Session No. 562 Commitment Based Safety: The Only Way to Zero Injuries Robert J. Veazie President People Powered Leadership Reston, Virginia We need to focus and act on the fundamental truth when it comes to safety. That is, there is no way to obtain and sustain zero injuries without the commitment of our workforce. This sounds rather simple or easy. If you just get the commitment of your workforce you get a great injury rate. It s not that easy. Most of us don t even understand what a commitment is frequently mixing it up with a good intention. We don t know the means by how people grow, develop and become committed. And on top of that, we don t realize the importance of reinforcing desired safe behavior and the critical role of leadership in fueling the contribution of their employees. All of these are essential to gaining and sustaining the commitment and related high performance of the workforce. Rather, we tend to repeat the same mistakes over and over. We think processes change people when in fact it s conversations and people that change people. Most of our Best Practices we implement become mechanical rather than meaningful. We believe that if someone tells you they are committed, they are truly committed (even if they don t understand what that means). And leadership continues to remain too removed from employees under connected to employees and with far less relationship required for highest performance of their workforce. An injury-free company requires extremely high performance. It s very hard work and discipline and takes everyone doing the right things to sustain that level of performance. This paper looks at 3 primary areas of failure in achieving and sustaining zero injuries: 1. Misunderstanding Commitment 2. Misunderstanding Human Development 3. Ineffective Under Connected Leadership What Is Commitment? At a safety conference two years ago, I asked 220 safety professionals in the room, Are you personally committed to ensure no one in your organization you support ever gets injured? After someone in the front of the room whispered, That s a stupid question for this group, I asked again, Are you, I know this is a perhaps stupid and easy question so please answer it are you
committed to ensure no one in your organization is ever injured? In loud unison most in the room yelled YES!! I then asked them all to write down what their commitment is for safety. Most in the room were all staring at me as I again encouraged all of them, Come on, you said it was a stupid and easy question, so please write down what your commitment is. Most began writing something, some, still puzzled, looked at me. After a couple minutes, I let them know that I was about to prove that few, if any of them, were truly committed. I suggested to them that we don t understand what it is to be committed. And that the difference between good intentions and true commitments was in five key specifications: 1. What you are committed to is self-chosen. 2. The commitment you chose MUST be a specific behavior. 3. The behavior must be observable and measureable. 4. You must have a goal (# of times/day, % of time, etc.) for your specific behavioral commitment 5. You must have someone else in your life you frequently (every day or two) share how you are actually doing against your goal for your specific behavior. After asking everyone in the room to look at what they had written, and then walking them through each of the five specifications of a commitment, I then asked, OK, who passed; who really had a commitment to safety; no hands of the over 200 went up. It s a lesson learned over and over. Intentions are good, but they don t change much to be better. Commitments that are about action, and they change the world. Until we have all of our employees personally choosing, working on, and being supported to manage key specific behaviors every day, we cannot achieve and sustain zero injuries. There are too many distractions in normal life. There are too many sooner, certain, and positive consequences (temptations) to take short cuts or at-risk choices. And our biology has us at more auto pilot than mindfulness much of the day. Safety does not and cannot come out of good intentions. And luck only lasts so long. Zero injuries is hard work built into what Jim Collins, in his book Great by Choice, calls fanatical discipline. But the starting point to creating a commitment-based culture is knowing specifically what a commitment is. Misunderstanding Human Development There is so much money put into training and many times so little gotten out of training, it is one of my largest frustrations and disappointments. I see over and over some of the big brands in the safety industry where companies have implemented their program, but little changes in the behaviors of the workforce and the overall culture of the organization. Consultants are good at selling programs. Many managers in companies don t understand personal change well, but need to do something to try and move their safety culture forward. Many find well-marketed programs that have short-term value but don t really change the essence of the organization s ability and capability to achieve and sustain zero injuries. Yet, this pattern continues and employees make
jokes of the new flavors of the month that eventually ends up in the graveyard of flavors of the month. Dr. Deming got it right in his simple cycle of Plan-Do-Check-Act. He knew that to create true or real value, we would have to periodically act, check up on and adjust what we learned in training. Well, if you have training that has weak or wishy-washy applications and support afterwards, you are going to get far less value out of the training. True value from training is all about what happens after the training in terms of what did anyone apply, and then how is that new behavior or value-added work reinforced. There are basic steps to human development that need further understanding as seen below in the commitment curve model shown below: The COMMITMENT CURVE Commitment is NOT immediate. It is a coached & supported self-directed path Line of Irreversibility Line of Commitment Internalize Institutionalize Adoption Installation Threshold of Understanding Positive Understanding Understanding Awareness Contact Source: Managing at the Speed of Change (Deryl Conner) Exhibit 1. The Commitment Curve Step 1: Contact Before we become committed and competent in anything, we must first move from a state of ignorance to coming in contact with it. Right now, you are personally coming in contact, likely for the first time, with what I m writing about. You are not committed to it, nor competent in it. Just perhaps a bit more interested in reading further (I hope). Step 2: Awareness This step is where we learn about the topic. It s basically done by training people. It may also include theoretical or conceptual education, but awareness typically is mostly showing people what the process or method is. Or, what I believe is that people who attend training have a bias
for listening that they bring into training. That is, they are listening for, What do you want me to do now? or, How do I do this? by the end of the training course. Our minds are far less focused on the why (educational component) in the first training course, and much more focused on the what what are you asking me to do? At the time training is done, people are neither committed nor competent, just aware. They are typically ready to go try something out what they just learned to do. In many organizations and perhaps most of the training, the process stops right here. People don t apply, and they don t grow. They just got trained and that s all. Step 3: Understanding After being trained or learning about something, the next step to develop is that of trying it out. This is application. Through applying what you were just told or just learned, by trial and error, you begin to gain an understanding of what it really is through the experience of applying it personally in your life. Step 4: Positive Understanding Learning is always messy. You try out something you learned for yourself. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn t. I tried caulking my shower a few weeks ago. What I did is functional but it looks like crud (per my wife s evaluation). I learned\a lot about that gooey caulking material and, in the process, learned I have more to grow in doing this work well. In applying myself and trying, I got an understanding and, while doing more and more, I got a little better. I am now more positive about my approach, and next time perhaps the grade I will get from my wife will be pretty good or better, rather than, this looks like crud. You don t grow if you don t apply, try and make some mistakes, and get better. Step 5: Installation It is amazing that it takes this long before we begin to become committed. Commitment grows on us over time as we apply ourselves. We can take training and proactively try, learn, and begin to find value in what we are doing. In the installation phase, you begin to see the value in the method you are applying. And for the first time feel like the source of doing what you are doing is yourself. You are more educated, more practiced, and are doing the method or process because it is worth it to you; the return for your time is positive and valuable to you. Step 6: Adoption At this point in the process, over time, we have come to see value in what we are doing, begin doing it for ourselves; this stage is the beginning of the empowerment stage. As we become fully committed and enabled to take what we have learned and change how we are doing the method, we adopt new ways of doing it. Sometimes becoming more efficient or just doing it differently because we feel a sense of the new way our own way works best. Many times, this is the level that is not achieved in organizations. Employees work on new processes and begin to climb up the commitment curve. Yet, when unable or not allowed to change the method, to adopt the new learning they have to do it better, they begin getting frustrated and stop doing the work because no one will let them do it the best way. And no one likes to do stupid work or less valuable work, especially when they see a better way. Yet, support
of leaders to adjust, adopt and make better having empowerment takes a light level of commitment to a fully committed stage where performance is increased even more. Steps 7 and 8: Institutionalizing and Internalizing The final two stages are what constitute what I refer to as the end game in all cultural change; that is, the ability to internalize the learning and have it become part of one s being or personal self discipline. At this point, we are far beyond a simple commitment; we are at the point of irreversibility. It makes so much sense and we are experiencing so much value in doing this. we will always perform this behavior. A small example of this is when I was in a car crash years ago, and wearing my safety belt saved my life. I will always wear my belt now; it has huge value. At this stage, we know how to do it, we know why to do it, we are optimistic that it will work, we have had the experience that it has value, and we believe it s really worth it to do. All of this being self-discovery and self-experience, we are truly committed and perhaps beyond; we are passionate about the method, process, or behavior we have learned. Internalizing is the level of highest performance. Summary Human Development In summary, most organizations do not achieve cultural change work, such as in developing methods to become committed and internalized in risk management, because they don t understand the natural steps in the human development process. Rather than nurture growth through compassionate, caring conversations, managers they try to force or cause people to move up the learning curve just do it. The command and control style is used rather than a more connecting style of supporting and reinforcing employees behavior as they try, learn, and grow on the commitment curve. It is in this many managers never cross over and balance leadership with management to truly lead the organization in successful organizational change. A few years ago, I was called by one of my clients who told me, You need to come here and meet with all our employees about our new safety process, there is a lot of resistance and we need to deal with the resistors. When I asked, What percent of the workforce is resisting. and heard back about 60%. I knew immediately the problem was not of resistance, but one of leadership. I stated to my client. The work we need to do is with the leadership team, not with the hourly workforce. Trusting me, he set up time with the management team for me to discuss the means to more effectively connect with employees, to educate them further, to empower them to grow on the commitment curve and support their results as they grow (generative leadership). Today, that one site is now the best in safety results for over 20 sites in their company. And recently the company s annual safety conference was held there at that location to teach all the other sites what they had learned so far on their journey to safety excellence. Misunderstanding the natural path of human development and the generative leadership necessary to reinforce the growing excellence of employees is a key repeated mistake in organization change. Ineffective Leadership People are busy. John P Kotter wrote an entire book just on the topic of sense of urgency because in his originally published eight steps to change model, the first step about creating a sense of urgency has become so complex in a world of more and more information at a faster and faster
pace. It is difficult to decipher what s most important and stay focused in today s work environment. Additionally, Daniel Kahnman in his Nobel Peace Prize winning work and book, Thinking Fast and Slow, notes that human beings are basically lazy. Our biology is designed to save energy. And we seek easiest ways through challenges. And this doesn t change just because you are a manager. At some level, we are all a bit lazy. And in a world of too much going on and absence of focus it s hard to always make the best choices for the organizational changes we desire. Perhaps as well we underestimate the power of connecting and reinforcing employee behavior. It s easy for today s managers to not get the needed time with their employees for highest performance. The Society for Organizational Learning, out of MIT, has suggested from their research that 70% of all organizational cultural changes fail. And the top cause of failure is first level management (supervision), followed closely by lack of necessary support and action from senior management. In today s crazy, busy world, many times managers choose the easy way to try and get action; they demand it. Using command and control has its place at times in organizations, yet as a primary mode of operation, it takes away from the spirit of others to contribute. Also, it directly impacts how many if any employees will climb the commitment curve to the highest levels of commitment and related contribution. command and control style is a shortcut from taking on effective leadership. Too often leaders stay hands off. They are not out enough talking with employees, reminding them why we are doing risk management the way we are doing it, or reinforcing the good results they are achieving as they grow. Yet what drives employee initiative and higher performance out of self-motivation is three things: education, personal control (choice), and reinforcement. Leaders that forget their role in providing these three actions, while employees are doing the most difficult work of trying on new methods and learning, fail to fuel the tank of the engine that drives cultural change their workforce. Great leadership is not rocket science. Rather, it is more of owning the responsibility of frequent connection to employees and making that a personal discipline. There are many ways to connect with employees, further their education, help them with their decision rights (choices), and reinforce the great work they are accomplishing. It all works better when leaders connect frequently with their employees, building relationship and trust. As leaders interact with people across the organization in ways that build their self esteem and reinforce their great work, they generate even more excellence from their employees. And the outcome, trust, is the fuel that continually drives higher confidence, competence, and self-motivation to perform at highest levels of ability.