learned how to change our process control systems from pneumatic systems to electronic systems without running parallel—thus cutting the time and costs for the conversions by about 50%. We did this 16 times without failure.

As the culture shifted towards excellence everything else shifted towards excellence. When we turn the story around from safety being a pain in the neck to becoming the leading edge for shifting the total organization to high performance and excellence, then safety becomes a focal point for the organizational change efforts.

About 80% of the large-scale organizational change efforts fail to produce the desired results and are not sustained. Rather than beginning with a large-scale change effort, we can begin with a smaller effort, focused at safety and then spread the effort as we learn how to do it and gain everyone’s support. Success is much more likely and it is sustainable. At Belle the culture shifted! One measure of that was the injury rates dropped to world-class levels and were sustained for 16 years. Everything else we measured also showed significant improvement.

Let’s shift the safety message from being a pain in the neck to becoming the leading wave for total organizational excellence!

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business Tagged With: business safety, creating a safety culture, injury-free workplaces, Safety Lessons for Business

Update from the 9th Global Congress on Process Safety

May 7, 2013 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

I recently attended the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Spring Meeting and the 9th Global Congress on Process Safety in San Antonio, TX. About 2000 people attended this Conference. A lot of papers discussed the need to improve the safety cultures of our organizations. Others talked about the big safety challenges as the global demand for energy rises, as gas import terminals are converted to export terminals, the challenges of the complex technologies that are being developed and the difficulties of getting everyone, in big and small companies, up to speed and staying abreast of the exploding knowledge.

There were a number of papers on the Management of Change Processes and the more recently recognized Management of Organizational Change. These change process require skill, discipline and persistence to do all that is necessary. These Management of Change processes are a big challenge for the larger companies because of their complexity.

These are even more difficult challenges to smaller companies:

Many are privately owned
People function in multiple roles
There are not enough people to do everything
Money is limited
Information is often informally shared
Rapid decision making is common
They are unique and flexible.

All the papers I attended treated safety, its culture and the Management of Change as complicated problems; this is a big barrier. Complicated problems like an assembly line use linear processes; as each, in-specification part, arrives and is put into the assembly, a new product is successfully produced. Our training programs are linear in nature where each step is presented in sequence and the final result is a new skill that is to be used.

One author showed the Management of Change Process he was presenting as a sequence of 8 steps to be done one after the other with no feedback being shown. The presumption being that if each step is done correctly then things will be just fine. But usually things are not quite right, people forget, information gets misunderstood or lost, people don’t follow through as they are expected to do, so we have to train them again. This is all very hard and inefficient.

The linear tools of complicatedness are not the right ones to be using because the systems are complex systems.

Safety culture and the Management of Change are complex processes. The tools of complexity must be used. When we shift the way that we engage with each other, everything changes. The Self-Organizing Leadership© process is a tool of complexity. Information needs to be shared freely, trust and interdependence built and people need to see how they and their work are a part of the larger whole. These tools are vital to make the transition from complexity theory to practical application. The most important tool is the Process Enneagram©. It is the only known tool that helps people to solve complex problems, make the social connections they need to do the work and releases the emotional energy and commitment to do the work quickly and well. Beverly G. McCarter and Brian E. White write on p. 152 of their 2013 book, Leadership in Chaordic Organizations, ISBN 978-1-4200-7417-8, that “Richard Knowles’ Process Enneagram seems to be the missing link between complexity theory and practical application.”

When the tools of complexity are used all the processes of change become easier and move more quickly. People co-create their future. Resistance to change almost disappears. The changes are more focused, relevant and comprehensive. While the system is full of ambiguity and feedback making things richer and more comprehensive, the on-going dialogue serves to bring things together. As information is fully shared and trust and interdependence are built, the people come together co-creating their shared future and accomplishing their goals. The whole system becomes more coherent and effective.

Richard N Knowles, Ph.D., The Safety Sage

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership, Self-Organizing Leadership Tagged With: 9th Global Congress on Process Safety, Leadership in Chaordic Organizations, Management of Change Processes, Safety culture and the Management of Change

What the West Texas Disaster Can Teach Us

April 23, 2013 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

Wednesday evening, April 17, 2013, there was a terrible explosion in the West Fertilizer Company’s fertilizer plant in Texas. The latest reports indicate as many as 14 people were killed and over 160 injured.

The plant was located right in the middle of the town of 2,700 people and the explosion caused a huge amount of physical destruction in addition to the human devastation.

The plant handled ammonia and ammonium nitrate for fertilizer use.

These are well-known, hazardous materials that can be, and are, handled safely by most companies. There is extensive process safety technology regarding the handling and use of these materials. The technology applying to these materials as with many chemicals is strong and effective.

There are two major dimensions to using, making and handling hazardous materials. One is the process safety side, which is well known and effective, and the other side relates to the way the people choose to work with these materials, and choose to use the technology. The best process safety in the world is of no use if people don’t apply themselves and use the process.

In 2006, according to the Dallas Morning News, the Company was fined $2,300 for failure to have a risk assessment. In one EPA report they said that they handled anhydrous ammonia assuring them that no one would get hurt in the event of a release.

While we do not know specifically what happened, my many years of experience in managing chemical plants, would suggest to me that these are indications that the people side of their systems failed in some way. These are hazardous materials that need to be handled with professionalism, dedication and attention to procedures.

The lesson to be learned here is to rethink your situations in your own factories, plants and businesses where you handle and use hazardous materials. Think about questions like:

Do you talk together and share safety information?
Do managers get out of their offices and into the operating area to talk with the people on the floor?
Is the level of trust high enough that employees will freely report safety concerns and near misses?
Des everyone work together to solve safety problems?
Are your Material Safety Data Sheets and Safety manuals up to date and used?
Are employees properly trained and is the training schedule maintained?
Do you have high housekeeping standards and are your facilities properly maintained?
Do your employees have the resources they need to work safely?
Are you cutting corners to speed up the operation?
Do people have the proper personal protective equipment and do they use it?
Do you have a system of follow-up so that suggestions can be implemented quickly?
Are people able to shutdown a process on their own if it is unsafe?
Can people refuse to do a job if it can’t be done safely?

The questions can go on and on, this list barely hits the surface in what can be addressed when making a commitment to safety in the workplace and having a leadership team where safety is a priority. It takes discipline and hard work to stay on top of safety issues, but these are the kinds of responsibilities and burdens any organization working with and using hazardous materials must bear. If you use these materials, then you must accept the responsibility that comes along with the use. The people in your facility and those living around you depend on you to do your job well.

As a manager of plants handling and using hazardous materials, my mantra was “I don’t have a right to work at a place where it is okay for you to get hurt. Now let’s get the safety right and make money.”

What is your safety mantra, your deep, authentic safety message for your people?

As we have seen from this indecent in Texas, the results can affect more than just your plant or business – entire towns can bear the brunt of accidents, explosions and the destruction that follows. My heart goes out to the town, the people, families and the plant workers. Situations like this are preventable…with Safety Leadership that comes from top down.

If you don’t have a safety mantra or message and follow the processes…I strongly recommend you get this in place and FOLLOW IT. Your business and the people that sustain it are depending on your leadership for their safety and the safety of many others.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership, Self-Organizing Leadership Tagged With: business safety, safety and hazardous materials, safety excellence, Safety Lessons for Business, West Texas Disaster Lessons

Moving to a Safety Culture of Excellence

April 2, 2013 By Richard N. Knowles 2 Comments

Most organizations seem to be comfortable with being at the level of safety compliance. This is a start, but is not good enough over the longer run. We have to meet the OSHA guidelines and train the people in how to work safely and use equipment properly. There are lots of people doing the safety training and the American Society for Safety Engineers (ASSE) has many, many resources for the safety professional. Most of the people in most organizations have some knowledge about how to do the work safely, know how to use the PPE and have some knowledge of the safety rules.

Reaching high levels of safety performance when working in organizations like these is very hard. Sustaining these levels of performance is even harder. Once the people have been trained, proven that they know and understand what they have learned and then actually doing the work as they have been trained often falls short. For a variety of reasons people don’t follow through; people take short-cuts, forget, are pre-occupied, feel pushed, don’t believe that management really cares, there are not enough people to do all the work, management does not listen, they hear the words about working safety but their supervisor ignores the words.

There is a powerful need for our organizations to shift to safety cultures of excellence. Way too many people are being killed (~4,600 in 2011). Most of these accidents are preventable. Our existing cultures need to shift from top-down driven processes to ones that are more self-organizing and sustainable. Yet many people resist change.

Being fearful of changing job assignments, bargaining unit challenges, abuse of the rules, not knowing what is going to happen to them and their jobs is one major reason for resistance to change. Another fear of change comes from the uncertainty of who the new people will be that they’ll need to work with if they are reorganized; they have a set of relationships in their current job and any change will upset these. Another fear of change can relate to their status as relationships and structure change. Another reason to fear change relates to the level of control that a person currently has in their job over their work and uncertainty about how that will change. Almost all of these fears come about because change is imposed with little input from the people who will experience the change.

However, change is with us all the time. It is not some unusual incident which is being shoved at us.

If the processes of Self-Organizing Leadership are used most people will not resist change. With Self-Organizing Leadership the people are co-creating the changes that need to be made. People do not resist changes that they create, but rather they push these changes. Most imposed change efforts fail; most co-created change efforts succeed.

The four-step, Safety Leadership Process we use enables the people in the organization to co-create their safety culture and transform it to one of excellence where injury and incident rates drop almost to zero. In this process the first step is to use the Process Enneagram© to work with a cross-section of the organization to co-create their Safety Strategic Plan. In using the Process Enneagram an important, compelling question is developed; one that the group feels is really important and one they want to resolve. Then the facilitator begins to move the group through the sequence of conversation relating to each point helping them to develop clarity and coherence relating to what they want to accomplish and how they will do it. Everyone makes inputs which are written down onto the Process Enneagram Map.

The space is created so that the environment is safe and open for honest conversation.

This part of the Safety Leadership Process usually requires about a day so that the issues, assumptions, Principles and Standards, and goals are understood and the energy required to accomplish their transformation is released.

In the next part of the Safety Leadership Process, the Process Enneagram Map they have created is taken out to those who were not involved to share the thinking and to seek improvements. In these conversations, trust and interdependence are built as people see what management wants to accomplish and are walking the talk.

The next part of the process is to talk with people about what they are doing, listen to them, discover ways to improve the work and help the people to make the needed changes. As we do this, people become more comfortable in talking together and opening up.

Another part of the Safety Leadership Process involves actually looking at what people are doing.

Systems problems show up as we make our observations. We often see very high levels of unsafe behaviors that are the result of people trying to work within the work environment and making mistakes. This is not an employee discipline process, but rather a process of discovery and learning. As the organization continues to make observations enough data is collected that the observations can become a predictor of a potential injury. Then we show the leaders how to react and avoid the injury.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: complying with OSHA guidelines, safety compliance, Self-Organizing Leadership

Safety Excellence for Business

March 22, 2013 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

The Goal is Zero sets us up for failure.

None of us wants to have anyone get hurt in our organization. We are trying hard in various ways to keep people from getting hurt. Sometimes organizations can achieve very long periods of injury-free performance. One large plant I know of went 24 years without a lost workday case (LWC), and another one went for about 10 years. These sorts of strings of injury-free days are commendable. This can tempt us into believing that if we just work hard enough that we can achieve workplaces where there are no injuries.

We do indeed have to work hard, but I don’t think that we can ever achieve injury performance forever. The things that people do or don’t do relating to safety are the cause of over 95% of all injuries. None of us is perfect. Our minds wander. We get into a hurry. We forget something. We get distracted. We are upset by a problem at home or at work. We develop bad habits.

I expect that all of us do something unsafely every day and don’t get hurt. But one day the conditions will be just right for things to come together in a new, different and unexpected way. Then we suffer the consequences.

When management sets the “Goal is Zero” we set ourselves up for failure. There is very strong pressure in most organizations for people to report what management wants to hear. If the “Goal is Zero” then the pressure builds to look for ways to avoid having to report an injury or near miss and the cover-ups begin. People will tend to just report things that are too big to hide. A major source of our safety information disappears. When we don’t report the small things then we can’t learn from them. Problems persist, bad situations are not addressed, and reporting can get a person on the wrong side of their management. Sometimes management creates a reporting system that is so difficult and exposes the person making the report to criticism, that the people just avoid reporting. Trust among the people in the organization is impossible to establish. When trust disappears, learning stops!

In order for trust to be built information needs to be openly available to everyone. The environment needs to be secure enough that we can talk and learn together. We need to help each other becoming our brothers and sisters keepers. Listening and respecting each other is critical.

When management creates a culture of openness, trust and interdependence, and an environment where everyone can see the big picture long periods of injury-free performance can be achieved.

John, a wise friend, told me once “When the safety gets right, everything gets right!”

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership, Self-Organizing Leadership Tagged With: business safety, injury performance, injury-free workplaces, safety excellence