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It almost doesn't matter the industry we're working in today. Week in and week out, we work with leaders who are focused on creating greater accountability for safety results. For some clients the focus is on "Patient Safety" and for others it's "Food Safety." For clients in the medical device industry it's "Product Safety," and in the manufacturing environment it's "People Safety." Within every client engagement, we find leaders working to create greater accountability for safety performance.
According to Liberty Mutual's 2011 Workplace Safety Index, serious workplace injuries in 2009 cost US companies over $50 Billion in direct US workers compensation costs. Most annual workplace surveys don't include the indirect costs of safety incidents to the overall operation. What about the cost, for example, to compensate and train a replacement employee? What about the costs to repair damaged goods or to implement a corrective action program? What about the cost of lower morale or schedule delays? These are the indirect costs that can financially drown an organization that doesn't get it right when it comes to accountability for safety.
As one reads and listens to experts on workplace safety, though their words sometimes vary, many end up saying the same things. When boiled down, they often write and teach about the simple importance of employees TAKING accountability for safety. They talk about prevention. About the need for people to See the problem, Own the problem, facilitate the Solving of the problem, and then Doing something about the potential hazard.
Over the last year or so I've worked with Don Vinci, the Vice President of the Gas Distribution Business of the Entergy Corporation a Fortune 500 company located in New Orleans. This is a leader, whose team members will tell you, never confuses "supporting" with "leading." Don understands that modeling what it looks like to "TAKE" accountability for results begins with him. He's one who also knows that what he creates accountability for, he usually ends up delivering.
Over the last 12 months Don's organization has made significant, measurable, improvement in the areas of organizational accountability and employee engagement, leading the business to improved performance on each of their Key Result Areas - Financial, Customer Service, and Reliability. Their key measure - Industrial Safety Performance - also improved significantly in 2011. The organization experienced Zero OSHA recordable injuries (except for one that occurred when a company vehicle was rear-ended while at a complete stop,) compared to 8 recordables in 2010. An improvement that is significantly impacting bottom line results.
Acknowledging that their increased performance, (across all result categories), wasn't happening by chance, I recently asked Don to share with me how they were creating accountability for improving their Safety Results. Here's what he shared with me:
It started with my direct reports - they stepped up, took individual and collective ownership to achieve the results we agreed were important to the success of the business. We then went about the hard work of developing and implementing our plan to get there.
Our improvement in results has been paralleled by a significant improvement in our safety culture. We now see employees taking accountability for near miss reporting as we more than doubled the number of near miss reports in 2011 over 2010. Employees are now being rewarded, rather than punished, for reporting near misses in an effort to address shortfalls and encourage learning.
We implemented an 'Invest in Supervisors' initiative that focused on improving first line supervisor performance. This initiative included training on Accountability (The Oz Principle) and Culture Change (Change the Culture, Change the Game)
We stepped up management and supervisor presence in the field to observe and coach employees while conducting work, emphasizing both appreciative and constructive feedback.
We established a safety "Bright Spots" process that highlights employee work practices that go above and beyond expectations to ensure work is conducted safely.
Regular supervisor forums were established to reinforce expectations and provide a forum for open communications and collective learning.
We revised and clarified expectations regarding selected gas safety rules and identified clear consequences for failure to follow these rules, consistent with the severity of the infraction. Implementation was fair, firm, and consistent. We needed people to hold the belief that we were serious about our safety results.
We held periodic face-to-face, all-hands meetings to keep employees informed on how we were performing on our Safety Results.
Finally, we held regular small group employee meetings to hear employee concerns, provide feedback, and maintain open lines of communication.
Don's multi-faceted approach to safety has brought about impressive results for Entergy Gas Distribution, yet there remains a unique humility to Don, as he genuinely deflects praise for improved performance back onto the individuals that he leads within his organization. He understands that the key to arriving at greater levels of ownership is to foster an environment where people are "Taking" greater individual accountability for the key results.
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I recently had a conversation with the divisional leader of an organization that provides outsourcing services to hospitals. At the time, he had agreed to take over a troubled division of their organization. The division had just lost 36.4% of their business volume (based on revenue) and was desperately short of its profitability target. Shortly after transferring he became deeply frustrated with the lack of accountability evidenced within the culture. In essence, people were not recognizing what they needed to do to advance the Key Results. In a letter this leader recently sent to me he said, "We obviously had their hands and feet, but not their hearts and not their minds. We had unintentionally contributed to the problem by not allowing people to take true ownership for the key results."
In the same letter, this leader went on to say: "As you know, we decided to engage Partners In Leadership for The Oz Principle® training in May 2010. [It was a] huge success because it is the easiest program to take from theory to practice, due in large part to our leaders' relentless use of the language, concepts and tools provided in the program. We had facilitators trained to take the message to the second and third levels of management in our accounts. We started to see first time results in Client Retention, Revenue Growth, Account Profitability, Associate Engagement, Associate Retention and Management Retention.
I was recently in a meeting with this leader when he quantified this change in performance with historically impressive numbers. In 18 months, the division had progressed from a trend of losing 36.4% of their revenue volume to achieving 116% new sales growth. In 2011, they are achieving 178% of budgeted profitability through the first seven periods of their fiscal year and 105% of year over year profitability growth. Meanwhile, client loyalty scores have improved 4 base percentage points in 2011 from 2010; with 100% of clients surveyed stating they value their relationship and 95% saying their organization has a can-do attitude.
What the leader didn't acknowledge in his letter was the role he had played in creating accountability for integration of the principles and tools throughout his organization. Shortly after our initial session, he started holding monthly conference calls that served one purpose - reinforce the Key Results. At the beginning of every meeting he would share and ask for examples of people living Above The Line.® He began recognizing people who exhibited Above The Line behavior in their efforts to achieve the key results.
Over time, he began compiling "Oz Principle Best Practices," which he would cross-pollinate to other divisions of the organization by using the Levels of Ownership™ Model as a tool to create unprecedented results within her hospital. Each story provided an example of integration that was happening because of a leader who understood basic principles of expecting others to report back on their ownership of the process.
These are conversations that, without fail, reinforce the powerful principle of creating accountability for integration and follow through. Workshops do not change organizational culture. Culture is changed by integrating proven principles and tools into the way leaders lead their teams.
The principle this leader understood was that what he created accountability for was exactly what he was going to end up with. He understood that there are beliefs people hold relative to "training events" and that the experiences going forward for his team would have to be different in order to shift those beliefs.
Due to the historic returns of this team, we have now introduced The Oz Principle across every sister division of their company and are now introducing the Culture Track™ to the senior team. This leader concluded his letter to me by saying "Our team stands tall in knowing we have had a hand in the cultural shift taking place throughout our entire company."
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I was recently asked how long it typically takes to successfully transition organizational culture. My response was simple -accelerating a transition in organizational culture is not a function of time but rather a function of how leaders create experiences consistent with the desired culture.
Culture change must be led; it's not something that can be delegated. Leaders create experiences for those they lead and those experiences either reflect a commitment to living the desired culture or reinforce the old culture that the organization needs to abandon in order to remain competitive.
Leaders must develop the skill to lead change! Leading change does not mean creating more process or scheduling more culture meetings. It means internalizing and integrating the cultural shifts into the way they lead. Implementing the desired culture and associated tools into the way they recognize people, promote people, hire people and communicate. Every experience they create, each new initiative that is announced, and every change in direction is interpreted in light of the desired culture.
As we've worked with senior teams of some of the most well known companies in the world we've found that they are either trying to "process" their way to different results or they are consciously working to shift the way employees are currently thinking and acting. The prior approach requires dime-a-dozen management; the later approach requires the skill to lead!
For some leaders, this brand of leadership will mean doing some things for the first time in their careers. But eventually these leaders come to find that the great accelerator of culture change is not found in more layers of "process" but rather in the way they lead.
In short, an effective leader isn't just someone who consistently tells others they need to be accountable and then holds them to it. Effective leaders are able to create an environment (culture) where those they lead naturally take accountability themselves to deliver the desired results.
