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August 2007

Welcome

Welcome to the August 2007 edition of LJM's newsletter.

Sustainable safety performance

We at the Lloyd-Jones Meakin Group have worked with and helped many organisations over the last several years. I am confident that all our clients have benefited from working with us and advanced on their safety journey. However much I would like to, I can't claim that all our clients achieved as much as they would have liked to or could have.

At LJM, we've spent a lot of time recently analysing how safety performance improvement projects are rolled out and why are some organisations more successful in achieving their desired outcomes than others.

The answer of course is complex, in fact there are as many answers as there are organisations. However, there are some characteristics that organisations successful in sustaining a high level of safety performance share.

  • Relentless and passionate commitment to safety driven by senior leadership and understood and shared by every member of the company.
  • Accepting that safety has to be owned by everyone, everyone is accountable for safety and held accountable for safety.
  • Appreciation of safety as a journey, a process, not a project with an end date in sight.
  • Treating safety as an integral part of the business rather than a stand alone discipline. In such organisations safety becomes the "way we do things here", safely, efficiently and effectively.
  • Making sure that the basis building block, the elements of a robust safety management system, is in place.
  • Accepting that safety is more than common sense. Sustainable good safety performance requires as much strategic thinking, planning and senior leadership involvement as any other aspect of business.
  • Real understanding of risk management - the ability to recognise exposures at a strategic as well as an operational level. These organisations integrate a risk based approach into every aspect of work and develop a mindset that constantly questions what could go wrong to deal with it before it does go wrong. They manage their incidents well and learn from them.
  • Employees receive high quality safety education and training that helps them to understand commitment to safety and ownership of safety as well as acquiring work / task specific information.
  • Genuine engagement of operational employees and, if relevant, contractors, in planning and carrying out work tasks. These organisations have a strong focus on behaviours because they understand that systems are only as good as the people who use them.

As consultants we know we can bring more value when we work in a partnering relationship with an organisation, accepted as an independent member of the team and given an opportunity to transfer our skills and knowledge.

As professionals we take great pride in our work and we feel disappointed when we are convinced we could help guard a company against taking the wrong path but we are not given that opportunity. We are seen as providers of a "product", a piece in the puzzle. In our view individual pieces only fit in well with the rest of the puzzle if careful planning has gone into designing the fit as well as making sure that all pieces of the puzzle are accounted for.

Our commitment to you, our client, is to strive hard to make sure that we bring you value adding solutions

Max Lloyd-Jones
Managing Director
Lloyd-Jones Meakin Group

LJM in America

In the past few years, LJM has worked on several projects in the US, but we have never had a permanent presence in the States.  Now, we're pleased to announce the opening of our office in Texas. 

Dr Richard Bentley worked for LJM in Australia for eight years delivering valuable projects to companies such as Boral, Rio Tinto and Energex. Rich has now decided to return home to the US and will continue working with LJM.  We expect that the new office will open up more opportunities for LJM to work in America, both with new clients and our current clients with American operations.

Authenticity: A Concept for Today's Leaders

Dr. Geller discusses the value and implications of the term authentic

I advocate discussing leadership principles that are activated by the letters of the acronym LEAD. The letters stand for the following:

  • L for Live, Listen, Learn, Love, and Leave a Legacy
  • E for Empathy, Energy, Empowerment, and Engagement
  • A for Audacity, and Achievement of success over Avoidance of failure
  • D for Data to support an opinion or perspective

I propose adding a critical A-word to this list - Authenticity. In fact, I believe this word can give all of us beneficial direction. How about a commitment to be more Authentic in our interpersonal relations?

What is Authenticity?

Only with a clear operational definition can a word or concept guide behavior. My American Heritage Dictionary defines authenticity as "the condition or quality of being authentic, trustworthy, or genuine". And, the first definition of authentic is "conforming to fact and therefore worthy of trust, reliance, or belief".

These definitions can incite constructive discussion about the meaning of related words: trust, reliability, consistency, and genuineness with regard to improving organizational safety. Even more behavioral direction is provided in two books with "authentic" in their titles - Authentic Leadership by Bill George, former chairman and CEO of Medtronic, and Authentic Involvement by Dan Petersen, a safety-leadership guru.

The connection between these books is obvious: Authentic leadership yields authentic involvement. Let's review the primary authenticity directives provided in these books.

Authentic Leaders

Authentic leaders "are more interested in empowering the people they lead to make a difference than they are in power, money or prestige for themselves. They are as guided by qualities of the heart, by passion and compassion, as they are by qualities of the mind" (Authentic Leadership, Bill George, Jossey-Bass, 2003, p12).

Authentic leaders are vulnerable and always open to corrective feedback, and they demonstrate self-discipline to continuously improve. Bill George claims you cannot be authentic without compassion. Compassion is developed through profound understanding of other people's situations and feelings. Empathy is a synonym for compassion, a critical E-word for the LEAD acronym.

According to my dictionary, however, compassion is more than understanding and identifying with another person. It also includes "the inclination to give aid or support or to show mercy". Mr. George suggests leaders develop compassion by listening to others' life stories, by volunteering for community service projects, by having mentoring relationships, and by traveling through developing countries.

People with empathy and compassion lead others with purpose, meaning, and personal values. They don't put an inordinate focus on short-run profits. They don't motivate through warnings and threats, thereby de-motivating the development of self-accountability - a key component of authentic involvement.

Authentic Involvement

Authentic involvement is self-directed, and occurs when people are "treated like a mature, adult human being; as an equal, not subordinate, able to use their innate intelligence and skills daily, even hourly; able to achieve; given responsibility; and recognized for doing a good job" (Authentic Involvement, Dan Petersen, National Safety Council, 2001, p46).

So who treats employees like this? You know the answer - authentic leaders. Actually, all of the leadership principles reflected in the LEAD acronym are relevant here. Effective leaders enrich their work culture and help workers become self-directed, self-accountable, and self-motivated. Dr. Petersen advocates an integration of the humanistic and behavioristic approaches to understanding and helping people. This is, in fact, the foundation of People-Based Safety™, which I call "humanistic behaviorism".

Problem-Solving Training

Petersen advocates shared decision making between salary and hourly workers, with each side recognizing the need for interdependent cooperation. But for this to happen, managers, supervisors, and hourly workers need training on how to interact effectively throughout a systematic process of balanced problem solving and decision making that requires mutual training on effective problem-solving tools and methods.

In Conclusion

As leaders, I propose we try to be more authentic. Facilitate group discussions around behavioral definitions of "authenticity," with particular reference to industrial safety. Then decide what it takes to "walk such authentic talk". This will likely result in a list of practical and relevant things people can do to make 2007 better than 2006 at keeping people safe.

E. Scott Geller, Ph.D.
Professor, Virginia Tech
Senior Partner, Safety Performance Solutions

The power of commitment

About a year ago a large company in the resources industry asked LJM to help them lift their safety performance. Not only were they dissatisfied with their results, their productivity and profitability were also threatened.

It was obvious that the culture had to change, and rapidly. This seems like a contradiction - we all know that culture change takes a long time. At times, we simply have to find a way to achieve change fast.

LJM started its work with the company by running a series of commitment workshops. The workshops, attended by everyone in the company from the Executive to all operational employees and everyone in between, served as forum for realising that existing practices were not acceptable, agreeing on a new course and making a personal commitment to change behaviours.

In the following months, LJM helped the leaders of the organisation to live up to their commitments. This involved some education in safety leadership as well as personal coaching.

A year after the commitment workshops LJM reviewed the safety operations of the organisation and has found a remarkable turn around in safety performance and culture. From a history of injuries, among them fairly serious injuries, being part of everyday life, the company has moved to operating without a single lost time injury in the past 11 months.

So what were the key ingredients of the change?

  • The key managers have always had good technical skills but had not participated in any leadership or management training. In the last year they have learnt leadership and people management skills.
  • As far as safety is concerned, "they got religion". They understand the value of the commitment to safety and the value of living the commitment and demonstrating it every day, as they engage with the workforce in the field.
  • A dedicated and experienced HSE manager was employed who has made the system more robust and who manages the HSE team effectively, so they all add value.
  • The leadership team moved the safety culture from sweeping incidents under the carpet to reporting some near misses. They have achieved this by driving a no blame culture and through positive recognition.
  • The leadership team effectively communicated to their workers that safety cannot be compromised for production. This has led to better job planning that in turn has meant relatively smooth operations.

This may sound as if they were perfect. They are not. As we told them at the end of the review visit there are still significant opportunities for improvement. They have started to do a lot of good things, but they need to do more, and get even better results. In other words, they need to raise the bar.

Nevertheless the experience of this company shows that with unwavering leadership commitment and good systems support even a very difficult culture can be turned around profoundly and rapidly.

Travellers' tips - Hire cars

Recently a client of ours hired a four-wheel drive vehicle at a remote location in the north of Western Australia. When she checked the vehicle she found that the bolts securing one of the wheels had loosened. Had she not checked, travelling over rough surfaces, the wheel could have worked itself loose with potentially extremely severe consequences.

Perhaps not all of us hire four-wheel drives to cover rough terrain all that frequently, but we all hire cars from time to time.

It is not uncommon for hire cars to have worn or underinflated tyres. Do you have enough confidence in the unknown mechanics of the car hire company to entrust your safety to them?

Next time before you get into your hire car, as a minimum, conduct a visual inspection of the wheels and tyres, give the tyres a good kick to make sure they have air in them. Check the lights including indicators and brakes. Adjust the mirrors and seat before driving off. If travelling any distance check the oil and water, and before you hit the freeway, try to find a suitable spot to try out the brakes.

Drive safely!

Feedback

Do you have your own tips or anecdotes about driving safely, or comments or questions about Dr. E. Scott Geller's article? Suggestions for future topics are also welcome. Email us your feedback!

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