Leading Your Safety Culture with Care

An organization’s culture can sometimes be the difference between life and death. More than 4,500 job-related fatalities occurred in the US (OSHA) in the 2013-14 calendar year. This means that, on an average day, twelve people went to work but did not return home to their families at the end of the day.

Culture Change in a Mature Organization: The Effort and the Outcome

The Monday after Thanksgiving in 2005, November 28, was a cold, windy, and gloomy morning. The atmosphere inside of Tasty Catering’s building was neither cold nor windy, but it was very gloomy. We had moved into a building five times the size of our previous building on the first of that month. For the previous 27 days, my two brothers and I had been involved in constant bickering, which was a result of three alpha males trying to assert their dominance and mark their territory. The tension was evident.  The toll on staff was obvious. As the senior leader, I did not have the wisdom to change. I was a victim of my emotions.

How Culture Can Build Champions or Hide Heroes!

There are many individuals who got up this morning unhappy with their current job or position in life. It could be they had great expectations after finishing college, or they decided their previous career was not well-suited for them. Some even went back to school to get an advanced degree, just to find out the degree would not be a cure-all for their disenchantment. Whatever the case may be, there is no shortage of employees who are unhappy with their jobs. According to Gallup, over 70% of workers are unhappywith their place of employment.1 One big cause: Organizational culture.

How Culture Really Works: Levers for Change

Given that organization development consultants are fundamentally agents of change, it’s no surprise that many of the questions they ask us about our culture and climate surveys focus on levers for change. Most recently, an attendee at the 1st Annual Ultimate Culture Conference submitted a note card asking, in reference to the Organizational Effectiveness Inventory® (OEI) and my presentation on How Culture Really Works, “If you were to focus on one category of causal factors (structures, systems, etc.), which would you choose?”

Culture and Performance

My fascination with culture began more than 40 years ago when another young industrial engineer named Jim Delaney and I started a process improvement consulting firm not long after graduating from University of California Los Angeles. I quickly discovered that it was easier to decide on change than to get people to change. I observed that companies, like people, had personalities and, while some were healthy, most were like dysfunctional families. They had trust issues, turf issues and resistance to change. The difference between working with Sam Walton on the supply chain at Walmart versus with Woolworth was like night and day. It was clear one would succeed and the other would fail because of the mindset and habits of the firms.

So You Want to Create a Culture?

Culture is in these days, so I get a lot of inquiries about creating a culture, usually around “engagement” or “service” or “innovation.”  My typical response is “Why do you want to do that?” or, alternatively, “Can you give me an example of what you have in mind?”  Why don’t I just say, “Sure, and here is how you do it.”? 1 There are several reasons.