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We The People

7/28/2016

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Why do temperatures continue to rise every year?  Why are we fearful of and denying immigrants the opportunity for a safer and better life? Why are we fighting war after war, destroying cultures, killing innocents, and creating hatred? Why is it acceptable for America to allow tens of thousands of its friends, neighbors, sons, and daughters maimed and killed from gun violence?
 
I’ve heard numerous explanations for these injustices, impending calamities, and tragedies: population growth, inequality, economic stagnation, terrorism, and climate change. And no doubt each is a contributing factor to the distress our planet and its inhabitants are experiencing. But we are not innocent victims; we are active participants by dismissing and denying the past, the present, and the potential of future devastating consequences. We are the problem.
 
I believe the underlying cause for our self-destructive behavior is our obsessive pursuit of happiness and security. Our Founding Fathers unknowingly set us upon a quest to acquire the grail of happiness. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It appears we’ve become addicted to the pursuit of happiness at the expense of life and liberty for all.
 
As our world became increasingly secure and abundant, our values and behavior shifted from focusing on community to self-gratification. No longer was it necessary to actively participate in our communities. By creating and empowering institutions to care for our sick, extinguish our fires, protect us from our fears, and fight our wars, we removed the need to work collectively for the social interest and well-being of our neighbors, communities, and country. The untended consequences of this shift are that we are no longer “We the people,” but “I the individual.”
 
This shift will not take us securely into the future; it is taking us back to when our planet was inhabited by tribes each fighting for resources and significance. Polarization and segregation dominate our distressed social, economic, and natural landscape, and as “tribes” fight for control, each tribe is diminished.
 
Fear is stoked by tribes for their self-interest. The NRA says, “Trust no one— trust only your gun.” This has resulted in the U.S. leading the world in guns owned, gun violence, and gun killings and suicides, while gun manufacturers reap millions of dollars in profits.
 
The primary goal in a world of tribes is winning even at the cost of your neighbors, community and country. This deception that happiness and security can be achieved through the suppression of the “other,” makes it impossible to focus on the real threats to our security and well-being.
 
We stand at the tipping point in our pursuit of happiness; we are experiencing the turbulent upheaval of our protracted infatuation with self-interest, which feeds resentment and anger. This is a time that requires thoughtful and inclusive leaders, not those who are infatuated and addicted to self-interest. Our planet thrives on interdependence, not on tribalism—it requires the best of all of us.
 
In his book The Wise Heart, Jack Kornfield eloquently informs us of the error of our desires and thinking: “We do not possess our house, our car, or our children. We are simply in relation to them. The more tightly we cling to the idea that we ‘own or possess,’ the greater the unhappiness we reap.” With this understanding we can live as stewards, caring for things yet not being trapped by the concepts of self and possession.
 
The trap of Make America Great Again is set and the bait is tempting. We are told that we only need to exclude, deny, punish, and isolate to restore our addiction to happiness and security. We are told that our Founding Fathers were wrong. It’s not life and liberty for all that makes America great—it’s life and liberty for me.  
 
 America has never thrived on these self-serving ideals. In fact, America was at its worst at these times. We were at our worst when we enslaved people, and we were at our best when we fought on the shores of foreign lands to preserve freedom and to defeat totalitarianism.
 
 It’s human to feel resentment, anger, and fear, but we cannot allow these emotions to drive us over the tipping point. They are warning signals that we must open our hearts and transform resentment into gratitude, and anger into action that fights for the safety, respect, and equality for all. And we must transform our fear into courage by coming together instead of isolating ourselves into tribes. The choice is clear: we can be our worst enemy or our best friend. The human heart will never experience happiness by fighting its true nature — all hearts are connected. We are one heart.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



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To Be Or Not To Be? That is the Question

6/8/2016

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Considering a Move to Management:

Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be? That is the question…” soliloquy is about an internal struggle of whether it is better to live or not. While considering a move into a supervisory or management position is not a life or death proposition, the decision you make will have significant implications and consequences for your personal and professional life and that of the people you manage.
 
I think we’ve all wanted to be the boss at some point in our work history. Typically, these thoughts and feelings surfaced when I was unhappy about my relationship with my boss. I can recall thinking many times what I would and wouldn’t do if I were in charge. It seems so clear until you find yourself in a leading role.
 
Many benefits come with a promotion: status, authority, and increased compensation, to name a few. I call these “tip of the iceberg” benefits. They are very alluring, but a decision based only on these visible and extrinsic perks may cause more regret than satisfaction. The ability to perform a task or service consistently well, and to create the conditions for others to perform at the same level or better, requires intrinsic skills and motivations. By reflecting on three questions that challenge both our heads and hearts, we can balance the extrinsic with the intrinsic benefits of becoming a leader.
 
Numerous studies indicate that extrinsic motivators (money, bonuses, awards) have a short timespan of satisfaction before they lose value and become ineffective. Only a small minority of people feel that they are being paid based on their true worth. However, if your motivation for leading is rooted solidly in intrinsic rewards, which are a sense of achievement, or satisfaction that you did a job well. For example, you helped someone learn a better way of doing a task and made their day better. Because intrinsic rewards are intangible, they usually arise from within the person. If you are motivated intrinsically, you’ll will experience a significant and lasting degrees of satisfaction and fulfillment.
 
The questions are: Why do I want to be a leader? What is it that I want for myself and my employees? How can I be consistent and authentic to my purpose and achieve my wants?
 
Although these three questions are important for individual leaders, it is equally important for organizations to clearly define what they want from leaders. I know from experience that for the relationship between a manager and an organization to be mutually beneficial there must be a strong agreement between the organization’s expectations and approaches to leadership and the people they chose to promote. I can also speak from experience about how unrewarding and costly it can be to not explore these questions.  
 
Why do I want to be a leader?
I was selected in 1995 to lead a small group of behavioral medicine hospitals that were experiencing difficulty in a number of operational areas. The job was appealing to me because it was located in an area where both of my daughters were attending college. The company was interested in me because of my demonstrated ability and success with turning troubled hospitals around. We each saw the tip-of-the-iceberg benefits of the relationship, but discovered later that my approach and philosophy did not match their culture. I left the position after six months.
 
To begin your reflection, write at the top of a sheet a paper “Why do I want to be a leader?” and divide it into two columns. Label one “What helps me be my best” and the other “What makes it difficult to be my best.” Consider all your work experiences and note what you liked and didn’t like about those positions. Focus primarily on human factors, e.g. relationships with co-workers, what motivated you, did you receive recognition, what conditions made it difficult for you to do your work, and what conditions made your work engaging. Notice themes and conditions that may be common to all your work experiences; both will help you develop your “why” or purpose for wanting to be a leader.
 
After many tries I developed the following purpose for my practice: Dedicated to awakening, inspiring, and empowering human potential. What I realized in my reflections was that I performed at my best when the conditions of the job and my leaders were empowering. Jobs where I was given autonomy, recognition, and appreciation were the ones at which I performed at my best and enjoyed the most.
 
The goal is to discover a sense of purpose and clarity for why you want to be a leader. A purpose is like a North Star that can give you a sense of direction and focus. Based on your themes and conditions, craft a purpose statement that encompasses and summarizes the reason(s) why you want to be a leader.
 
What do I want?
Start with another sheet of paper and write, “What do I want?” at the top and then divide the sheet into two columns. Label the first column “For my employees” and the second column “Myself.” Then list all the things that you can think of, e.g., “I want my employees to feel respected.” “I want to be trusted.”
 
After you complete your list, go through all the items in each column and rank them in importance. This won’t be easy, but give it your best. To help you in prioritizing the perceptions of what employee want, reflect on your own work experiences and relationships—try to put yourself in their shoes. This list will help you in a number of ways. It will help you compare the benefits of the promotion with what is important to you, give you an idea of the role and functions you will need to fulfill to engage employees in a positive way, and help to clarify your work and personal values, which will be the criteria that you will use in deciding how you will lead.
 
How can I be consistent and authentic to my purpose and achieve my wants?
The “how” is based on a person’s philosophy and beliefs about human motivation, authority, control, and trust. I’m going to assume that you want to lead in a way that will create the conditions for your employees to feel valued, highly motivated, and engaged to perform their responsibilities and to value their relationship and association with you and the company.
 
The answer to Hamlet’s question is to be. Employees will first make their assessment of you as a person and secondly as a leader. The message is to be yourself, which is easy to say but much harder to put into practice. Being oneself is a matter of aligning your values with your actions. Employees are constantly watching to see if you walk your talk—trust is built or broken based on this simple rule.  
 
The Institute for Global Ethics, through extensive surveying, identified five basic values that most people agree are essential for positive relationships: honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness, and compassion. As a supervisor you can be sure that employees will be assessing you based on these or similar values.
 
The ability to be an effective supervisor or manager is learning how to stay true to a value in situations that may appear contradictory. These situations often arise and as a supervisor or manager you may feel stuck in the middle between your organization and your employees. One approach is to not see these situations as either/or, but AND.
 
From doing to being
One of the first indications that the position I took wasn’t going to work out happened in the first week. I was informed that the organization had made a decision to close it’s older, smallest, and underperforming hospital, and that I would have to organize a plan to accomplish this in two weeks. It was feasible, but it wasn’t how I would do it. Patients would be relocated to another hospital and staff would be notified of layoffs immediately. The plan violated my values.
 
I knew that if I went along with it my ability to be an effective leader would be damaged, possibly beyond repair. After a fitful night of sleep, I asked for a meeting and presented a plan that would allow me to live my values AND accomplish the organization’s goal.
 
My request required two months to accomplish the closing. The additional time allowed me to hold meetings with staff and to inform them of the decision (respect and fairness) and to include them in the process of the closing. It gave me time to express my appreciation and compassion to the staff who had been working at the hospital for many years and would not be able to find comparable jobs elsewhere.
 
We met the plan; the hospital was closed in sixty days. We held a staff party two days before the closing, after the patients were successfully moved. We celebrated the many years of hard work and dedication the staff gave to the patients and the organization. Employees shared stories; they laughed and cried. No one was happy about the closing; many told me that they expected it to happen. They wished it didn’t have to come to end, but they understood and felt respected; they had time to say goodbye. We couldn’t change the final decision, but we could change how it was done. We did it with respect and compassion and that made all the difference for them and for me. Ultimately it benefited the organization.
 
Moving into a supervisor of manager’s position does have advantages. It may be the first step on a new career path—but making the decision for the right reasons is essential for success. Being a high performer doesn’t mean you will make a successful manager. The shift is from doing to being. It’s a shift that requires you to create the conditions that will influence, encourage, and inspire your employees.
 
Your success will be measured by how successful your employees are. The rewards may be visible in your paycheck, but the most satisfying and lasting reward is knowing that you played a role in helping someone else do what you did better.
 
© Tom Wojick, The Renewal Group, 2016
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Leaders Don't Motivate - They Create the Conditions for Self-Motivation

9/3/2015

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The Iran Nuclear Deal - A Risk Worth Taking

8/7/2015

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“Without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.”

~ Stephen Hawking

The politicians, pundits and journalists who are against the Iran Nuclear Agreement focus on one point: it’s not perfect and could be better.

Most of us know from experience that humans are not perfect. Isn’t it unrealistic to expect that any agreement created by imperfect beings be perfect?

We are not in a position to force capitulation. Negotiation is a process that creates a path forward in which each party retains its dignity, propelled by the desire to give up something of personal value in order to gain something of greater value for everyone. Agreements are never perfect.

If Congress thwarts this agreement, what are the alternatives? We could continue and even increase sanctions, but our allies will not stand by our side, and if we are the only country applying sanctions the effects will be minimal—not a perfect alternative. Fifty years of embargoing and sanctioning Cuba has shown us that these alternatives can and will cause increased defiance. We imposed strict sanctions on Russia, yet Putin doesn’t seem a bit inclined to return Crimea.

We could also go to war, but we all know how imperfect war is. We only have to look at recent history to remember that in modern war there is seldom a clear winner and the costs are staggering and tragic. Consider:

Korean War:

No winner emerged. Instead, Korea remains divided and the North retains the capability of making a nuclear bomb(s). The war was waged at a great cost in terms of money and lives.

Vietnam War:

Objectively, North Vietnam, the communists, achieved their goals of reuniting and gaining independence for the whole of Vietnam, and it remains under communist rule today. The U.S. dropped more than 7 million tons of bombs—more than twice the amount that was dropped on Europe and Asia in World War II—and we lost more than 58,000 young lives. Not a perfect solution or result.

Gulf War:

The aftermath of the Persian Gulf War appeared to be a victory, but what we learned is that the victory was hollow. Saddam Hussein was not forced from power and the region became less stable. Many believe that this war helped to make Al Qaeda a force that would later strike our homeland.

Iraq War:

The initial stage of the war was a raging success—the banner proclaimed “Mission Accomplished.” Yet, the war created eight years of sectarian violence, 4,900 American lives lost and many more severely injured, and it amounted to a trillion dollar debt from which we still haven’t recovered. Iraq is still incapable of defending itself, and it gave rise to ISIS.

We need to ask ourselves if an imperfect agreement that may produce peace and diminish the potential of a nuclear Middle East is a better risk than the alternatives. Or are we willing to put our country and the world at risk by pursuing alternatives that have a dismal and tragic record. Can we afford to risk isolating ourselves from our allies, countries critical to solving the world’s most urgent problems? Are we willing to once again shed the blood of our youth by waging war?

Writer Archibald McLeish said, “There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience.” We have a clear choice. The Iran Nuclear Agreement has risks, but experience has shown that the alternatives are much more costly in terms of world standing, capital and human lives. All our options are imperfect and risky, but the greater risk here is repeating the past when we have a chance to take a risk for peace instead.


 


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The Power of Noticing

7/28/2015

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Have you been in a near-miss human collision recently? This seems to be happening to me more frequently these days.

When it happens, I’m typically in an airport, at a mall, or on a sidewalk, and notice I’m on a collision course with another person absorbed in their smart phone. Not wanting to create a scene or cause harm to myself or the other person, I change course.  As I do, the other person notices my movement and momentarily looks away from their phone, only to reengage, heading toward the next collision.

These incidents got me thinking about our extraordinary capacity to notice. We humans have been blessed with five senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste, which help us to fully experience and understand our presence in and connection to the space we occupy.  History, anthropology, and other sciences validate that human survival was based to great extent on our ability to notice when we were in danger and when we were safe. Noticing and then avoiding danger allowed us to flourish.

Noticing is still a significant factor in our safety, engagement with work and life, and survival. It matters if you notice that you are about to collide with a fellow citizen as you’re walking. It matters if you notice that your child is sad. It matters if you notice a bicyclist is sharing your road. It matters if you notice a co-worker is using a ladder that is not tied off or has not locked out an energy source before working to fix the problem. And it matters, as a leader, if your employees are happy and engaged or frustrated and on autopilot.

There is no doubt in my mind that using our senses to notice creates advantages, improves our safety and engagement, and generates a fuller understanding of our world. This exceptional capacity that can provide so many benefits, however, is being threatened by our technology, self-absorption, and isolation from the experiences of those around us.

Each time we turn off our capacity to notice, we become vulnerable. When we become so self-absorbed we don’t notice the homeless person in the shadows, or isolate and embed ourselves so deeply in our homogenous groups we don’t notice social injustice and inequality, we become vulnerable.

We are vulnerable because we’ve loss the opportunity to connect and understand. Our five senses are pathways into our hearts and minds, where our shared human experiences are stored. If we miss the opportunity to notice, we miss the opportunity to understand, connect, and make a difference in the lives of others and ourselves.

To be and feel noticed meets a deep human need. Have you ever longed to be noticed by someone, maybe a teacher, a coach, a parent, or a boss? When that moment of being noticed happens, you are infused with good feelings. If you feel unnoticed, unpleasant feelings and actions arise. Children misbehave when they go unnoticed, and workers languish and under-perform. Recently, our country has experienced riots and demonstrations by people struggling to have their plight noticed. 

Noticing is a powerful capacity we all possess, and it offers wonderful things. It can change a friendship or a working relationship—it can change the world. It is a gift to notice someone, and especially to oneself, because you are now more present and in tune with your world.  What we notice and don’t notice defines who we are in that moment as well as provides us the opportunity for change.

Noticing can be uncomfortable and exhilarating. The act of noticing will open you up to your sixth sense (s) - your emotions. You may notice that you are feeling sadness or anger or joy and awe depending on what you are experiencing.  Emotions increase the power of noticing by adding clarity and texture.

Martin Luther King said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” I like to paraphrase his quote to say that our lives begin to end when we lose our ability to notice the things that matter. 


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Can You Hear Me Now? Conversations not Assumptions

7/24/2015

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Normally, you assess an organization’s safety culture by observing how employees translate the company’s principles, values, attitudes, and goals into their behavior and decision-making.

This seems like a pretty straightforward method, but beware of drawing conclusions based only on observations—you’ll fall into the assumptions trap. 

I’ve fallen into this myself by relying on direct observations and reports consisting of data based on observations, and I suspect I am not alone. The assumptions trap is a consequence of the way in which the human brain forms patterns to help us manage a complicated life more efficiently.

Patterns feed our assumptions. They help us react, predict and make decisions regarding situations without having to assemble and sift through all of the details of what we are observing. The problem is the brain has no investment in making distinctions between fact and fiction. It takes in what it sees, dismisses what doesn’t fit, and draws a conclusion as expeditiously as possible. It will even add in data to fill any gaps just to complete the picture to fit the established pattern. This works very well when we need to slam on the brakes to avoid a child who darts into the road. However, this process has limits when used exclusively to assess or make assumptions about the effectiveness of a safety culture.

David McLean, Chief Operating Officer for Maersk, expressed this realization in his article “The Importance Of Process Safety & Promoting A Culture of PSM.”

“We were all very good at measuring personal safety performance, i.e. slips, trips, and falls, and this is very tangible, but did a good personal safety record mean we had a safe operation? Clearly not, as several major accidents had proven.”

Avoid the Assumptions Trap by Engaging in Conversations

“Can you hear me now?” was the key refrain from a Verizon commercial a few years ago. If you listen, you can hear employees using this same refrain in regard to their relationship with their managers.

“They never listen to us, and when they do, they don’t hear what we are saying,” I’ve heard employees say. “They already have their minds made up.”

Consider for a moment that managers spend 75% to 90% of their time in conversations! Who are they having these conversations with? And are they really listening or just filling in the gaps of existing beliefs and patterns? To understand and know one’s culture you must listen to it—not just to the words but also to the emotional texture of the words. A safety culture is created, nurtured and sustained by the breath and quality of the conversations that take place and the ones that don’t. 

“What people say and what they withhold matters,” said David Arella, founder and CEO of 4Spires. “Language trumps control. How the communication is initiated and conducted is often more important than what is communicated. An organization is a network of person-to-person work conversations during which information and energy is exchanged. Like cells in your body, the quality of these work-atoms determines the effectiveness of the whole. Attending to and influencing work conversations can help transform culture and improve collaboration.”

The true nature of a culture is revealed through its conversations. If you want to understand your culture before making assumptions about your culture’s strengths and weaknesses—what motivates employees and what’s in their hearts and minds—you must engage in open and honest talk. Conversations can help give meaning to observations.

Culture is made up of layers of conversations that are constantly vibrating and emitting information. Learning to notice and listen to these waves of information is a critical culture competency. It requires that leaders be committed to moving through the casual and superficial noise in order to gain insight into the organization’s authentic culture and discern what is really motivating employee performance.

Don’t Use Data: How to assess your safety culture more effectively

Edgar H. Schein, PhD, considered to be one of the foremost experts on organizational culture, believes that if you want to access your organization’s culture, bring together a group of employees who represent each part of the organization and provide an opportunity for them to dialogue about their issues, concerns, and the strengths and weaknesses they experience and perceive in the safety culture.

Here is a simple but effective model to help organizations assess and transform their safety culture. It calls for leaders, managers, supervisors, and employees to engage in authentic conversations in which each can express and share their concerns and build the trust required to move forward.

Leaders frequently expressed that they had reservations about engaging in these conversations, particularly those that reached below the surface. They preferred to use a survey (hard data). But after working with this model, not only did they obtain the data they wanted; they gained the commitment they needed from employees to work toward common goals.

The following questions can help assess if your have a culture that values conversations or if it is reliant on assumptions and patterns.

·      Is it like pulling teeth to get employees to talk in meetings?

·      How often do safety leaders practice walking and talking about the site?

·      Is the word stupid—or a similar insult—ever used to describe safety incidents or the employee involved?

·      What emotion(s) best describes the mood of the safety culture? Frustration, boredom, disappointment—or excitement, curiosity, and passion?

·      Do managers abhor meetings and feel that they are a waste of time?

·      How often have employee safety recommendations been implemented?

This self-assessment will begin to give you an indication if the conditions of your safety culture are conducive to meaningful dialogue; if it encourages open and honest conversations or stifles it.

A word of caution though: Just because employees may be reluctant to engage in conversations doesn’t mean they don’t want to be heard. Their behavior may be more about their lack of trust, fear of blame, or a result of previous conversations that resulted in a negative experience.  

A positive safety culture is a repeatedly observant one, not just of behavior but also of its tone and content. Safety leaders would be well served to develop a practice of deeply listening and observing before making assessments and judgments.


Contact Tom Wojick for more information on how to introduce conversations into your culture
401-525-0309
twojick@verizon.net



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Standing Up For Safety - An Act of Moral Courage

4/28/2015

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Don't Fall Into the Assumptions Trap: Your Safety Culture Thrives on Conversations

4/10/2015

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ROI - A Hazard To Employee Safety?

4/4/2015

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A familiar and popular business performance metric is ROI—Return on Investment. For many, this is the keystone of workplace culture, driving business strategy and decisions as well as the behavior of managers and employees.

Most businesses won’t invest capital or other resources unless there is a direct positive financial gain from the investment. It’s a no brainer—if a business wants to be successful and remain viable, it must generate a return. But is there a dark side to ROI?

Balancing ROI and ROS
There is a performance metric that is as critical to organizational success as ROI: ROS—Return on Safety.

Providing a healthy balance to ROI, ROS (#returnonsafety) is a metric that applies to every business, though it carries particular significance in manufacturing and production industries such as oil and gas, transportation, chemical, farming, and recycling. In these workplaces, humans interact closely with heavy machinery and hazardous substances, and it is not an unproven theory that focusing too intently on ROI can affect employee safety and decisions as well as organizational success.

In the last five years we’ve witnessed tragedies that serve as prime examples of what happens when organizations’ focus on ROI is dominant:

Upper Big Branch Mine (29 miners killed): A final report on the West Virginia tragedy indicated that Massey Energy had a culture of willful disregard for safety in favor of optimized profit and production.

Deepwater Horizon drilling platform explosion (11 workers killed): A statement from the final report noted that “the culture of safety is less strong than the imperative to meet deadlines, what has been referred to in the Deepwater Report by the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management as an ‘imbalance between production and protection’” (Forbes.com, 11/28/2012).

General Motors’ faulty ignition switch (31 deaths): Began with an ignition switch that was found to be defective in 2001. GM’s CEO, Mary Barra, stated to a congressional committee investigating the failure, "The customer and their safety are at the center of everything we do." Yet, GM’s own internal investigation, The Volukas Report, noted that there were conflicting messages regarding ROI and safety: “Two clear messages were consistently emphasized from the top: 1) ‘When safety is at issue, cost is irrelevant’ and 2) ‘Cost is everything.’” One engineer said that the emphasis on cost control at GM “permeates the fabric of the whole culture.”

The Price of Imbalance

The cost of these disasters combined is estimated to top 50 billion dollars. But the real tragedy is that as many as 71 people lost their lives because employee safety became an afterthought, or was never a priority to begin with.

This is the dark side of ROI. Could a culture that focuses on ROS, instead, have prevented these disasters? Most experts and authorities say yes.

Peter Kelly-Detwiler’s 2012 Forbes article, “BP Deepwater Horizon Arraignment: A Culture That ‘Forgot to be Afraid,’” addresses not just the Deepwater Horizon disaster but others as well:

“The gist of all of these inquiries and reports is pretty much the same: repetition, complacency, complicated technology, and a poor culture of safety combined with the production/protection imbalance is a recipe for failure. This can generally be remedied by the appropriate focus on best available safety practices and technology.”

Calculating the Worth of ROS

ROS as a metric is not as easy to calculate as ROI. It doesn’t show up in quarterly profit and loss statements and if it does its typically as an expense, therefore organizations have difficulty assessing its value to the bottom line—something many CEOs, under pressure from shareholders and the financial markets, can’t see beyond.

Instead, ROS requires leaders to have a vision that extends beyond quarterly reports. These men and women must have a steadfast commitment to safety, the courage to confront the short-term thinking of Wall Street, and a willingness to reject the idea that production and profit achieved at the expense of employee safety is a sustainable business strategy. 

Leaders who respect the value proposition of ROS understand how intimately safety is related to quality, reputation, efficiency, innovation, and worker engagement and loyalty.

 

How One Company Benefitted

Paul O’Neill, CEO of Alcoa from 1987-2000, was a leader who understood ROS and had the foresight to make it his keystone business philosophy and strategy.

In “How Changing One Habit Helped Quintuple Alcoa’s Income,” Drake Baer writes:

“The emphasis on safety made an impact. Over O'Neill's tenure, Alcoa dropped from 1.86 lost work days to injury per 100 workers to 0.2. By 2012, the rate had fallen to 0.125. 

  “Surprisingly, that impact extended beyond worker health. One year after O'Neill's speech, the company's profits hit a record high. 

“Focusing on that one critical metric, or what (writer Charles) Duhigg refers to as a ‘keystone habit,’ created a change that rippled through the whole culture.  Duhigg says the focus on worker safety led to an examination of an inefficient manufacturing process—one that made for suboptimal aluminum and danger for workers. 

“By changing the safety habits, O'Neill improved several processes in the organization. When he retired, 13 years later, Alcoa's annual net income was five times higher than when he started.”

An ROS mindset instills organizational leaders with the compassion, courage, and values of a Paul O’Neill. To assess the balance and tension between ROI and ROS in your business, review the following list.  

10 warning signs your culture is ROI-influenced:

1)   The person who is responsible for safety does not report directly to the CEO

2)   The CEO and managers rarely discuss safety at strategy, HR, production, quality, and sales and marketing meetings.

3)   The company’s safety vision is not linked to the business strategy or worst it is non-existent.

4)   Managers throughout the organization fail to consistently emphasize safety or are resistant to safety initiatives.

5)   The organization has few if any feedback loops for continuous safety improvement.

6)   Metrics used to evaluate individual and team performance have minimal to no weight placed on safety.

7)   Employees are not familiar or are skeptical of the sincerity regarding the company’s safety vision and values.

8)   Training and development do not emphasize safety.

9)   New employees and contractors are not first and formally introduced and oriented to the organizations safety vision and values.

10)                   Employees are fearful of negative repercussions for reporting safety incidents, risks, and hazards.

This is just the beginning though. Truly understanding what drives your business requires a more nuanced and careful approach than checking some boxes. I’ve seen many situations in which the person responsible for EHS reported directly to the CEO yet felt disrespected and undervalued, and vice versa. Assessing the motives of any organization requires a hard look at these relationships.

Ultimately, an organization that creates a culture more heavily influenced by ROI than safety cannot ensure success for its shareholders or stakeholders. Choosing to gamble the health and wellbeing of employees for production and profit, these businesses will always be a risky—not reputable or ethical—investment.

ROS-Return on Safety C The Renewal Group 2015

References and Acknowledgements:

Volukas Report: http://www.autonews.com/article/20140605/OEM11/140609893/read-gms-internal-report-from-investigator-anton-valukas-here

I want to acknowledge Hugo Moreno’s article, “10 Warning Signs of a Weak Culture of Quality” (Forbes Insight), which provided the basis for the checklist used in this article


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Organizational Engagement: Starting Your Own Concern Movement

11/14/2014

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I can’t seem to get through a page of John Gardner’s book Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society—which is full of lessons, advice and wisdom on the nature and nurturing of self-renewal—without being struck by a concept that resonates deeply. The following is just one example:

“For every citizen movement that changes the course of history, there are many thousands that hardly create a ripple. The few movements that survive are those that speak to the authentic concerns of substantial numbers of people.”

Immediately, names like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Susan B. Anthony, and Harvey Milk come to mind. These individuals were able to profoundly articulate the authentic human and civil rights concerns of millions of disaffected people, and because of this they became leaders within movements that changed societies.

The ability to sense, understand and authentically communicate the concerns of others is the core of leadership, and it’s as important in leading organizations as it is in large-scale societal change, because at the heart of all workplaces are people with concerns.

An alternative perspective on engagement


Organizations that achieve high levels of employee engagement experience superior results in many critical performance and success metrics, including revenue. And yet for many leaders, engendering deep levels of stakeholder engagement appears to be a difficult challenge. Too often I’ve heard leadership teams, when considering an engagement effort, say, “You can never satisfy them; if we change, they’ll only find something else to complain about.” This perspective of engagement, about giving in or giving up something, is a formula for failure.

An alternative perspective that I recommend to leaders is to frame engagement as a “concern movement”: a process of recognizing and attending to the mutual concerns of both management and employees.

The foundation of a concern movement


In his book Moral Courage, Rushworth Kidder identifies the values of honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness, and compassion as core human values. The foundation of a concern movement starts with a focus on these five universally accepted values, which, when invoked and practiced by leaders, speak to the essence of human concerns.

Honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness, and compassion transcend all cultural and organizational demographics. When they flourish, so does human engagement. To build a culture of engagement, organizations must integrate these values into the “why” and “how” they lead and the structures and systems of their operation.

This approach doesn’t require a leader to be a great orator, or to risks one’s safety for a movement—but it does require that you recognize and understand your stakeholders’ concerns and to be able to authentically resonate with their concerns.

Values are the powerful “why” that influence what people do and how they do it. Try delivering bad news to your organization without respect and compassion; it will inflame passions, kill engagement, or both. When employees perceive their organization to have a disregard for basic human values, it takes a toll on organizational results.

On the other hand, the benefits of employee engagement are well documented, and the road to engagement is paved with core human values. Organizations willing to walk the walk and talk the talk and start their own concern movement will succeed—both personally and as a whole.

 

 


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