Self-Organizing Leadership | Safety Excellence For Business

The Process Enneagram©: Essays on Theory and Practice

September 19, 2013 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

In my previous Blog on The Complex Systems Leadership Process© I’ve been thinking that it would be better to name it The Complexity Leadership Process© since it really is not a system as in systems thinking.

The Complexity Leadership Process is another name for Self-Organizing Leadership©. These are adjustments to my thinking relating to these ideas.

Self Organizing Leadership This Blog is focused on my new book, The Process Enneagram©: Essays on Theory and Practice. I am the editor for this book that was just published by Emergent Publications. It can be purchased directly from their website.

This book grew out of the call for papers for the Special Issue of Emergence: Complexity and Organization, Volume 15, Number 1, March 2013 on The Process Enneagram. In that call for papers I received 9 papers from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom. Since we could only publish four of them in the Special Issue of Emergence, for space reasons, Kurt Richardson, Director of Emergent Publications suggested that we publish all 9 papers in a book.

The book begins with a brief Introduction by me of the Process Enneagram. The 9 essays include two of an historical and theoretical nature by Tony Blake and Cameron Richards, one describing the use of the Process Enneagram at a Managing and Engineering Complex Situations Workshop to help a group of engineers get a better sense of the complexity paradigm and one paper is about using the Process Enneagram with groups of people in industrial organizations helping them to address their complex issues. There are two papers describing the use of the Process Enneagram with graduate students to help one class design their classroom experience for the semester and the other class to get a better understanding among a class of engineers of the flow of technology developments over the last few years from the perspective of complexity. Another describes the use of the Process Enneagram in helping to develop more cohesive, effective teams over a three-year period. Another paper correlates the energy flows in the Process Enneagram with those in an ancient Chinese cosmological, leadership model. The last paper uses a card trick by a famous magician to illustrate how one feels while moving through the work of the Process Enneagram.

These widely ranging essays open up a broad scope of richness in The Process Enneagram helping people to see and learn more about it from these widely ranging perspectives.

Sometimes I have referred to the Process Enneagram as a tool, but this is misleading in that it is not something like a wrench. I see it more and more as a series of nested processes that help guide important conversations and reveal the patterns and processes that are running within the organization. In using the Process Enneagram with people deeper understanding and better communications develop.

The importance of the Process Enneagram is in its use to help people work with complex, wicked problems, build the social connections they need and build the emotional energy and commitment to do their work.

One area where I have used The Process Enneagram is with people in organizations to help them improve their understanding of all their safety issues and develop a living, strategic plan for them to use going forward to sustain their work. Using The Process Enneagram is the first step in the Complex Leadership Process helping the people to get clear, focused, coherent and energized. As people develop and use The Process Enneagram they experience two levels of transformation. One is their own personal transformation and the other one is the transformation of the organization.

When the leaders from across the organization develop their strategic safety plan, and engaged in the transformations, they can take it to all the others in the organization to share and further develop it. If people are willing to be open to learning and growing The Process Enneagram always works in amazing ways.

In the previous blog I describe the Complexity Leadership Process and you can see the important role at the start of the work that it plays.

LEADERSHIP of Complex System and the Growing Interest in The Process Enneagram©

August 28, 2013 By Richard N. Knowles 1 Comment

This blog-post is NOT about Safety, but rather it is about the larger arena of Leadership. For those that know me, Leadership and Complexity are important to what I teach, what I apply in my Workshops, and what I often write about. The focus today is on the growing interest that is developing around the Leadership of Complex Systems…and The Process Enneagram©, which is a tool of complexity. Please read on….to learn about how this increasing interest is showing up!

There is a growing awareness of the science of complexity and how to apply the insights gained from this work in organizations. This is showing up in various places like the Linkedin Group discussion boards. There is also a growing awareness of the Process Enneagram© and its usefulness in helping people to solve complex problems, build the social connections they need to get the work done and create the emotional energy and commitment to do the work quickly and well.

The Journal “Emergence: Complexity and Organization” asked me to Edit a Special Issue of their Journal devoted to the Process Enneagram. This Special Issue was published in March, 2013. (Emergence: Complexity and Organization, Vol. 15 #1, 2013).

In the call for papers for this Special Issue a total of nine papers were submitted. This was too much for the Special Issue so all nine papers were recently published in a book. The Special Issue and the book, “The Process Enneagram©, Essays on Theory and Practice” are both available at Emergent Publications.

Beverly G. McCarter and Brian E. White in “Leadership in Chaordic Organizations”, (2013, ISBN 978-1-4200-7417-8) write a large section on the Process Enneagram and say that it seems to be the missing link between complexity theory and practical application.

International Top 100 Magazine just listed my biography in their “Who’s Who in Consulting” in their August 2013 Issue.

There is a growing interest in my book, “The Leadership Dance, Pathways to Extraordinary Organizational Effectiveness”. Even though it is 11 years old and has sold about 1,500 copies, Claire, my wife and partner, was able to do a book launch on my 78^th birthday on August 8^th and it became a #1 Amazon Best Seller and remains a Best Seller 15 days later as this is being written. This book is now considered by many people as a classic in organizational transformation.

The Process Enneagram is being used by many people around the world, especially in New Zealand and Australia where I have done a lot of work over the last 15 years. It is also being used by Datuk Mary Yap Kain Ching in Malaysia to study the leadership of head teachers in their most successful schools. Ms. Ching was recently elected to Parliament in Malaysia and is now the Deputy Director of the Ministry of Education in her Country.

A series of videos is being prepared for The Center for Self-Organizing Leadership website to introduce more people to this way of leading and to determine interest levels for developing a webinar on the Process Enneagram and its use.

Interest in Accreditation is developing in New Zealand, Australia and the US so I am now working with a number of people who are interested in becoming Accredited in the use of the Process Enneagram©. (If anyone reading this Blog is interested in becoming Accredited, please contact me.)

The Center for Self-Organizing Leadership website is being up-graded and many articles that I’ve written will be available and new products are being created.

My work in the application of complexity theory and The Process Enneagram to helping organizations achieve excellence in their safety performance progresses. My understanding of these tools and their application continue to develop. A description of my new Complex Systems Leadership Process© can be found in my previous blog.

This Process has three simple rules:

Share all information.
Build trust and interdependence.
Help people to see how they fit into the organization and the importance of their work to the success of the whole.

There is also a simple 4-step process for the people to use together to achieve and sustain excellence in their safety performance.

Having pursued this vision of the Process Enneagram and its value and importance, it looks as if things are beginning to come together. I thank all of you reading this for your help in this long journey.

Richard N Knowles, Ph.D.

Filed Under: Safety Leadership, Safety Leadership Process, Self-Organizing Leadership Tagged With: Center for Self-Organizing Leadership, Emergence Complexity and Organization, organizational transformation, The Process Enneagram

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

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

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

My Journey to Self Organizing Leadership

January 17, 2013 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

Here is some background on my journey into to learning to live and work in organizations as if they are living systems.

In my DuPont career, I learned an immense amount about myself, the people with whom I worked with and about how organizations worked or not. I also had many great opportunities to learn from top scientists and inventors. I learned from people outside DuPont who opened up windows to new ways of thinking and being. I was always learning from my first 14 years as a Research Chemist, making discoveries for 40 US patents, to 2 years in sales support and development, to 3 years in business development, to 17 years in manufacturing and plant management.

All this time, I was watching, listening, and learning about people and why things happened like they did. I also read and studied the traditional organizational development literature as well as expanding into new ideas like chaos and complexity theories. I had the privilege of working with people like Meg Wheatley, Fritjof Capra, Tony Blake, and Tim Dalmau. Always learning, watching, listening, and testing ideas against my experience of what seemed to work best to generate the best results for both the people and the businesses. When something worked, I followed the lead; if something didn’t work, I abandoned it.

Being introduced to and learning about the work of the British philosopher, John Bennett, in 1984 was critical. Through Tony Blake, I learned about systematics and the importance of and significance of number.¹ My introduction to the ideas of chaos theory in 1992 was another critical step in my adventures.²

All that I’d learned in my traditional management training courses taught me the practical aspects of managing, but didn’t feel right in how it related to people. There was a lot that was forced and coercive. But, I learned to manage this way and was good at it.

My approach was tough, top-down and looked at the organization from a mechanical perspective and the people as parts of the machine to be pushed and manipulated so the desired results, prescribed by those at the top, could be achieved. It was push, push, push, drive, drive, drive. Over time, the more that I worked this way, the more unhappy with myself and the way I was treating people I became.

A new window opened up as I learned more about systematics, chaos and complexity.

The thinking I was developing and beginning to use was much more effective and felt a whole lot better. This opened up the highly successful work I was able to do with the people of the people in the DuPont Plants in Niagara Falls, New York and Belle, West Virginia, and with the people living in our neighboring communities.

¹ Bennett, John G. (1977). Deeper Man. Edited by Anthony Blake. Charles Town, WV. Claymont Communications.
² Wheatley, Margaret J. (1992). Leadership and the New Science. San Francisco, Barrett-Koehler Publishers.

Filed Under: Safety Leadership, Self-Organizing Leadership