learn to work together | Safety Excellence For Business

It Sure Is Hot Outside so Watch Out for Heat Exhaustion!

July 10, 2024 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

There is a lot of concern about the heat and related problems like heat exhaustion.

It would be great if all our workplaces were air conditioned so no one would get heat exhaustion, but that is not the case. Some places are open and air can circulate if there is a breeze. Some places have big fans to circulate the air. Some places are stifling and difficult for everyone. Some people must work outside in lawn care or construction.

OSHA and others want employers to provide relief in some way for heat exhaustion, but that is not always possible. This is very tough, no one has all the answers, and there are no easy solutions. In situations like this, the people doing the work need to be actively involved in trying to figure out how to mitigate the heat hazard and help each other as much as they can.

I heard of one group of men who made cast-iron castings who decided to work wearing only eye protection, gloves and boots. But that does not meet anyone’s safety standards. I read about others trying to lower the heat stress by changing their workday to start very early in the morning before the heavy heat of the day. Staying hydrated remains the key preventative to heat stress and exhaustion.

People are creative and can come up with many good ideas so that they don’t get heat exhaustion.

I liked to sit down with the people to talk together about how our particular group could handle the heat stress issues we were facing. Often creative solutions came up that would provide some relief. Perhaps it was a schedule change, wearing broad-brimmed hats, shortening the hours on really bad days, or taking longer breaks with ice-water or gator-aid in cooler chests to drink. These days cool-gel neck wraps and cooling vests are worth considering.

There are a variety of ways that people can use for their work situation that are safe and appropriate. As people come up with these ideas, talk together about how to best manage things to reduce the likelihood of someone having a heat stress problem. Try to figure out together what the best solution will be for your group under your conditions. I have found that involving the people in trying to figure this out usually results in the best solutions.

Ever wonder what people did to keep cool before air conditioning? Take a look at this short history lesson from History.com, “11 Ways People Beat the Heat Before Air Conditioning.”

The Politics

The political issues heading into the next few weeks and months and into this next election are very hot and difficult. It is best if you can keep them out of the organization – verbal political hostility can escalate quickly.

Political arguments can be a big distraction and lead to loss of productivity, increased injuries, and even workplace violence like bullying or even fights. Hostile environments can be fed by politics that turn mean and dismissive. Try to keep these heat issues out of the workplace. Employers need to remind employees that everyone has their right to their own political views, and because we endeavor to have a civil and respectful environment – where everyone is free from abuse of any kind – we need to keep our political views apart from our workplace.

The …isms

There are so many …isms that all sorts of distractions can come up. Opinions are very strong and tempers fly. Try to keep these debates out of the workplace. We all know better.

There is Relief for Everything, including Heat Exhaustion

Sit with the people together to talk about all the heat/hydration issues. Listen and let people talk about them without criticism. After having identified the most important ones for your group, talk together about ideas and ways that you all can work together and minimize the various heat stress problems as best you can. Develop a list that is most important for your situation and ask everyone to agree to work together so that things can be cooler, safer and healthier. Post these around the workplace so everyone can see them and live up to them.

Many of our problems we can solve ourselves so let’s do it! Give me a call at 716-622-6467 if you’d like to talk about this – happy to share with you.

Shifting Our Thinking and Behavior

June 10, 2024 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

We should be shifting our thinking and behavior.

I have written a lot about our whole safety system in the US being stuck for the last 8 years, with about 5,200 fatalities and 2,400,000 serious injuries a year. There is a lot of effort by many people, but the results are not getting better. That’s why we should be shifting our thinking and behavior.

I have also written and spoken a lot about Partner Centered Leadership, which is a very effective process to help organizations get a lot better in all dimensions of performance. In this process everyone thinks and works together with caring, respect, honesty, and trust. We all help each other to be our best.

Partner Centered Leadership requires a significant shift in how the managers lead.

I used to use the hard, top-down management approach. But I had to shift my thinking and behavior to being more open, really caring and working with the people, listening and learning together.

This is not just trying to be a better top-down manager. It is a complete shift to real partnering and caring.

The way I thought about the people and the huge knowledge they have about their actual work had to change. I had to learn to talk with the people and not at them. I had to listen.

Organizations are complex adaptive systems behaving more like a living system than a machine. No one has all the answers, so we had to co-create our future together. We found that our collective knowledge and intelligence were amazing. As this became revealed in our work, we all got more and more excited about what we were trying to do.

We discovered a relatively simple complexity tool called the Process Enneagram that we could use together so we could:

see the whole system in which we were working,
see the various parts and
see how they interacted.

This was the first time we could see this way; it really helped us.

The Three Levels of Work

As we learned, we also became quite conscious of different, interdependent, interacting, simultaneous levels of work processes. When you watch a soccer game you can see the three levels of activities.

At the Level 1, the players on the field are self-organizing as the game unfolds. They are making instantaneous decisions using the clues and actions they take in as they play. The best decisions are made by them as the game goes on.
At Level 2, the coaches on the side lines are making decisions based on what they are seeing. They see different things. They will call in plays, make decisions about replacing a tired player, think about improving or adjusting the over-all strategy, and cheer the players to perform better.
At Level 3, the referees make sure the conditions for the game are consistent with the league rules. They work on stuff like proper ball pressure, and the correct markings on the field as well as making sure everyone is playing fairly, calling penalties and managing the over-all game. If the players and coaches do not play by the agreed upon rules, the game will fall apart and no longer be soccer.

In Partner Centered Leadership, all three levels are working. Together we co-create the agreements of how we are going to live and work together at Level 3. All of us are accountable and take responsibility for them. The Level 3 agreements govern everything and are the difference in whether the organization is successful or not.

Those of us in management or leadership positions are at Level 2; we respectfully interact with the people sharing information about how the people and the business are doing. We ask for their help and ideas about how to get better. We encourage people to make decisions close to their work, with consultation with others who are also close and knowledgeable. We also use our situational awareness as we interact sensing problems like bullying or harassment, or how the organization is feeling at that moment, etc.

Those doing the actual, physical work at Level 1 are constantly learning and sharing so we are all improving. Making decisions close to work is usually the best place to make them. This is like the idea of “work-as-done” and “work-as-imagined.”

Shifting Our Thinking and Behavior: Partner Centered Leadership

When I was the plant manager, walking the plant every day, I operated at Levels 2 and 3. At Level 2 I talked respectfully with the people to help to build trust and interdependence. I shared lots of information about all we were doing. I also encouraged their decision-making, praising their successes. I also apologized for my mistakes.

I also worked at Level 3 as I talked about our agreements on how we wanted to work together. I would watch what was going on praising good behaviors, and if I detected poor behavior, we would talk about it. Rarely, I would have to address a bullying or harassment problem; these cannot be ignored since they are like a rotten apply and will spoil everything unless the behavior is eliminated.

I rarely worked at Level 1 since the operators, mechanics, engineers, first line supervisors, and safety people (we had 4 safety people) knew far more than I did. My Level 2 and 3 work enabled them to grow and be their best.

In leading this way, all 1,300 of us together, reduced injuries by 97%, and emissions to the environment by 95%. Our productivity rose by 45% and earnings rose by 300%. We did this in just 4 years.

Partner Centered Leadership really helped us all to get a lot better!

The shift in thinking and doing is worth it!

Shifting our thinking and doing are critical in helping to lead our organizations to a successful, safer and more prosperous future. Partner Centered Leadership will really help your organization to prosper.

I’m heartened to learn about the Safety Futures’ – Advanced Safety Professional Practice, a 12-week program under David Provan, (Melbourne, Australia), having recently graduated 100 newly-enlightened Safety Professionals. This program covers the critical professional practice capabilities that are not taught well in other health and safety professional development programs. Click here for David’s LinkedIn profile.

Please give me a call (716-622-6467) or contact me at RNKnowles@aol.com. I will be pleased to connect with you about the “shift.”

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership, Safety Leadership Process Tagged With: improve how to work together, leadership safety, learn to work together, Partner-centered Leadership, safety in the workplace, shifting our thinking and behavior in business, stronger workplace relationships, teamwork in the workplace, workplace safety

A Story: Make Shi(f)t Happen in the Workplace

May 10, 2024 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

When I was first promoted into a low-level manager’s job, my mentors were tough “Kick Ass-Take Names” (KATN) managers.

They were “it is my way or the highway” type people.

Our focus was on things, and we saw the organization as a machine and the people as challenges we had to make work for us. I modeled this and was quite good at KATN, but it was tough, progress was limited, and people were angry most of the time.

Then one day there was a modest-sized fire in one of the chemical production units in the big plant where I was the Plant Manager. All the ugliness, arguing, complaining disappeared and in an instant, the people became a high-performance team. In just three weeks of amazing work, the plant was back into production, but then people reverted to their terrible behavior.

Sometime later, as I walked the plant talking together with the people who were most impacted by the fire, I found that they really liked the way they worked during the fire repairs. People helped each other, they shared all information, were respectful, they told the truth, they made decisions themselves close to the work; this way of working meant a lot to them. They were quite excited as they reminisced about the fire and restoration experience. At one point I said to them “Fellas, we can’t burn the darn place down every few months so we can feel good. We have to figure this out.”

I began by walking the Plant for 3-5 hours a day, every day, among the people, listening and learning about their work and ideas, discovering that many of them were quite remarkable. I asked for their help and encouraged them to solve as many problems as they could themselves. I held weekly communications forums (in various venues across the plant) to keep everyone updated on the business, events, changes, etc., and answered everyone’s questions. Energy and good ideas bubbled up as the deep intelligence and creativity of the people emerged each day. Within just three years, the injury rate was down 97%, emissions to the environment were down 95%, productivity was up 45%, and earnings were up 300%.

In walking among the people, talking, listening, and sharing, everything changed. My role was to encourage the sharing of information, helping to maintain the vision and mission of our work as well as insisting on maintaining high standards of performance. Those doing the front-line work did remarkable things to make significant improvements. We all developed our agreements on how we would behave and work together which formed a rock-solid basis of our culture.

For example, we agreed to tell the truth, listen to, and respect each other, and apologize for mistakes. I was part of this; I had to model the behaviors. We held each other accountable to live up to our agreements. We had discovered that the organization behaved as if it was a living system where the key for success was in all of us, how we related and agreed to work together. We had created the conditions where everyone could learn, grow and be the best we could be. I asked everyone for help because we in supervision surely did not know everything. Many people already knew this.

Partner-Centered Leadership

We had shifted from a fear driven, KATN culture where relationships were poor, where it was hard for people to learn and grow, where change was slow and difficult, to a partnering culture where we cared for each other, learned, and grew to levels of performance we never imagined. I call this way of working “Partner-Centered Leadership.”

Everyone began to shift from sitting back like consumers, waiting for management to bring in various, new safety offerings like better safety meetings, training courses like behavior-based safety, new PPE, better safety equipment, new hazards analysis processes, more process safety management, management inspections like walk-arounds, big safety conferences, special OSHA training, and new versions of safety like Safety II and Safety Differently, to becoming active citizens and leaders taking the initiative and responsibility to be creative, to explore new ways to do things so we could all get better and help to solve most of our problems.

If new training or equipment was needed, groups could select from a broad variety of safety offerings to fill the need. We took responsibility for the whole plant system, our safety, environment, health, production, HR, quality, customer service, and community relations; they all came together. The separate stovepipes almost disappeared as we realized that we were all in it together, needing each other to be successful. We were a whole system with all the parts connected and interacting all the time. Through the process of partnering at all levels, our total performance went way up. Morale and a strong sense of belonging developed which felt good.

As we worked together this way, we learned to sustain this way of working. For example, the safety and health performance achieved a TIFR (Total Injury Frequency Rate) rate of ~0.3, and it was sustained at this world-class level for 19 years; this lasted for 14 years after I was transferred to a new assignment. I wrote an article about this in the American Society of Safety Professionals Journal, Professional Safety, which showed that Partner-Centered Leadership was far more effective than KATN.

Doing It

This way of leading requires a shift in management’s thinking about the people to seeing them as whole people with families, hopes, dreams, and a big creative capacity. It requires a shift in management’s behavior about developing relationships of caring, trust and commitment. It requires a willingness to treat each other with respect, to listen together, learn, grow. It means inviting everyone to work together to become our best. It requires giving people credit for their contributions.

It does not mean losing control of high standards, suffering with incompetent people, putting up with toxic behaviors and sloppy performance. It does not require new capital investment, new computers, and training. It requires a willingness to be with the people to talk together about the problems we face, to share almost all information and the need to solve problems at the lowest, appropriate level so our businesses can survive in this highly competitive, fast changing world. We also need to give credit where credit is due.

Everyone Wins

Partner-Centered Leadership builds morale and releases creative energy. The collective intelligence of the whole organization increases. It builds resilience and flexibility. Everyone together, co-creates their shared future. As the Plant Manager, I could throw leading by fear and KATN into the trash and shift to leading with deep caring, respect, integrity, and a great sense of satisfaction as all dimensions of performance significantly improved. It was wonderful to see how we all were growing and developing. All of us became winners!

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership, Safety Leadership Process Tagged With: communication in the workplace, improve how to work together, leadership safety, learn to work together, Partner-centered Leadership, safety in the workplace, safety meetings, stronger workplace relationships, team meetings in the workplace, teamwork, teamwork in the workplace, workplace safety

A New Season for Relationships in the Workplace

March 11, 2024 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

We are coming into a new season of nature with emerging flowers, nesting birds, new gardens, and sunny, warmer days.

It is a time of anticipation of all the new things emerging from the winter hibernation. There is excitement and anticipation in the air. There is hope for new things. Spring is all about change and renewal.

There is also hope for new relationships with our families, friends, and co-workers. The bright, warm sun warms us all.

Suppose we have a new season at work where we develop stronger, more supportive relationships among us. Just imagine the positive impact this would have. There would probably be a lot fewer people getting hurt and a lot less toxicity if our workplaces were filled with caring and support.

New Relationships

In our February blog post, I introduced the idea of a Cycle of Change, which I show here.

How much stronger would this Cycle of Change be if we could work together in an environment of caring and support? What would the morale look like? Would we be looking out for each other and helping where we could? Would we have more open conversations about what is going on and how we could improve things? Would there be a lot less bullying, dysfunction, and workplace violence? Would there be less fear and anxiety? Would the level of understanding among all organizational levels be a lot better? Would conflict between the people on the floor and the supervisors be less? Would we be growing a more sustainable, stronger culture? Would safety and environmental performance be better? Would productivity, quality, cost effectiveness, competitiveness be better?

It is interesting to think that all these would improve by just working on supporting and caring for each other. How we chose to work together has a big impact.

There are a lot of “would” words written above. And this one is used pointedly…Would that we all could understand and embrace this fundamental of life: “We change through the work we do together.” Leaders, especially need to connect these dots!

Making Our Choice

Who decides that supporting and caring are important relationships to work on? Who will make you work this way? Are the ideas of support and caring important to you?

If they are important, can you act on them and spread this way of working, one person at a time? Can you help, and support each other as you spread this way of working?

Each of us can make a positive impact if we want to. What do you want? What do you decide?

Call me at 716-622-6467 and I’ll walk you through how quickly and easily you can adopt this framework to your business, your team, your group.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: bullying in the workplace, improve how to work together, learn to work together, safety in the workplace, safety leadership, stronger workplace relationships, teamwork, teamwork in the workplace, workplace safety, workplace support, workplace violence

We Change Through the Work Itself: It is not complicated!

February 10, 2024 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

There’s a need for the crucial conversations to help the people in the organization to raise their awareness and identify ways to improve how they do their work together.

We often fall into routines, and skip thinking and talking about ways to improve things. Sometimes safety consultants are brought in to talk about the need to change the mindset of the workers and improve their safety culture.

I have a real problem with this approach.

The word “worker” sends a message that these people are somehow below us and maybe not so smart as we are. This is a terrible message. These people who are doing the work are really not much different than the rest of us. They have families, are paying their mortgages, paying their credit card debts, buying cars, etc. Most of the time they do their work safely and well. Why do we so often, at work, treat them as somehow inferior? In my experience, trying to fix and change someone’s mindset is a hard sell, meeting with resistance and often resentment.

Many of these “change” consultants offer various ways to change the culture, hoping that the people’s mindsets will also change. Most of these changes come across like New Years Resolutions. They sound good, but after a month or two, we drift back to our old habits and nothing really changes.

Change is a process and not a thing.

In my experience change comes about as we work together on something we need to improve, find better ways to do the work to make the improvement, agree on how we will do the work and then do the work. Change comes about through the experience of doing the work itself, together, and learning from that experience. The process looks something like this picture.

change comes about through work experience

This way of working requires open, honest conversations where everyone feels safe enough to share and contribute. As we learn together, amazing improvements begin to emerge. Visualize this as a learning helix. Each step lifts us from level to level.

The people who are close to the work have the best knowledge of what needs to be done. They do not have it all, so they need to talk with people outside the group like safety professionals, engineers, and others to be sure their ideas are the best they can be.

It will be interesting for you to talk together about these ideas. It would be fun to see how it works for you and your organization. Make a modest start and see what happens.

work issues can be solved together

As leaders in workplaces, we need to do better. Give me a call at 716-622-6467 or contact me via email and let’s talk about how you can do this – working with a real problem and genuinely involving the people – sharing their best to make it happen together.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: improve how to work together, learn to work together, partnering in the workplace, safety culture, safety in the workplace, safety leadership, teamwork, teamwork in the workplace, workplace safety, workplace support

Safety Works When People Work and Learn Together

January 10, 2024 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

The year 2023 was a busy and active year with all the increased business activities, increased construction, and lots of safety conferences.

I congratulate those of you who made progress in improving your company’s safety performance and had more people going home in one piece. It is a wonderful thing to know that you made a positive difference in someone’s life.

The safety challenges were difficult and relentless. The preliminary reports indicate that overall, the number of people getting killed or injured went up in most areas around the world, including the United States. There is so much to deal with like drugs, violence, the push for people to produce more and more with limited resources, more reporting, and the uncertain political and economic climate that is so distracting.

What sorts of changes can we all make in the way we are doing our safety work?

Just doing what we are doing, but harder and faster is not getting the improvements we need. Putting more safety people into the work may make a small difference, but not the step change we need to make.

My Learnings

One of the things I found that really made a big difference when I was working as a plant manager was going out among the people listening, talking together, getting to know them, and the challenges they had in doing their work. These are the people actually doing the physical work of manufacturing.

As a manager, sitting in my office, I had almost no idea about their daily challenges they faced in doing their jobs. I was also worried that they were getting various messages from me, the other managers, and supervisors that put them into a bind. They were struggling with messages like work safely but get the pounds out. They were unclear about priorities and goals. I think they were all trying to do their jobs as well as they could, but it was like working in a fog.

As we talked together, the messages got a lot more clear. I got a much better understanding of their challenges and difficulties. I could not do their jobs; I just did not know how to do their work. So, I started to ask them for their ideas about how I could help them in doing their work.

It was slow at first, but as trust began to build, a lot of good ideas emerged. Many problems they could solve themselves, so I encouraged them to talk together and figure out a good solution. If it was safe and workable, then let’s try it a see how it worked.

A Deep Learning Developed

I did not know how to do the Level 1 work where the actual manufacturing tasks took place, and they did not know how to do the Level 2 work that I was doing. We lacked the experience, information, and knowledge that we each had. All I could do was to ask the people how I could help make the systems better so their work went better, and the people could ask me about the things that I was saying to make the messages and goals more consistent and clearer.

The frontline people got a lot better at doing their Level 1 work and I got a lot better at doing the Level 2 work. As we worked together improving our Level 1 and 2 work, we also talked a lot about the importance of treating each other with respect, really listening and learning together. We learned to help each other better, talk together better, and learn better. These shared values were our Level 3 work and applied to all of us. We discovered that the values in Level 3 applied to all we did so that our work at Levels 1 and 2 went a whole lot better.

Over time, in working together like this for about 4 years, our injury rates went down around 97%, emissions to the air, water and ground went down about 95%, and earnings went up around 300%. All aspects of our work improved. We all did it together.

For the New Year

I ask you to think about how you can begin to do safety differently and make the breakthroughs you want to make.

Workplace Safety is a Local Issue

Improvements in the safety performance (fewer deaths, injuries and incidents) is a local issue. These improvements have to be made by the people working in the particular jobs and activities. Ideas and edicts can come down from on high, but they do not make the place safer. If they could, we would already have injury-free workplaces.

The people, working together, as I described, make the difference. The work has to apply to the specific work and tasks by the people who are involved at Levels 1, 2 and 3.

When people at the facility level decide to work this way together,
amazing things happen.

Let’s have an amazing year!

My offer to you: Give me a call (716-622-6467) so we can talk together about working at Levels 1, 2 and 3. Let’s see what happens.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: improve safety performance, learn to work together, partnering in the workplace, safety in the workplace, safety leadership, safety training, teamwork, teamwork in the workplace, workplace safety, workplace support