I was given an important job at home recently. My partner was going away for a few days and there were several instructions. There was something about washing. I vaguely recall a sentence which contained the words ‘Windows, AirWick, and Vacuum’. There was also something about watering the tomatoes and specifically ‘don’t forget that if it’s warm, they’ll need watering twice a day, because the conservatory gets warm. We don’t want them wilting now, do we?’
No, we don’t.
I admit my thoughts were on other things. Specifically, what time the Indian takeaway opened, whether I could remember how the television control worked such was the length of time since I had last operated it, and whether the Ukraine-England match was on ITV or Sky Sports.
I should have listened more.
They say hindsight is a wonderful thing. I disagree. Hindsight is horrible. Hindsight is the bailiff who comes to take your dignity. Hindsight is there to mock you. Hindsight, to date, has never done anything good for me. It’s the horrible little man cackling in the corner when your partner comes home, just as you’ve finished blasting the house with Shake ‘n’ Vac who says “Ah, well done, it smells lovely in here. How are the tomatoes doing?”
“Er…Well, they were fine yesterday.”
Cue a darkened face, a march to the conservatory and the pitiful sight of a hapless tomato vine, snaked across the floor, pointing an accusatory withered limb at me. I was then told, in no uncertain terms, that I am ‘inherently unreliable and incapable of learning’.
Guilty, M’lud.
So, with that in mind, and with horticulture seemingly closed off as a career path, I thought I would offer my expertise to the world of business. So, here are my top tips as to how to build a truly unreliable organisation.
Forget Mindful leadership
It all starts at the top with the ‘Ostrich’ approach. Make sure that, as a board, you encourage the hiding away of bad news. Even better, if you can, try to silence those who would seek to share it. If you must share bad news, try to put it in a place where no one will see it. After all, you don’t want people getting upset. Why not have a ‘bad news’ corkboard in the boardroom so only the top people know that things aren’t great? If you have your own ‘withered tomato vine’ in your organisation, don’t make any attempt to revive it, just shove it away somewhere and maybe it will go away. If you are challenged by any members of staff, or given any compelling evidence that things are not perfect, simply put your fingers in your ears and shout “La la la I can’t hear you.” Even better, stay out of everyone’s way in the first place. After all, you are far too busy and important to mingle with the workforce anyway. They just wouldn’t appreciate you trying, so why bother, right?
Don’t give me problems, give me solutions
If you have systems in place to capture near misses, accidents and other key performance data that might indicate a problem, stop collecting it. It will only upset you. A near miss is the same as nothing happening anyway isn’t it? Plus, board meetings are busy enough so wasting precious time talking about stuff that ‘didn’t actually happen but nearly did and could happen in the future’ is not very productive at all. And it’s all about productivity. Similarly, if staff are coming to you with health and safety concerns, you should come right back at them. Why aren’t they just getting on with the job? Don’t they understand the importance of the bottom line? Honestly, it’s like you have to do everything yourself isn’t it? Remember, the best type of organisational culture is the mushroom culture: keep your staff in the dark and feed them s**t.
Make sure you take charge
When things go wrong, and they will, even in a perfect organisation like yours, it’s important that you are seen to be the pure specimen of management excellence that you are. So take charge and make sure everyone know that you are taking control. Even if there are voices screaming at you that there are people better qualified to handle the situation, ignore them. What do they know? Have they got an MBA? No. Do not, under any circumstances, devolve any responsibility to anyone else of a lower pay grade than you. The best people to manage a crisis are the ones who are paid the most. That much is obvious isn’t it? Besides, they will be plotting against you and will be after your job if you give them any responsibility. Even if you get the decisions wrong and things get worse, don’t relent. Remember, great leadership in safety is about making decisions that you know are the right ones.
Culture shmulture
People make mistakes. Not everyone can be a perfect as you, that would be unfair and you are a fair leader. But while you should recognise that people will make mistakes, you should also ensure that they pay for them. Don’t worry when people tell you that the reason the mistake happened was because of something nebulous like ‘the system’ or ‘the processes’ or ‘the culture’. Ignore them. People who make mistakes are a sign of weakness in your organisation, the proverbial limping gazelle, and they must be weeded out and criticised. Publically, if possible, just to make sure everyone gets the message that you are running a tight ship. If anyone utters the words blame culture reply with a curt but authoritarian “It’s your fault we don’t have a no-blame culture.”
Learning orientation
Look, you’ve got your MBA and you are pretty sure that someone in the organisation is providing a half-day risk assessment course, or is it a full-day? Who knows. The point is, you are doing everything you can to reduce the risks to your staff. Work is sometimes dangerous isn’t it? We can’t all live in a bubble. Got to expect a few accidents and sick days. What you certainly want to avoid is getting dragged into discussions about ‘learning from incidents’. Aren’t the HR department in charge of learning anyway? Shouldn’t they be doing this stuff? Maybe they need a root-and-branch review of their effectiveness. The only learning that needs to occur when things go wrong is that the people involved don’t do it again. If they haven’t followed the processes, that’s their fault isn’t it? And forget all this stuff about investing in developing your employee’s competencies: people should be competent at their job and if the job evolves, they should evolve with it shouldn’t they. After all, you have evolved into a fine leader of people. You don’t even wear a tie on Friday’s, what more can you do?
If you would like a more serious look at building High Reliability Organisations you can find an article here
http://www.bjhcm.co.uk/cgi-bin/go.pl/library/article.cgi?uid=100559;article=BJHCM_19_9_446_448
Or get in touch, and I’ll put you in contact with one of HSL’s Human Factors team.
P.S. What I also learned from this episode: (1) All the AirWick fragrance in the world won’t sustain a tomato plant (2) England aren’t going to win the World Cup in my lifetime.
Views from the top of a hill 