Many a time our interactions lead to someone asking what culture is and how do we change the safety culture in an organizations. Every organization has a unique experience in their journey towards changing the culture. Also people are keen to know as to where do leadership and culture intersect.We asked back the same questions to the people across the organization as to what do they understand by good safety culture . People come with several responses. People come with many expectations into an organization. Firstly they desire dignity and respect. They need to feel inclusive and more belonging that at society at large . People are willing to make changes to their work styles and habits to align with the organization such that they see it as their contribution to their success of the organisation. After all changing one’s belief systems for an alien organization is quite an adjustment. Hence intrinsically people with strong values and principles dont take much time in making that adjustment.
It is therefore that the success of the organization especially striving for perfection depend heavily on how people align their attitudes and style with the expectations of the organizations that has defined the path to success and what it eventually would look like .Leaders have the power of envisioning this path and laying policies around it to make success palpable at the end of that journey. Leaders have already set the context for the culture to take shape. People come with beliefs , attitudes and values. Organisations that are able to espouse shared values that overlap with most of the individual belief systems are have a better start on the culture journey. Hence culture is also what leaders are able to harness common thread across the belief systems. Therefore culture is a two way street. Leaders influence culture based on what they think is necessary for ensuring success and at the same time they try to catch the common belief systems to see how far the intersection is. First lessons of Safety is to understand this distance and make effort to cover it. Leaders adopt three Cs – Care , Communication and Consistency. All three aim at understanding and shaping the common belief system. Conquest is an organization where the top leader’s definition of safety success was very lofty. The aggregated culture was quite far from the point of intersection.
Leaders move across organizations as they are mostly sought for their deftness and business acumen. But when it comes to safety leaders often first worry about the depth of the water before entering the pool. Is the water blue as it appears at the top or gets murkier as it goes deep and how deep. Safety competency at leadership levels are therefore so important. At Conquest the understanding was poor and hence took longer time to gauge the depth. Leaders had to use the three Cs and foster relationship and trust to get an idea of the complex adaptive processes.
Only when leaders interact through focused line walks do they understand the quantum of work at hand to improve the safety culture. Leaders can then choose hire external support to assist them with the change management. Leaders have to make the effort to make the intersection happen. Conquest leadership team made conscious efforts to bring that intersection quickly by having daily coffee conversations, picking up the weak signals seriously and responding to requests for resources more eagerly. Conquest also discovered that a specific time allotted at the beginning of the day to just share learnings of daily experiences made safety conversations easier and coming to them naturally.
Safety has to become second nature to be a good leader. It takes lots of effort because it is not available in text books or flow diagrams or the PID diagrams and loops. It is a daily investment to time and effort and at the same time thinking on the fly what your next paint on the 3Cs canvass be.
Emprocon Consultants LLP 