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A Breath Away from Catastrophe - Creating mindful work environments

1/21/2016

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“He was a boy who loved to hear tales where the hero’s life was always one breath away from catastrophe.”
 
I was perusing possible gifts for my grand-kids this past Christmas when I read this line on the cover jacket of the book Spirits Princess and thought about how exciting and entertaining this book might be. What really captured my attention was the phrase “one breath away from catastrophe.”
 
How many times in our lives have these words been meaningful? I can recall a few near-catastrophes in which I was literally one breath away from a serious accident. I remember sitting in my car after losing control on the first icy road of my driving career; I was one breath away from going down an embankment. I recall one summer backing up a dump truck loaded with gravel to fill in around the foundation of a home. There was a small rise of dirt, and every time I tried to slowly back up the rear tires would spin. After I pulled forward and gave it a little more gas, I found myself and the truck within a breath of tipping over into the foundation. I couldn’t dump the load or the truck would have flipped. Holding my breath, I slowly got out of the cab and embarrassingly enlisted a guy with a bulldozer who was working in the next lot to help rescue my truck and safe my summer job.
 
I also vividly and sadly remember sitting with both my Mom and Dad when they took their last breaths. Unfortunately, the full meaning of this word escapes our attention until we are present in these moments and realize that it is the essence of life and death.
 
I wonder how many times our accidents and injuries and catastrophes were literally one breath away form a different result? I suspect many more than we realize. Isn’t a near-miss really just a “one breath away” moment?
 
The Chaotic and Hectic World of Work
 
Todays’ work environments are filled with increased and competing demands and technological advancements and distractions. Multi-tasking has become a way of managing this new reality. Some say this new pace of work leaves them breathless.
 
In a recent meeting with a group of managers and supervisors, we explored the question, “Are there current conditions in our culture that might be creating the potential for safety issues?” Some concerns surfaced immediately: “We are in a state of chaos!” “Everybody has an agenda and thinks it’s the priority.” “We are driving our operators to distraction and increasing everyone’s stress levels.” “If this continues, it’s not if we will have an accident, it’s when and how serious.”
 
What if “one breath away” was not an expression of a close call, but a method or practice that could reduce chaos and prevent a near-miss from becoming an unfortunate reality?
 
The human factors that most frequently contribute to or are the primary reasons for accidents and injuries are complacency, stress, fatigue, distraction, and haste. Each of these has many root causes that would need to be be fully addressed. However, there is a scientifically proven intervention that can provide temporary improvement or relief from the effects of these factors and can prevent that critical moment form turning bad.
 
Complacency, stress, fatigue, distraction, and haste create the conditions for accidents because they steal one’s attention and focus away from the task at hand. To prevent this, we employ a simple, inexpensive, and effective tool that can bring one’s connection, respect, attention, and focus back to work.
 
The Power of Mindfulness
 
Mindfulness is an ancient practice the uses the breath to bring one’s full attention and awareness to the present moment.
 
The purpose of mindfulness is to create moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment. Over the last 10 years, mindfulness has entered American mainstream and business culture. Numerous companies offer mindfulness training to their employees as a benefit and as a tool for improving performance. One notable company, Google, offers its employees a course on mindfulness that is 50 hours long. It is the highest rated course in the history of Google.
 
The essence of mindfulness is breath, called mindful breathing. Research has shown that even one six-second mindful breath is effective at calming the body and mind and improving focus. This breathing tends to be slow and deep, which stimulates the vagus nerve, activating the parasympathetic nervous system. This system regulates our heart rate and blood pressure, which when lowered helps to produce calmness, increases awareness, and lowers stress. This moment of mindfulness can also help to temporarily offset the symptoms of fatigue.
 
The skill of mindful breathing is used by the worlds best athletes in all sports. Watch any world class golfer, tennis player, skier, track athlete, or baseball player, especially when hitting—they all employ mindful breathing to calm themselves and to better focus at the task at hand. If it works for professional athletes, shouldn’t it also help our workforce athletes improve their performance?
 
Choose Mindfulness over Mindlessness
 
Technology is revolutionizing workplace safety. From robotics that keep humans out of harm’s way, to man-down systems that send out alerts for employees in need of assistance, our workplaces are safer than ever. But there is still one area that is persistently and intimately connected to accidents and injuries that technology has not fully solved: the human factor. 
The contribution of human carelessness or mindlessness to all accidents and injuries ranges from 50% to 90%. The ability to reduce the involvement of human factors can have a significant affect on an organization’s Return on Safety.
 
Although technology is rapidly creating solutions to safety issues, our hectic pace continues to thrive, increasing the chances that human errors will continue to significantly contribute to accidents, injuries, and near-misses. Organizations can fight this by creating the conditions for a mindful workplace.
 
To create a mindful work environment in which employees feel motivated, comfortable, and encouraged to practice mindfulness requires management’s active involvement in setting expectations and creating new norms that might be contrary to the existing organizational culture. Management must be active role models – they must be believers.
 
Getting Started:
How to create a mindful work environment
 
Implement it mindfully. This is not a program. Mindfulness is a respectful approach to work and life.
 
Take the time to educate leaders and managers on the history, science, and research behind mindfulness, how it works, and why it contributes to improved human performance. Invite an expert on organizational mindfulness to conduct a training session to assist with the process and to demonstrate mindful breathing.
 
Institute a moment (six seconds) of mindful breathing before and at the conclusion of all management meetings for one month. Take notice if the climate of the meetings changes. Ask managers if they notice a difference
 
Once managers become comfortable and notice the affect it has on the tone and results of the meetings, ask managers to introduce the same practice in their meetings. First, have them explain the Why, have them share their experiences and invite their employees to participate for one month. Ask for feedback after that time.
 
Remember, this is just a six-second breath before and after meetings and when starting and stopping a task. This not mediation—it is one mindful breath that signifies one’s respect for their work and themselves, which will create a safer and healthier organization.
 
Before long, mindful breathing will become a standard operating procedure (SOP), not because it is mandated, but rather because all employee will notice the benefits and improvements it brings to their work and life. A mindful breath won’t change the hectic and demanding world we live and work in, but it will reduce our mindless approach to the task at hand and it just may be the breath that prevents an accident or injury.  
 
 
 
 

 
 


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

9/3/2015

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Can You Hear Me Now? Conversations not Assumptions

7/24/2015

26 Comments

 
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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

22 Comments

 
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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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Safety Culture Tip - STRESS

9/28/2014

37 Comments

 
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Stress is a gateway to workplace accidents, injuries, absenteeism and poor performance.  In a recently published study, The Burden of Stress in America, both men and women rated finances and work problems as the second and third highest contributors to their personal stress.

In one of the largest studies (n-186,440) titled, Safety at Work: An Investigation of the Link Between Job Demands, Job Resources, Burnout, Engagement, and Safety Outcomes, which documented links to job demands and stress as having a larger than expected negative impact on workplace safety. The study also identified three critical factors that when consistently integrated into a safety culture will significantly reduce accidents and injuries and improve the health and performance of your employees. 

The first factor is to consistently perform formal and informal supportive risk and hazard assessments to reduce, mitigate or eliminate risks and hazards in tasks, the workplace environment and with the interface between employees and equipment.

The second is for organizations to create a supportive work environment for their employees.  The primary way to accomplish this is to provide training for managers and supervisors to be better leaders and to emphasize the importance of listening, teamwork and social supports.

The third is to be observant of factors that physically and psychologically increase work demands and stress. Remember that the unknown and feeling that you don’t have any control over your situation create the most distress for people.

Interestingly, across all industries, real and perceived risks and hazards was the most consistent job demand (stressor) and a supportive environment was the most consistent job resource in terms of explaining variance in burnout, engagement, and safety outcomes.

Safety Culture Tip: If your organization is experiencing disruptions due to reductions in business or other changes (remember most people view change as stressful) it will tap into what most people report as the biggest contributors to their personal stress – financial problems and work problems.

Tips:

Request your managers and supervisors to assess the physical, psychological and emotional climate of their employees.

Implement and emphasize the three factors, from the study, which are proven to reduce employee stress, accidents and injuries:

Request that supervisors and managers schedule a number of supportive risk and hazard assessments with their employees on all shifts. This is a great opportunity to not only assess risk, but as importantly for managers and supervisors to listen and converse with their employees. This will communicate caring and support. Most often night shifts receive little face-to-face contact with managers. This is a time to schedule that visit; it says a lot and means a lot! Actions always speak volumes!

Get to know your each of your employees and how they deal with stress. Some become more withdrawn while others may show increased annoyance and irritation. Take the time to check in with these employees and privately let them know you noticed a change in their behavior and would like to talk if they would like too. You can also suggest that the employee can connect with the EAP and your Employee Health Specialist for support.

Information is power. The biggest fear of humans is of the unknown. Share as much information as you can with your employees. Even if the news is “bad” people do better knowing then left to catastrophizing alone or with each other. Communicating indicates that you respect and care. Look for the positive aspect of the situation and or change and convey that as well.

Creating a supportive environment will go along way in preventing the next lost time day and the trust of your employees.


 

 




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I Can't Say I'm Sorry Enough

2/4/2014

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                                          Emotions and Culture – Drivers of Human Behavior

" I can't say I'm sorry enough. I'm sure I'll be criticized, but it's true. I felt awful. It wasn't my intention. […] It's not what I wanted to see or anyone to see."

These are the words of Shawn Thornton, a professional hockey player for the Boston Bruins, after attacking and injuring an opponent during a recent game. Suspended by the National Hockey League as punishment for his behavior, the consequences of Thornton’s actions affect him and his team.

Why did Thornton attack his opponent in the first place?

Based on his response—“It wasn’t my intention”—I suspect he allowed his emotions to take over. In other words, he was “emotionally hijacked.”

We’ve all had experiences of being emotionally hijacked, when strong emotions suddenly wield control of our behavior. Our response after the episode is usually the same as his, too: “I don’t know why I acted that way.”

Intense emotions can dominate our thinking and drive our actions—they are powerful sources of energy. In emergency or crisis situations, they work to keep us out of harm’s way: Fight, freeze, or flee. But in other, less noble situations, they cause us to react in ways we later regret (“I felt awful”).

Having the emotional awareness and insight to prevent or short circuit the hijacking process brought on by intense emotions is called emotional intelligence, a necessity in a world filled with situations that can easily give rise to intense emotions. Carefully handling strong emotions, rather than quickly giving into them, is critical in making reasoned decisions that work for us rather than against us.

I also believe an even more powerful force than emotions was involved in Thornton’s reaction that night, a force that oftentimes makes it difficult for individuals to navigate situations that ignite intense emotions: culture.

Suppose you are in a business meeting when a colleague pokes fun at your presentation. His comments are humorous but rude and uncaring. You might notice your muscles tensing and your mind racing. Will you walk over and throw your morning coffee in his face (fight)? Excuse yourself and leave the room (flee)? Or stand motionless, unable to respond (freeze)?

Since most office business cultures do not encourage, support, or condone physical attacks, you opt not to throw your coffee. What you decide to do instead is respond in an emotionally intelligent way: “Your comments leave me feeling put down and I’m not sure how they have contributed to helping us find a solution. In the future, it would be helpful for me if you could be more specific and constructive with you comments and feedback.”

Thornton’s attack took place in a business environment, or culture—professional hockey—that encourages, condones, and supports fighting as a means of solving disputes. For many years, hockey teams employed players for their fighting skills rather than their athletic abilities, according to Seth Wickersham in his article “Fighting the Goon Fight.” It was the role of these enforcers to protect their team’s star players from opponent harassment while also goading the opponent’s star players into a fight. 

Ben Livingston, a sports journalist, supports this theory in his article “The Bizarre Culture of Hockey.”

“The only constant in fighting is that you are assessed a penalty for doing it,” he writes. “There exists a bizarre practice of allowing fighting to occur, while at the same time penalizing the participants for doing it. This has lead to it being called a ‘semi-legal’ practice.”

Another potent factor in becoming emotionally hijacked - The emotions of others. In Thornton’s case, this meant the taunting and yelling stirred up by his fans. When a fight breaks out in hockey, fans cheer furiously for someone to be physically punished. Many, in fact, are drawn to the sport for its violence.  

Though Thornton was penalized for his part in the incident, his co-conspirators—the fans and the culture of professional hockey—escaped without penalty. As in any emotionally intense situation, Thornton’s behavior was the tip of the iceberg.

It is the stronger influences and motivators—those that support and permit transgressions like his—that remain below the surface, where the culture of hockey exists.

Rules and regulations are never a primary factor in human behavior unless they are in full alignment with a culture’s mission, values and strategic objectives. Rules merely provide cover for an organization so they can identify and blame transgressors and escape accountability and culpability. 

We’ve seen this with the likes of Enron, British Petroleum (BP), Massey Mines and most recently, the world’s major banks. All professed to be motivated by high ethical standards and comprehensive safety rules and regulations, but the cultures that have dominated these businesses runs contrary to their hollow words.

It is emotions and culture that have the greatest effect on human behavior and any organization that attempts to influence and enforce positive behavior with regulations alone will remain vulnerable to disruption, loss, and plenty of emotional hijacking.

Thornton said, ”I can’t say I’m sorry enough,” but the burden and responsibility of his actions do not sit entirely on his shoulders. It’s difficult for any employee to make the “right” choices when organizational rules give direction but the culture of the organization is ambiguous about enforcement and in some cases turns a blind eye to negative or unsafe behavior because it supports the organization’s explicit desire for profit, production, entertainment, and risk taking.

The NHL, in which fisticuffs remain an integral part of the sport’s culture, penalizes individuals for fighting, but the behavior of its players remains unchanged, because below the surface enforcers are rewarded and celebrated for their transgressions by fans, teammates, and the media.

Banks will not change their culture of risk taking for profits when CEO’s get bonuses and salary increments after being penalized billions of dollars for violating regulations. And safety will always be secondary when employees are pushed to keep production up at all costs. 

The unfortunate aspect of these “Trojan Horse Cultures” is that they present and say one thing, but inside, where true culture resides, are the drivers of behavior, which often put their employees at the lower rungs of the organization in harms way as they attempt to navigate between the rules and what the culture is condoning and endorsing.

I’ve worked for the past ten years assisting organizations in identifying where there is culture misalignment and working with them to restore and or build cultures that authentically and consistently align with their mission, values and strategic objectives.  The work is hard, but the rewards are significant and produce results that are sustainable and profitable. Most importantly, they become organizations in which leaders and employees feel pride, take ownership and work jointly to insure success, and where leaders and employees feel accountable and safe in stating. “I can’t say I’m sorry enough.”

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Leaders Don't Motivate - They Create The Conditions For Self-Motivation

9/30/2013

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The Glue That Binds Teams Together

9/10/2012

25 Comments

 
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I was spellbound. Here I was not reading a book about teams, but listening to the wisdom of a team who had lived it day in and day out. This experience occurred during a recent workshop on workplace safety. I had the privilege of working with a high-performing team that has a stellar safety record. The purpose of the workshop was to invite additional dialogue regarding a survey the team had taken. The plan was to seek additional detail and nuance about what they were thinking, feeling, and the experiences that influenced their ratings in this survey that measured areas of safety in their workplace ranging from corporate ethics to hazard recognition.

While others took some time to warm to the task, this group was immediately engaged. They didn’t need encouragement or assurances of confidentiality. They jumped right in to a lively dialogue on each section. It wasn’t long before my curiosity was killing me—how was this group so invested, open, engaged, honest, and committed not just to safety, but to everything else they did?

So I gently interrupted our conversation. “Can I deviate for a moment from the agenda and ask what drives your team and keeps all of you invested and committed to what you’re doing and how you do it?” Immediately, they started to share the glue that binds them together in their common pursuit of safety and performance.

The first thing out of their mouths was a statement that indicated they each held a sense of common mission and purpose that drove their thinking, feelings and behavior. “We are very aware that what we do is very dangerous. One mistake has the potential to not only injure one of us—it could also have serious consequences for the people at this plant and the surrounding community. We don’t ever want that to happen.”

What came next was, “We know each other and we care about each other.” And the caring extends to wives, children, girlfriends, and boyfriends. “We know a lot about each others’ families; we know their names, what schools they go to, the sports they play, and  when things are going good and not so good. When you know people’s families, you have a deeper understanding that what we’re doing and how we’re doing it has far-reaching consequences. This also helps us to keep in touch with how a person is doing personally, and sometimes we pitch in to give a coworker a break when he or she needs it.”  

More Glue:

We agree to disagree. “It’s taken us some time, but we’ve come to the conclusion that disagreeing is just part of life. We don’t get that upset anymore when we disagree. We give each other space and sooner rather than later we come around and work things out. We know that nothing is more important than safety and that keeps us from going off on each other.”


We take personal accountability for our actions. “This has also taken us some time, but we’ve come to accept that we are the ones who can make a difference. It doesn't do us any good to complain, blame and look to somebody else to make our decisions. Our behavior and choices make the biggest difference, and we feel more secure and satisfied being accountable and in control.”

This team had no formal training in teamwork; they had only learned from their experiences and continued to put what worked into practice. This created a culture in which purpose, accountability, respect, caring, and dialogue was the glue that kept them safe and performing to their individual and team best. They are what books are written about.

That evening, I reflected again on the special opportunity I had to join in on these insightful and inspiring discussions. It became clear that what I teach and facilitate is what this group had intuitively and experientially put into practice. Their culture is infused with intrinsic motivation. They are motivated from the inside out. No one is dangling carrots or rewards or threatening them with consequences if they don’t act responsibly. They act safely and responsibly because it matters to them, and they take ownership and pride in it.

Self-Determination Theory informs us that if people are given or find a sense of purpose in what they do; if they are given the resources, permission and support to have autonomy in making decisions; the encouragement and opportunity to develop relationships with each other and their managers; and the ability to influence the things that matter most to them—they will not only achieve, they will thrive.

This team thrives in a very difficult environment. They do hard and dangerous work. Their success can be framed in a theoretical model, but what is most impressive is their commitment to make it stick—they are the glue.  





© Tom Wojick, The Renewal Group, September 2012



 


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