Why Are So Many People Being Killed and Injured at Work?

November 11, 2024 By Leave a Comment

A New Safety Leadership Paradigm is Needed

This is a question I have been thinking about for quite some time. There are lots of good people working to improve our safety performance, yet the numbers hardly change from one year to the next. In reading Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” (1962), the idea of a paradigm shift comes to mind. A paradigm shift is when the basic concepts and practices of a particular area of study need to change. Perhaps a change in the way we approach total safety performance is needed; we need a safety leadership paradigm change!

Background: Our Current Safety Management Paradigm

For years we have looked at the structure of organizations as if they are machines focusing on things, equipment and tools, even seeing people (the employees) as if they were merely interchangeable parts of the machine. Since the advent of OSHA, this approach has really improved the total safety performance of most organizations, yet across our industry we now seem to be stuck. The underlying pattern is one driven by fear of failure and punishment. The energy is driven down from the top with little feedback. Most people resist processes of power and change being imposed on them. Information flow is restricted to a “need to know” basis. Perhaps we have improved total safety performance about as much as we can using this approach. I know from my own experience as a plant manager in leading this way, that improving and sustaining the safety performance is slow and difficult.

with safety leadership businesses can be safer

Partner-Centered Leadership: A New Safety Leadership Paradigm

I spent a lot of my time as the plant manager studying how and why organizations work or not. The ideas coming out of the new insights about complexity, chaos, and complex adaptive systems offered a different way to lead. I learned to see organizations as if they are living systems and a new paradigm formed. I saw people as caring and partners in our work together. The relationships with and among the people became the most important feature of our work. People want to be respected. They want to be heard. They have ideas they want to share. They know more about their work specific work than I did as the Plant Manager.

We shared information abundantly providing almost constant feedback to each other. We co-created our future using a guided conversational process called “The Process Enneagram” (see my YouTube videos to learn about this process). We learned Self-Organizing Leadership and developed the Partner-Centered Leadership approach1. People took responsibility for their work and new ideas constantly emerged as we talked together. Change happened as we learned to work together in new ways finding the results of work getting better and better. The collective intelligence of the people blossomed.

The people (everyone) and I had to learn to work this way as we worked together. We gradually found that the safety performance (TRIFR down 97% in 4 years) and everything else improved. As we learned about Self-Organizing Leadership, we realized that as people self-organized around their work that the system needed to be held together with a container that allowed the flow of information and energy but did not overcontrol the system. I called this container “The Bowl.” Some people talk about needing “guide rails,” which is also a useful idea.

A Comparison of the Managing and Partner-Centered Leadership

I wrote a paper for Professional Safety in 2022 about our work at our plant and comparing the effectiveness of the Managing and Partner-Centered Leadership processes2. It clearly showed the superiority of the Partner-Centered Leadership process.

The Partner-Centered Leadership process may very well be the new paradigm that is needed to greatly reduce the number of people being killed (~5,200/year) and injured (~2,400,000 people/year).

Please seriously consider this and let’s work to get a lot better. This is not just trying harder; it is really about doing things differently and more effectively.

Please give me a call and let’s talk about how this can happen for your organization.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Overcome feelings of Impatience in the Workplace

September 10, 2024 By Leave a Comment

When leadership can help employees overcome feelings of impatience, frustration and anger, the energy and creativity of the people emerges, enabling much quicker, better decisions and more effective work to take place.

Impatience

In a long road trip over this Labor Day Weekend, we got stuck in an hour-long traffic jam on a very busy Interstate Highway. The GPS message was “Your route is closed.” We were sitting on the 3-lane highway with big trucks all around us and there was no way out.

My impatience level went way up as we just sat without knowing anything about the stoppage or a possible alternative way out. Other car drivers were also getting impatient and beginning to make poor decisions. For example, several impatient drivers wiggled thru tight spaces, actually turning their respective vehicles around – then began their journey against the normal traffic flow, maneuvering along the shoulder to get to the last exit we had passed so they could get off the Interstate and go around the holdup on secondary roads.

We just waited with the trucks to see what was going to happen. After about an hour the traffic began to move and open up. We never saw the source of the holdup, but we had a sigh of relief to be able to move forward again.

overcoming frustration and impatience in the work place

Ruminations

I began to think about the times in my own career when things got bogged down or we had had an incident that stopped everything. I struggled with these same feelings of impatience. Everyone was impatient and frustrated. Some people wanted to just push through before we had given things enough consideration to understand what was wrong and see a way out of the problem. Others spent time in their offices, away from the situation, trying to dictate solutions; it is easy to come up with possible solutions when you do not know what is really going on. This really became frustrating when the corporate people tried to tell us how to solve our problem. Others wanted to cut through the safety procedures since they felt the procedures were getting in our way.

We were all impatient, anxious, angry, struggling with a strong sense of urgency and frustration. This is a dangerous situation where it is very easy to make dreadful mistakes. The people working close to the problem feel acute pressure to solve the problem and get going. They are extremely aware that their managers want to get going. Their managers are also under a lot of pressure from their managers or from sales or from customers to get going.

The people working close to the problem are aware of all these pressures, but also know that they have to do things right so no one gets hurt, so the process will really run correctly when things are restored, and so there will not be a new safety or environmental incident on startup.

Leadership’s Role

In these situations of high frustration and impatience, the people close to the work need to be helped and supported by their management and leaders.

As a Plant Manager, my role was to create a safe space for those working close to the problem to think things through, organize themselves, plan the restoration processes, and make the other decisions needed to get back up and running safely. The operators, mechanics, engineers, and safety people know what needs to be done, so as the Plant Manager, my role was to create a safe space where they could do their work. I also reminded them to work with high safety, environmental and customer standards, helping each other to do their best in the situation.

As we shared information on the progress to solve the problem and the things around it, we also helped to maintain respect and caring among everyone and gave credit to them as progress was made. These made a big, positive difference.

When we can minimize the feelings of impatience, frustration and anger, the energy and creativity of the people emerges, enabling much quicker, better decisions and more effective work to take place. This is Partner-Centered Leadership in action!

Call me at 716-622-6467 and I’ll be pleased to talk to you about Partner-Centered Leadership. It is the way forward.

feelings of impatience in the workplace

Filed Under: Safety Leadership, Safety Leadership Process, Safety Partnership Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Shifting Our Thinking and Behavior

June 10, 2024 By 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.

shifting our thinking and behavior

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!

working together means success

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: , , , , , , , ,

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

May 10, 2024 By 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.”

partner-centered leadership in the workplace

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.

partner centered leadership can make a difference in workplace safety

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.

working together in the workplace

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: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Improving Workplace Safety for Your Employees…

September 10, 2021 By Leave a Comment

Many Thousands of People are Being Injured and Killed at Work

Many, many good, safety professionals are working to maintain and improve workplace safety. Yet the number of people losing their lives in our workplaces (in just 4 years) has increased from 4,836 in 2015 to 5,333 in 2019, based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics. From 2015 through 2019 there have been 25,746 people who have lost their lives at work. To put this into an alarming perspective, compare this to the losses in Afghanistan since 2001 (over twenty years) where there have been 3,592 allied forces who have been killed, based on Associated Press.

With all the effort put into improving safety performance in our workplaces, why have we not seen a reduction in the number of people being killed at work? New papers sharing improved ways to ‘improve workplace safety’ are presented at safety conferences by the American Society of Safety Professionals, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ Global Congress on Process Safety, and many smaller conferences as well as in publications in a variety of journals. The informational know-how is available!

Each of the specialties of occupational safety, occupational health and process safety management have a huge amount of information that has been developed over the years to improve safety performance. While some progress has been made in reducing the total number of injuries from a rate of 3.0 in 2015 to 2.8 in 2019 (2,814,000 injuries) this seems slow to me.

What is Missing?

The fruits of all this work has to be carried out by the people actually doing the physical work, those close to the actual operating and maintenance processes. We need to help these people, and not just pile more stuff onto them.

wokrplace safety comes down to the frontline people

I have found in all my 60 years in working in research, production and consulting globally that a missing link is not talking with the front-line people and exploring and learning together how to improve the work so that fewer injuries and incidents occur. None of us have all the answers. We need each other. (Talking down to people doesn’t work; talking to people (one-way) doesn’t work—the key is in talking with our people!)

Here is a Simple Solution…

When I was the Plant Manager at the 1,300 person, DuPont Belle, WV Chemical Plant I changed this. In my leading process, I spent 4-5 hours a day for 7+years walking around in the Plant, being respectful, sharing information, listening, asking how I could help the people, asking them for their help, learning together to improve things and building trust and interdependence. I talked with everyone. My mantra was “I do not have a right to make my living at a place where it is okay for you to get hurt, and we have to make a living, so let’s figure this out together.”

Our injury rate dropped by about 97% in three years, emissions to the environment dropped by about 96% in 4 years, productivity rose about 45% and earnings rose about 300%. Safety is connected to everything so as we made safety improvements everything else improved. In this approach which I call “Partner-Centered Leadership”, all parts of our safety work came together as shown here.

partner centered leadership for workplace safety

Each of occupational safety, health and process safety have their unique knowledge and management disciplines. When they are brought together, in the region of overlap in the center of this Venn Diagram, this is where the people and the leading process described above come together. In addition to talking with everyone about all the dimensions of our safety work as I walked around, there was one place where this all came together and was clear to everyone. Our monthly Central Safety Meetings were open, and all aspects of our safety work were discussed openly with everyone. All questions and concerns were welcome, and fixed. I strongly urged our supervisors to talk with their people and the engineers to sit with the operators to teach them the elements of process safety.

This is Simple.

Go into your workplaces, respectfully talk with the people, listen, share, ask them where you can be of more help, help them to follow up on their ideas and concerns, solve problems, build trust, and have everyone go home healthy and in one piece. Engagement!

You can do this!

To learn more about this approach see our web sites:
RNKnowlesAssociates.com and SafetyExcellenceForBusiness.com or give us a call at 716-622-6467.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership, Safety Leadership Process, Safety Partnership Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The Things Every Manager Wants from Employees…

February 10, 2021 By Leave a Comment

But What Does Every Employee Want from their Managers/Leaders? And, How Do We Get These, Together?

In a 2017 article in INC online magazine, the desired universal list of what every manager looks for in an employee was highlighted:

  • Predictable results (get stuff done – be counted on to deliver!)
  • Drama-free collaboration (play well in the sandbox; don’t cause interpersonal issues)
  • Spontaneous initiative (don’t expect to be told exactly what to do every time)
  • Truth-telling (candid about issues; willing to speak up, diplomatic)
  • Enthusiasm (show your positive engagement)
  • Continuous growth (treat your job as part of career)

But what does every employee (universally-speaking) want as traits in their managers/leaders (excerpts from the SESCO Survey report)?:

  1. Honesty. 90% say they want honesty and integrity from their manager. Lies and secrets are the biggest killers to credibility.
  2. Fairness. 89% want their manager to be fair and to hold all employees accountable to the same standards.
  3. Trust. More than 86% want to trust-and be trusted by-their manager.
  4. Respect. 84% want to respect-and be respected by-their manager.
  5. Dependability. 81% say they want to be able to count on their manager when needed.
  6. Collaboration. 77% want to be a part of their manager’s team and be asked to contribute ideas and solutions. Shutting employees out will shut them up-and send them shipping out.
  7. Genuineness. 76% want their manager to be a genuine person. Employees sometimes spend more time with their boss than with their families-they don’t want a phony.
  8. Appreciation. 74% want their manager to appreciate them for who they are and what they do. When was the last time you handed out a “Thank you!” or “Great job!” to employees?
  9. Responsiveness. 74% want their manager to listen, understand and respond. Be a sponge, not a brick wall.

partner centered leadership can make a difference in workplace safetyI share all this because, if you follow my work with the Process Enneagram©, you can pick up very quickly that there are certain things that are integral to each point of that framework – especially the pattern for excellence that I call Partner-centered Leadership©.

Particularly, the qualities that employees want from their managers (and their coworkers) fall into the Building of Relationships by living by agreed-to Principles and Standards – essential ingredients: Honesty, Fairness, Trust, Respect, Dependability, Collaboration, Genuineness, Appreciation and Responsiveness. This is how we choose to behave with and treat each other!

Employees want sufficient information to be able to do their jobs and to understand how they fit in the big picture. Each cog in the wheel is essential. Yet they also need to understand where that wheel is rolling, what direction, and how fast. They do not want to be jerked around.

Information-sharing & Identity/Frame of Reference: Employees want the truth about the business…where does it stand? What is needed to move forward? What is required performance-wise for the next quarter? What is in it for me? How can I grow as the business succeeds? These are valid questions. How do I fit in to our success (likened to the stonecutter who was building a cathedral!)?

Leaders / Managers / Employees …Yes, you can get it all…together! Call me at 716-622-6467 and I’ll share the process with you. We teach Leaders and Managers how to do this, and we train-the-trainers too – so that you can have sustainability.

These three legs on the 3-legged stool are essential: Living by a set of Principles and Standards so that you can Build Relationships, Sharing Information, and Ensuring a Sense of Identity. Why? Because all things get done through people. And People Matter! And these are the ingredients for a successful business.

live by a set of principles and share information in your business

The key features for leaders/managers to remember in Partner-Centered Leadership are:

  • Valuing people, change and the future
  • Seeing organizations as if they are living systems
  • Recognizing organizations as complex, adapting, self-organizing networks of people
  • Focusing on the open flow of information, building respect and trust
  • Helping people to find meaning in the work itself

Partner-centered Leadership | Safety Excellence For Business

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

Bringing Safety People Together…It’s all in the Venn!

January 11, 2021 By Leave a Comment

I want to share some experiences I’ve learned about the importance of sharing information and building trust – especially as it applies to the various safety aspects of our workplaces.

We surely had our hands full in 2020 with all the COVID-19 issues. While the new vaccines will help, change will always be with us. Each of you can make a positive difference for the people in your organizations by sharing information about what is going on, building respect and trust and listening carefully, so you really understand the issues and concerns.

I have noticed that those working on occupational safety and occupational health do not interact much with the people working on process safety management (PSM), and vice-versa. For example, at the ASSP meetings, I rarely hear any one talking about PSM and at the AIChE Process Safety meetings, I don’t hear much about occupational safety and/or occupational health. It is as if these are different stove pipes. But each of these are areas where people are deeply involved in the total safety performance of the organization. I have found that when everyone is talking together about the total safety, synergy emerges and all areas benefit.

When I was the Plant Manager of a big chemical plant, the people working in these three areas were engaged in conversations and contributed to improvements across the board. This Venn Diagram illustrates how we brought them together while maintaining their unique contributions.

the importance of sharing information and building trust

Each safety area was managed separately, using their own operating discipline. Where the three areas came together, we talked about what was happening and looked for input from each other. This significantly raised the total safety and environmental performance of the site. PSM also has a big impact on the environmental performance when spills, accidental chronic emissions, release incidents, improved yields and fires and explosions are eliminated; and a lot less is emitted to the environment.

The area of overlap of the three safety disciplines (at the center of the Venn diagram) is where we engaged in Partner-Centered Leadership:

  • Sharing all information
  • Building trust.
  • Listening to each other’s problems and opportunities.
  • Learning and finding better ways to do the work together.

For example, we talked about the three disciplines in our site Central Safety Meetings, keeping careful track of our safety workorder backlogs, meeting our safety equipment inspection schedules and talking about incidents and injuries that had happened, and what we could all learn from them. The engineers went into the various production areas and sat with the operators to learn what the operators were experiencing as they ran the processes, and the engineers taught the operators the engineering technology supporting their work, helping them to understand what was happening in the manufacturing operations. The supervisors, engineers, operators and maintenance people talked together as safety and work procedures were developed. The gap between work-as imagined and work-as-done virtually disappeared. As trust and the open dialogue improved, our safety and environmental performance really improved.

In just three years, the Total Recordable Injury Rate dropped by about 97% to a rate of about 0.3, and the people sustained this for 17 years. PSM improved with much lower levels of releases and upsets. The emissions to the environment (accidental and permitted) went down about 95% in four years. When the PSM was run as a separate stove pipe from the occupational safety and occupational health stove pipes, the Plant’s performance did not come anywhere close to these low levels. This is significant!

The improvements we made in how we worked together in safety spread into all the other parts of our work in running the big (1,300 people) chemical plant. The more we shared information, treated each other with respect and listened to each other, the more the total performance improved. For example, productivity rose by about 45% and earnings rose about 300%.

Learning to work more effectively, through our safety work, spread to the whole organization. Each of you reading this newsletter can make a big difference as you engage with the people in your organizations, sharing information, building respect and trust. The impact of your work will spread.

Want to know more? Contact me at 716-622-6467. Or, Order my book, “Partnering for Safety and Business Excellence” on Amazon.

 

Note: Venn is a diagram that shows all possible logical relations between a finite collection of different sets. Take a look at what sits right in the middle!

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership, Safety Partnership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

This is Your Wake Up Call!!!

November 10, 2020 By Leave a Comment

Has your organization become forgetful or is it sleepwalking?

A delightful new book by Stephen Capizzano (2020), The Forgetful Organization, has some ideas that really make sense for those of us working to help organizations improve their safety performance and move towards Safety II.

has your organization become forgetful or is it sleepwalking?In this story, a wicked witch puts the princess and the whole kingdom to sleep for 100 years. They all have to wait for the arrival of the prince to kiss the princess and awaken everyone. As children, we all knew this story, but in this new book, Stephen Capizzano shifts the story to thinking about what happens in our organizations.

Are we in our organizations, walking around as if we are asleep? This idea of us walking around as if we are asleep is not new. The ancient Greeks talked about the caves of sleep and drinking from the rivers of forgetfulness. Are we sleepwalking deep in our habits and unaware of things going on around us?

Are we asleep in our old habits that we like and feel comfortable in? Do we like pushing the blame for problems off onto someone else? Do we like doing the minimum required for compliance? Isn’t just enough good enough? Do we really enjoy our dull safety meetings because it is a time for day dreaming about something else? Do we enjoy pushing back when something new comes into the picture like a new training program or improved safety procedure? Do we really love the “same old way?”

As we are sleep walking, 5,250 people died at work in 2018 (Bureau of Labor Statistics). The number of fatalities since 2008 has ranged between 4,800 and 5,250 people a year. Is that a habit we have become used to? The second highest cause of death for women at work is murder (453 in 2018). Is this another habit?

I used to be in the sleep-walking mode until we had a fire at a plant where I was the Plant Manager and I woke up. Maybe that was my handsome prince. Actually everyone woke up. We became a high-performance organization getting the fire out, the repairs made and starting up. Then our old habits reasserted themselves and most of us went back to sleep. But this jolt for me to wake up was so powerful I did not go back to sleep. I went on a quest to find out how we can all breakout of our old habits, stay awake and do extraordinary things together.

In this quest, I discovered many new things and created Partner-Centered Leadership, which I have discussed many times in these newsletters. One key element I found was that people want to be winners. Another finding was that we already know how to work at high levels of performance. We just have to wake up and help each other to shed our old habits. It is not a matter of scolding each other to do better. It is really just reminding each other that we already know how, so let’s do it. When we wake up, we use the natural processes of working together at a high level of performance. We do not need to go to special classes or workshops; we already know how to work this way as the fire crisis showed.

We already know how to:

  • treat each other with respect
  • help each other
  • listen together
  • tell the truth
  • share information
  • say we are sorry when we mess up
  • think and develop better ways to do things
  • work safely
  • remind each other to be our best

The key features for leaders to remember in Partner-Centered Leadership are:

  • valuing people, change and the future
  • seeing organizations as if they are living systems
  • recognizing organizations as complex, adapting, self-organizing networks of people
  • focusing on the open flow of information, building respect and trust
  • helping people to find meaning in the work itself

set a goal of where you want to beWhen we were able to shed our old habits at our Plant in West Virginia, injury rates dropped by 97%, emissions to air, ground and water as reported to the EPA dropped 95%, productivity rose by 45% and earnings rose by 300%. As I walked the plant for 5 hours each day we were reminding ourselves to shed the old habits and create a much brighter future.

We can all make the choice to wake up and create a safer, brighter future. Let’s remind each other and ourselves that we can wake up. We can each become the handsome prince that Stephen Capizzano talks about in his fine book.

Some interesting safety data

The Bureau of Labor Statics summary for 2018 shows that in 2018 there were 2,834,500 Recordable injuries. At an average cost of about $50,000, this amounts to a waste of over $1.1 trillion as well as a lot of suffering and sadness.

COVID-19

Returning to work during this pandemic seems to be the right thing to be doing, as long as we do our best regarding social distancing, wearing a suitable face mask, washing our hands, and keeping our hands away from our face. We also have to give our older people special care to protect them since they have such serious effects if they get the virus. Everyone needs to look out for each other and take the steps to do the best they can to work safely and keep everyone healthy. This is not down-playing the seriousness of the disease, but rather looking at a balanced approach where people also need to work and the businesses survive.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

As the World Turns…

January 10, 2020 By Leave a Comment

We are coming to the end of another decade of change, turmoil and uncertainty.

can make a marked difference in workplace safetyArtificial intelligence and robots, block chains and bitcoins, the opioid epidemic, political strife, and workplace violence, international worries and potential conflicts are some of the challenges facing all of us. There is a critical need for people, in all walks of life, to come together to openly and honestly talk about our challenges, share our thinking and learn together. We do not have to be blindly swept along. We can make decisions and do the things that we need to do to help to make the world a better place.

We can make a marked difference!

One important challenge that we can do something about is in improving the safety performance in our own organizations.

For the last 4-5 years, the number of people getting killed at work has been holding steady at around 5,300-5,500 people. Lots of safety professionals and other people are working to improve safety in many ways, but we are stuck at the level of safety compliance. We have to shift our thinking in order to break out of this box and significantly cut the numbers of people getting hurt and killed.

This is not about blaming the people and seeking root cause. It is not about just working on safety. In our complex world, there is so much more going on and there is no single root cause. Organizations are complex, adapting, self-organizing networks of people so our thinking has to shift to fully grasp this complexity and do the things we need to do.

Partner-Centered Leadership

The best way to improve the organization’s safety performance, beyond compliance, is in using Partner-Centered Leadership©, which I have been developing for over 3 decades. I used this approach when I was a Plant Manager for many years and together, the people cut our injury rate by 97%, our emissions dropped by 95% and earning rose by 300%. I further developed this approach in my consulting work over the last two decades. Everywhere this approach is used has resulted in rapid, significant improvements in the organization’s total performance.

In building on the base of safety compliance, the focus of our work is on developing more effective leadership and improving the total performance of the organization. Safety performance is just one aspect of the organization’s performance so when the entire organization improves, safety improves as well.

partner centered leadership can make a difference in workplace safetyWhen I talk about safety. my thinking goes well beyond the traditional safety numbers, training and procedures. It includes ideas about respect and how everyone has agreed to work together. It includes ideas about personal responsibility, integrity and dedication to helping everyone improve. It includes openness, honesty and sharing information abundantly. It includes ideas about the deeper, often hidden patterns of behavior which have a profound impact on the work environment and drive much of the behavior. It includes the fact that the managers and leaders have the largest impact on their organization’s performance. It includes the understanding that managers focus on reliability, stability, predictability and control as they try to maintain the status quo and that leaders focus on the people, change and the future sharing information abundantly, treating people with respect and helping people find meaning in their work. Both good leaders and managers are needed.

It includes spending a significant amount of time in the workplace with the people holding both casual and formal conversations about how the people are doing, asking them how I can help to improve their job, looking for feedback on my own performance, seeking better ways to do things as well as talking about the things that are important for the business to succeed and prosper. It also includes the need to maintain high standards and operating discipline. I spent five hours a day in the plant when I was the Plant Manager, every day for 5 years.

Keeping the Continuous Conversation Going is Key

These conversations are a very important part of building the metaphorical container that holds the organization together and provides guidance for everyone. Sometimes these conversations can get quite intense as we all are searching for the truth and better ways to do things. When people have a good understanding, the vision, the mission, the expectations, the standards of behavior and performance, and their own role in building the success of the whole organization, they have a sense of this container, and they are able to make the decisions they need to make regarding the details about how they can best improve their own work as well as the business. The container, which I call the BOWL, provides the order and focus for the organization and the freedom for the people within the BOWL to learn, grow and improve.

Improvement and change come one conversation at a time. As we talk together, listen and learn, everyone gains new insights and a better understanding of how things are going. As this thinking swirls around the ideas begin to synthesize into concrete pictures and new possibilities emerge. The people co-create their shared future. Everyone is growing and learning together.

Partner-Centered Leadership is the best approach that I know about that is proven to help us break out of compliance and move into much better levels of total organizational performance. Call me to learn more about this way of working and the central tool we use which is the Process Enneagram©. If you really want to make a difference then call us at 716-622-6467.

(We are on the cusp of a New Year, so as you draw up your strategies for improvement in 2020, know that the old way of doing things won’t get you to where you want to be…Give us a call…We’ll get you moving forward to better safety performance.)

Filed Under: Safety Leadership, Safety Partnership, The Process Enneagram© Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

As the World turns…Partner-centered Leadership is needed…Big Time!

November 11, 2019 By Leave a Comment

We are expanding the scope and focus of our Richard N. Knowles and Associates Inc. business to helping organizations reduce the risk of workplace violence.

This begins with the leaders deciding to create a culture where it is okay and encouraged that people genuinely talk together, listen, help each other, look out for each other and learn together. This is a culture that helps people to be the best they can be and for the organization to get a lot more profitable. It all begins with all of us treating each other with respect.

Respect: Treating everyone with respect helps to keep tension low. Courteous, respectful treatment of co-workers, customers, and clients is fundamental to preventing workplace violence. What is your organization’s approach to respect in the workplace?

Does this sound like what we have talked about in our safety work? It involves the same approach, which we call Partner-Centered Leadership. At both the organizational safety level and the full cultural level, we are doing essentially the same work. It is all about people and choosing to work together, communicate together, interact together, in healthy, respectful ways.

By emphasizing that we begin with respect for each other, we are setting the standard that it is not okay to engage in disrespectful behavior, to harass one another, to bully anyone whether by a co-worker or a supervisor or manager, to gang up on anyone and/or use other ways to try to impose one’s power on someone in a hurtful, repetitive way. Those incivilities can only be destructive to culture – they make the difference between a hostile work environment and a healthy one.

Each person in a leadership position needs to go into their organization modeling this behavior and talking with the people about this – why it is important and insist that the standards be upheld. They need to support the line organization in doing this so none of the supervisors are hung out to dry.

The behaviors driving poor safety performance are a part of the workplace violence picture. People who are being pushed to work so quickly that, for example, they do not conduct a “Take-Two” safety check before the work starts or skip tool box meetings or are pushed without anyone listening to their thoughts before starting the work, are often the people who get into trouble and get hurt. Their attention is focused on getting the job done as quickly as they can without worrying about their or their co-workers’ safety. They tend to skip critical PSM safety checks which can lead to big disasters.

safetyThis is the sort of culture that Eric Hollnagel is talking about in his Safety II work, which is intended to move the organization beyond the traditional top-down safety management. (I’ve written about Safety II in previous articles – it is all good!)

In a hostile/toxic culture where it is okay to bully someone, things can build over time to where someone feels so bad and helpless that he/she does something violent…a home-grown, active shooter, for example. In 2016, workplace murders accounted for about 500 fatalities and 380 suicides. The second biggest cause of fatalities for women in the workplace stems from workplace violence.

We at Richard N. Knowles and Associates, Inc. have joined forces with Robin C. Nagele who brings vast experience in security and law enforcement. If you go to our new web site, NageleKnowlesAndAssociates.com, you can learn more about each of us and our work. We bring a holistic approach to this important work that leads to better cultures, improved safety and security and stronger earnings.

Guide to Reducing the Risk of Workplace Violence – The Absolute Essentials (by Nagele, Knowles and Associates)

Request your free copy today!

Go to our website and provide your name/address in the comment section. We’ll send this informative resource to you promptly. We’ve had good feedback on this booklet and just completed our 4th revision – further expanding content.

Want copies for your entire workgroup? Give us a call at 716-622-6467.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , ,
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