With our focus on improving the safety in workplaces, our intention is to make things less complicated and difficult. Many organizations that we work with are all tangled up and things keep getting twisted around.
People get protective of their turf, resist changes, form tight little groups and exclude others, bully, get into endless arguments with management and others, and waste a huge amount of time in unproductive activities. This drives the management into difficult positions trying to push to get things done safely and on time. Everyone is in the tangled web.
Things do not have to be this way! Most of the people know that this is counter-productive but that is the way it is. However, when we engage the people from across the organization in the Complexity Leadership Process, guiding them in a purposeful conversation of discovery that changes everything, they find it does not have to be that way!
In working with them, we begin with an important question like “How can we reduce the number of people getting hurt?” and talk together. In the course of this, stories are told, incidents remembered, injuries relived, and things open up. The people discover that they know a lot about all this, but the knowledge was hidden and scattered among everyone.
As we talk together, we see how, in working together, we can get a lot better in reducing injuries.
No one comes to work expecting to get hurt, so they begin to see ways for people to stay healthy. As their ideas develop, they are posted on the wall chart we use and a Strategic Safety Plan develops. The excitement builds as people engage in the conversation and debates. They co-create their safety future together, discover the connections that they have with others, and create ad-hoc teams to go after their big discoveries for improvement. When they have co-created their plan, priorities are clarified, and resistance to change virtually disappears so changes are made and improvement is seen very quickly. Their Strategic Safety Plan is posted for everyone to see and use going forward.
In working this way, management’s job gets a lot easier and becomes one of facilitating the people rather than having to drive them. Becoming a cheerleader is more fun than being a driver. Furthermore, the accident and injury rates go way down so everyone wins. I know this happens because this is what happened to me when I was the plant manager in the DuPont Belle, West Virginia Plant.
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