Self-Organizing Leadership | Safety Excellence For Business

Partner-Centered Safety

November 6, 2014 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

Sustainable levels of safety excellence are achieved only when everyone is pulling together to make their work as safe and productive as possible.

creating a safety culture Partner-Centered Safety is a robust, proven way to bring people together to achieve sustainable levels of safety excellence being based on deeply held beliefs and values.

People want to be treated as people.
Most people have good minds and think.
People want to know what is going on.
People want to be successful and want to work safely.
People love their kids and want to go home safely, everyday.
People come together as partners to co-create their shared future in a structured, focused, intense, disciplined dialogue using the Process Enneagram©.
People are self-organizing all the time openly and freely sharing information, building relationships of trust and interdependence through their agreements about how they are willing to work together and creating meaning.
All the people at all the levels in the organization are in this together contributing from their unique roles and perspectives.
People want to be heard, listened to, valued and respected.

A second element of Partner-Centered Safety relates to the environment in which everyone works that is complex in the sense that ideas, conditions, people, outside influences, etc. are interacting and changing all the time. Every decision is made in these complex situations yet no one has all the information, sees everything and has their mind totally focused on the specific task at hand. To over come these everyone needs help and support so that the best decisions are made in the moment of taking action.

A third element of Partner-Centered Safety is “The Bowl”. In co-creating their shared future and operating out of these shared beliefs and values a container is created consisting of their mission, vision, principles of behavior, standards of performance and expectations. This container is called “The Bowl”. The Bowl provides order for the organization, holding it together and within the Bowl the people have the freedom to make the best decisions possible. A major responsibility of the leaders and managers is to help everyone understand and maintain the Bowl through continuous conversations and interactions. If someone becomes a problem in not working this way or in violating the Bowl, management must address and deal with it. All the people have a responsibility to work within the Bowl holding each other accountable to live up to their shared agreements.

See our website for successful examples of the effectiveness of Partner-Centered Safety.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety Partnership Tagged With: business safety, injury-free workplaces, partnering for safe workplace, safe work environment, Self-Organizing Leadership

Characteristics of The Safest Organizations

October 17, 2014 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

The safest organizations are the ones that behave as if they are Living Systems.

creating a safety culture in the workplace Most of us working in safety have been brought up to see organizations as if they are machine-like. This thinking goes all the way back to Descartes (1596-1650) and Newton (1642-1727). We use reductionist approaches to try to understand them. We seek cause/effect relationships. We use linear processes for training and the like, prescribing answers and doing things TO the people. We work on this part or that part trying to fix the whole thing.

It is a bit like a doctor who works on the stomach while another doctor works on the heart as if they are not connected in some way to the whole body, and have an impact on each other.

In this reductionist arena, we put a lot of effort and time into trying to reduce injury and illness rates to levels of excellence (<0.5) and sustain these levels. This is very hard, difficult and expensive.

Yet, over the last 50 or so years, scientists have been able (by using high-speed computers) to see the world and its patterns in wonderful new ways. We can see the whole of the organization – the connections of the various parts and the non-linear ways that they interact. We discover feedback loops and self-organization.

We are able to see the whole organization as if it is a living system.
All the people are vital parts to the success of the whole. We are able to share information freely, to learn together. Trust and interdependence build and the future can be co-created.

This is not just airy-fairy stuff! When I have used this approach to working with organizations to improve their safety and business performance, extraordinary results are achieved.

This is Operation Transformation for you and your organization, for Leaders and your people.

You each can begin to take steps in this direction by going into your organization, listening and talking with the people.

Find out what they think about the work they are doing and if they have some ideas about doing it in a better way. Help them to think through these ideas and, if they are good ideas, help them to bring them into reality. This simple process will begin to open things up to a better, safer, more productive future.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: creating a safety culture, injury-free workplaces, safe work environment, Self-Organizing Leadership

Shifting the Safety Culture to Excellence

October 3, 2014 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

When we work together with our people, we can shift the safety culture.

self organizing leadership culture The first part of this work is sharing all information and talking together about it. Another part is building trust and interdependence with the people as we openly discuss what is happening, what we are doing and why. The third part of this work is helping people to see the big picture and how important their part is to the success of the whole business.

These are the core elements of Self-Organizing Leadership. When we co-create our Safety Strategic Plan™ using the Process Enneagram©, we produce a living strategic plan that we use going forward. We keep it posted, talk about it weekly and modify it as things change.

We have found that walking around and talking with, rather than at, our people often feels new and awkward for many managers. It takes some practice and persistence.

Being in dialogue with the people makes us feel exposed and uncertain. Sometimes people ask questions we can’t answer. That is okay – just get the answer and go back to talk some more. This is not a spectator sport. There is a Spanish saying, “It is a lot easier to talk about the bull than be in the ring.” Yet, this walking around and talking and listening together is key to our success. In these conversations we are building the BOWL. This is the container that holds the organization together. It consists of our vision, mission, principles, standards, and expectations. As people learn to function within the BOWL, they find the freedom to create new solutions to problems, taking the lead to solve them and become leaders.

When the culture shifts in this way, the people begin to see other things that they can do to improve the business. Quality problems that were once ignored get solved. Cost problems that lingered get fixed. Customer issues among the plant and their customers, like delivery requirements, get solved. Turn-around times between production campaigns needed to clean and re-pipe the equipment drop from weeks to just days. I have seen all these things happen.

When the safety culture gets right then everything gets right! Moving to safety excellence becomes the leading wave for total cultural change to excellence.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business, The Process Enneagram© Tagged With: creating a safety culture, safe work environment, safety excellence process, Self-Organizing Leadership

Changing Safety Culture

September 18, 2014 By Richard N. Knowles Leave a Comment

I am becoming more and more focused on changing the safety culture of organizations. There are lots of training programs and fine instructors teaching all aspects of safety technology. Yet our organizations still have to deal with a lot of people getting hurt.

Most people don’t come to work expecting to get hurt. Most organizations want people to work safely. I think a large part of our challenge to moving towards safety excellence is the way our organization’s culture influences how people decide to work together, or not.

safety excellence in business leadership Most of the safety people I’ve come to know approach organizations as if they are mechanical things to manipulate. Organizations are structured in functions. Knowledge is structured in pieces. People are narrowly skilled. Motivation is based on external factors. Information is shared on a need to know basis. Change is a troubling problem. People work in prescribed roles seeing only their part of the work. If change is needed people are moved around like chairs. Training is provided in abundance. Safety programs are set up as step-by-step processes where things are arranged in a prescribed sequence.

There is a big emphasis on teaching people what to do and then expecting them to do only as they are told…as if they checked their brain at the locker.

In my experience, organizations are not mechanical things to be manipulated, but rather they behave more like a living system. Knowledge is seamless. Organizations are seen as a whole system. Work is flexible and without boundaries. People are multi-skilled and continuously learning. Motivation is based on links to the whole system. Information flows openly and freely. Change is happening all the time, and seen as an opportunity for improvement. People work beyond their roles. People see their work in relation to the whole, knowing and doing what needs to be done. People work safely because they want to go home safe at the end of the day. They understand the larger expectation of the business.

Organizations are complex adaptive systems. The tools to work in complex adaptive systems are different from those that work in organizations seen as machines. When the tools of complexity are used, things work much more effectively, people become engaged in working towards the success of the whole system and change can happen quickly.

To learn more about this topic, see my blogs posts on Safety Excellence.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: safe work environment, safety education in the workplace, safety programs, Self-Organizing Leadership

Complex Systems Safety Leadership Process©

August 21, 2013 By Richard N. Knowles 2 Comments

Our work in helping to create injury-free work environments is complex.

There are three major areas of work that overlap to some extent. Depending on the work of the organization the emphasis may be different for the three areas of work.

Occupational Safety: One area of our safety work relates to Occupational Safety. Here we experience acute incidents like slips, trips and falls. Some of these lead to deaths. This area of safety work has been around a long time and is well developed. The systems, process and equipment for this work are managed by those closest to the work itself. These are the operators and mechanics as well as the first-line supervisors and the safety people who are working with them. This work not only saves the people from injuries it saves the company about $40,000-50,000 per average OSHA Recordable injury. A powerful leading indicator I have found useful is the Safe Acts Audit which is a quick and simple way to asses the safety climate as it shifts around. This is not a punishment procedure.

Occupational Health: A second area of our safety work relates to Occupational Health. Here we experience long-term, chronic problems. These can be related to low levels of exposures to toxic materials like asbestos, benzene and lead or repetitive motion problems like carpel tunnel syndrome and poor lifting positions. This area is newer than the Occupational Safety area and we are still learning a lot. As our workforce age, we will run into more Occupational Health problems. Often, by the time that we become aware of the problem, a large number of people have been impacted and the costs for remediation are very high, running into the millions of dollars. This work is best managed by those close to the work like operators, mechanics, clerical people, and health and safety experts. The leading indictors for this area of work are the discomforts experienced by the people doing the work, and also by researchers and experts who are studying large populations of people and can see trends and wider problems that are more subtle.

Process Safety: A third area of our safety work relates to Process Safety. A lot of new work is developing in this area of safety. Here we have acute problems like spills, releases to the air and water, fires and explosions. There can also be chronic dimensions to this like very low levels of emissions to the environment that result in public health hazards. This area of safety work is best managed by the operators, mechanics, engineers, researchers and other scientists close to the work itself. When a Process Safety incident occurs the costs in terms of lives and money can be very, very big as British Petroleum can attest to. The leading indicators in this area of safety work are things like near misses and close calls. Leading indicators are also the adherence to standards like timelines to get things repaired, schedules, the reduction of backlogs on safety work orders, and timely inspections of relief valves and thickness measurements of vessels and pipelines.

leadership safety in the workplace Overlap: All three of these areas of safety are often lumped together as SHE, EHS or HSE. When we lump these all together we can miss things so I think it is useful to see these three overlapping, interacting areas of our safety and health work. There is some overlap between Occupational Safety and Occupational Health like the proper selection and use of respirators. There is some area of overlap between Occupational Health and Process Safety like preventing chronic exposures to toxic chemicals. There is some overlap between Process Safety and Occupational Safety like locating trailers and offices away from operating areas using large quantities of flammable and explosive materials.

There is also overlap among all three areas of our safety and health work. This is where the people issues and culture become important. Everything happens through people! We need to have strong, effective leadership in order to bring all the work together and do a solid job in this work. There are many safety consultants who are teaching leadership of safety using linear, top-down processes that do have a good impact. However, in my experience, these are hard to do, often cumbersome and very hard to sustain. This is because these people are trying to lead safety using linear processes that are suitable for complicated situations.

Interactivity: All the interacting people and areas of safety and health are a complex system requiring different tools for successful leadership. Coming out of my studies of chaos and complexity science and my own experience in leading safety I have developed the complex Systems Safety Leadership Process©.

Complex systems often have a few simple rules that govern their behavior. The Three Simple Rules for The Complex

Systems Safety Leadership Process are;

Share all information with everyone except private personal information.
Build trust and interdependence among all the people.
Help everyone see their part in and the importance of fulfilling the work of the organization successfully.

Building on these Three Simple Rules are the Four Steps to Safety Excellence which are:

Use the Process Enneagram© with the leaders of the organization to develop clarity, coherence and commitment to achieving safety excellence.
Together, walking around, openly talking and sharing information, listening, sharing and learning, fixing problems, improving the safety systems and processes and building on all the safety systems, processes and tools we already have to manage the safety work.
In doing this with integrity, we build trust and interdependence among all the people.
The result of this way of engaging with everyone results in having everyone pulling towards safety excellence and continuous safety performance improvement.

This may sound rather strange to many of you yet this is the process to lead all aspects of safety to achieve sustainable excellence in our performance. The work I did with the people at the DuPont Belle, WV and with New Zealand Steel mentioned in earlier blogs, show that this way of leading safety is proven, robust and sustainable.

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

Filed Under: Safety Leadership, Safety Leadership Process Tagged With: safety compliance, Safety culture and the Management of Change, Self-Organizing Leadership, workplace safety case studies

Moving to a Safety Culture of Excellence

April 2, 2013 By Richard N. Knowles 2 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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