Building Culture: Principle 1

A nine-part introduction to the Principles of Culture Principle 1: Everyone is personally responsible for ensuring safe operations 

Author: Lisa Lande, Ph.D.

We have come to the end of this nine-part review of current safety culture principles with a look at exactly where culture begins – with each of us! Since culture is nothing more than an aggregate of our individual behavior, the focus of today's post is on the critical role each of us play in the creation and maintenance of our current culture and consequently our power to strengthen it. Principle 1 - Everyone is personally responsible for ensuring safe operations - calls on us to recognize that every behavior each of us demonstrates has an impact on our local environment and ultimately our broader culture. It beseeches us to recognize and then use our power to set the tone and direction of the environment we both work and live in. It requires that each and every one of us remain actively engaged and committed to the maintenance of a healthy, safe and secure culture once established. And it stands as a culmination of all the other principles brought to bear, because to be personally responsible for ensuring safe operations requires we have acted in accordance with all other existing principles.

A point of clarification must be made before continuing: Though primary principles are intended to refer to those immutable and unalterable "facts" that stand true across the span of time (as my colleague, mentor, and operational safety expert Jim Marinus and other Human & Operational Performance experts assert), the Safe Conduct of Research (SCoR) principles defined by the leaders at Battelle for the purposes of extending the primary principles originally compiled by the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) to a broader research environment, are what we must call secondary principles, or principles that must be questioned and adjusted within the context of time as well as the organization where they most aptly serve. Still critically valuable and necessary to a culture change effort, my intent here, is to alter this secondary set of principles to better align with a contemporary workforce - an entire one - and also more fully emphasize the relationship between each of us to all of us in our pursuit of healthy culture. Though by no means meant to stand as the final or most eloquently positioned rewrite here, it is hoped that this first principle will suggest the following intent: With every action we take, both individually and collectively, we are responsible for ensuring the existence of a safe, secure, and healthy culture. However principle 1 may eventually be drafted, the intention is to call out overtly that each action we individually or collectively take or fail to take has the ability to alter or sustain our local environment as well as our greater operating culture. In a revised version too, it is important to call into light the role security plays in the formation of healthy culture, since security as much as safety factors into a strong performing organization. Directionality is also intentionally not assumed. In other words, having a strong and healthy culture naturally supports that work is done safely and securely. But it is equally true that conducting our work safely and securely forms a healthy culture. A bit of a "chicken and egg" thing going on here: Which came first, safety and security or healthy culture? Either way it goes, recognizing that both safety and security positively correlate with healthy culture, must be reflected in the modification to this most critical principle 1. Because to recognize this relationship helps to expedite culture change. Our goal must be to reframe this principle in a manner that resonates with a broader audience. In fact, our goal must be to formulate a complete set of guiding principles that serve as inspiration for more than just our high-hazard and operational-safety focused employees. Our principles must touch the hearts and minds of every employee within our workforce if they are to be embraced and if culture is ever to be truly healthy. Why? Well, think about it for a moment: Do you know even one employee who doesn't want to work in an environment where they can thrive and put to good use their interests, experience, and passion? Or exist within a culture that genuinely supports them? Or feel "safe" and "secure" to act on their purpose and contribute to the goals and agendas of their employer? I can't, and sincere bummer if you can!

But let's slow down for a moment and reread the question put to you above; you were asked if you can think of any employee who doesn't want to work in an environment where they...feel 'safe' and 'secure' to act with purpose? On re-read, how are you interpreting the phrase "safe and secure"? Do you read it to mean that the employee is seeking an environment where there are no office leaks and their computer isn't going to get hacked? In other words, that their concern is around operational/physical safety and security? Or did you interpret it to mean they might be looking for the more nuanced but equally powerful psychological/emotional aspects of safety and security, like feelings of being valued, having a sense of belonging, that they are able to make a contribution, or that they are growing and developing personally and professionally? If you thought of both the operational/physical as well as the psychological/emotional aspects of safety and security, then good for you. You are ahead of the curve. And this is where we must move in our conception of "safety" and "security" if we are sincere about realizing healthy culture within our organizations, and even in society for that matter. Both levels of safety and security - the seen and unseen, overt and nuanced - must come to light if we are to eventually achieve the optimized working culture where both the individual and the business thrive.

It is important to remember that the area where we wish to and must impact culture change, is at the level of our line managers. However, for culture change to truly occur, it must include ALL employees. And therefore, to act truly in line with these principles and ultimately drive culture change, will require that all of us have and will continue to demonstrate the requisite skills and behaviors that foster greater awareness, authentic confidence, and successful performance on the job. Our sole and entire ability to perform optimally within ever-quickening and shifting circumstances, must be grounded within our principles. And just as time and the change inherent within its passing requires adaptation, an organization's guiding principles must adapt in kind to reflect these changes in time and in line with their unique organizational needs and objectives. First principles must be immutable, and I leave it to experts more knowledgable than I to define these. But these secondary principles first put forth by INPO, revised by Battelle leadership, and now reconsidered here, MUST be modified to speak to an ever-changing population of contemporary workers. It behooves us to reevaluate, reconsider, and improve guiding principles in relation to our current needs in order to ensure they serve us well in pursuit of an ever new performance culture. Alone, each one of the principles serves as a guidepost. Collectively, they offer a comprehensive map to our final goal – healthy, engaged, focused, and meaningful WORK. And for those of us who are striving to remain true to our purpose (our "Why?", according to Simon Sinek), this meaningful work is a significant part of our LIFE, nicely blending work and life into a balanced whole. And this adds even greater import to ensuring that our principles speak to us - all of us - and are regularly reviewed and updated in support of our most safe, secure, and rewarding journey. We must not simply trust that these principles as originally crafted still offer us the best path to healthy culture. Instead, we must bring a questioning attitude to the table and consider the value and relevance each brings to the task. This is particularly important as we enter a new, fresh, and expanded understanding of what “safety” and "security" culture really is and must be as we consider the workforce of a new decade.

Psychological safety and security

We all know that safety goes beyond checklists. We have advanced our thinking well enough to know that safety includes the also powerful but nuanced ways we either engage and support each other, or do not. Our principles must reflect and reinforce a more broad-based awareness and respect for the role both operational and psychological safety play in our culture enhancement goals. And if we are to truly and sustainably influence healthy culture creation, it is important to recognize that this dual-lens approach requires both strong managerial AND leadership behaviors. Both are required skill sets to optimize our performance, but unfortunately both are not naturally balanced in most of our repertoires. Most of us tend to be better at managing over leading, or visa versa. Very few of us have the natural balance of the two but have to make an effort to build up one or the other in order to improve overall performance. But if committed to enhancing culture, we will stay motivated to balance these two unique skills sets since both are critically needed to do so. A strong performance culture requires that safety exists operationally, or in the grounding and concrete elements that are visible and can be managed with checklists and protocols. And healthy culture also requires people feel safe psychologically, which is more nuanced and often fuzzy which is why it confuses us to think it matters less. But people respond well to being lifted, encouraged, and valued. Feeling safe in this way allows us to act safe in the other way. When explained in this manner, it hopefully makes sense why both management and leadership skills must be fully developed and integrated if we are to effectively address both sides of our safety house. When mastered, management and leadership work together brilliantly and synergistically, just as operational and psychological safety have the potential to do so. Our goal as solid manager-leaders – and as individuals who recognize that we are personally responsible for creating safe operations – is to improve our balance of management and leadership skills so that we similarly and with equal aplomb, balance our focus and attention addressing both the operational and psychological aspects of safety and security.  

Integrating the concept of psychological safety into our safety culture focus also allows our non-operational employees to resonate with the tenets as deeply and fundamentally as do those whose first passion is safe operations. Not every employee feels compelled to care about operating safely. And more may even feel operational safety gets in the way of fulfilling their life’s work. But everyone regardless of function can understand the damage a disrespectful, discouraging, or disparaging work environment creates and how working in such an environment keeps us from doing our best work. In fact, working in an unsupportive – psychologically unsafe –environment not only keeps us from working well, it stands in the way of doing that work in an operationally safe way. And that is why these principles cannot seem to apply to only those of us who work in a high-hazard or directly operations-centered work environment. Not if we truly wish to change our culture to one of health, to full-on safety, and to a place where goals are achieved and exceeded with ease. And if we wish to expedite this culture change, well than the words we use in each principle matter and must connect with each and every one of us. This is particularly key if we want our principles to be more than a set of words on a laminated poster in the break room, but something instead that is fully embraced and embodied in word and deed. 

More about the importance of consistency

The link between word and deed is important not only to your own credibility as a leader, but to any change effort you are investing energy into achieving. If we behave inconsistently with any of the principles yet speak to our advocacy for them, whether subtly or due to a small lapse in our awareness, we undermine our own managerial and leadership credibility and hence our ability to influence change. People follow what they trust. If your behavior is inconsistent with your word or stated intent, you sacrifice a huge opportunity to advance your personal as well as the collective Lab agenda. Think principle 1: you are personally responsible for safe operations, and that most assuredly includes the way you behave either consistently or inconsistently with your stated commitments. If you are actively serving as an advocate and champion of any culture change effort within your Institution, it is of even greater importance that you ensure word and deed are tight particularly in light of your advocacy for a healthy culture.  No pressure or anything, but every behavior you demonstrate – and I mean every behavior – is being evaluated for consistency between word and deed. It’s not that people are trying to trip you up or see you fail (and if this is the case, some serious work is needed on the psychological safety side of your house), but because people are assessing their level of trust in you and whether it seems “safe” to follow you. They evaluate you out of good old self-preservation.  Even if these observers are initially unaware of why they don’t trust you, when encouraged to think and reflect on the genesis of their lack of trust, it more often than not stems from a breach between your word and deed. You can imagine the damage these inconsistencies have on your ability to foster psychological safety and influence others to follow your lead. Instead what you may experience is employee hesitance if not out-right defiance in the face of your efforts. If interested in reading more about the impact of unconscious cues on our judgement and decision making, check out Malcolm Gladwell’s book "Blink". And if you want to read more about consistency as a pillar of trust, please visit Covey’s "Speed of Trust".

Strategies to Engage in the Work of Culture Change

Here are a few ways you can reinforce culture change and enhancement efforts in our organization and strengthen your own management and leadership skills in the process.

Fully engage in your organization's culture enhancement efforts; be seen by all, actively engage, and be present.

Culture change is not a program, it is a revolution. So make yourself an active part of that revolution and engage fully. Other employees notice when you slip out early, or worse, don't show at all. Do your best to commit as much of your time with these events as your calendar allows. And this is for your own credibility as a manager and leader as it is for building trust in you so others comfortably follow your lead. By staying present in mind as well as body, you demonstrate that you really mean it when you say you are a champion or advocate of culture enhancement. 

Start addressing psychological safety needs with equal fervor to your operational safety needs. 

When conducting your next walk-around, ask questions about teaming, trust, and feelings of support in equal measure to queries about procedures and roles. Balance your focus on operational and psychological safety needs. By doing so, you will be educating and encouraging awareness of these more nuanced behaviors that also have huge impact on operational performance. Become as comfortable addressing any existing strong or weak teaming behaviors as you are managing procedural compliance or non-compliance issues, because both the operational and the psychological sides of the safety house must be equally supported if we are to successfully deliver on the important work of the Lab. 

Start attending to and calling out the “what goes right” behaviors you want to see, as overtly as you stay alert to what isn’t.

Take time to reinforce the behaviors and norms you want to see, those that lead us to the operating environment that optimizes our success and that align with and support our culture principles. We, the majority of us, seem to take positive and desired actions for granted, only putting light on the areas in need of attention. We rush by if passing at all, the opportunity to reflect on what we did well and extract every ounce of learning from it. We act as if focusing on what goes well or correctly, somehow seems needy or is conceivably a sign of narcissism or grandiosity. This oversight or acting from misbeliefs whatever the case may be, has put humans at risk. Focusing only on where we “messed up” and obsessing on how to avoid repetition, is a habit worth breaking, and research has validated as much. Take a look at Cunningham’s book, First Break all the Rules, to see how a bit more conscious effort placed on attending to the behaviors that led to success and seeking to replicate, is associated with sustained and positive performance. So, next time you see an employee doing the right and desired thing, overtly recognize it. And do so from both the operational and safety sides of the house. 

Know what it means to engage your employees, and do it!

Engagement study upon engagement study demonstrates that employees who feel valued by their organizations, included and empowered as part of organizational decision-making, and can act with autonomy commensurate with their level of expertise, are also the most productive employees. They report a strong sense of worth, enjoyment with the jobs they do, and also report an enhanced ability to focus. It feels good to know you matter and make a difference! No wonder too that engaged workforces also tend to realize and act from a strong operational safety position. And yet, despite these findings, and whether inadvertently or not, organizations continue to steal away our employees’ sense of purpose by subtly and not so subtly undermining their sense of purpose, autonomy, and decision-making opportunities. This is particularly egregious when the outcome of these decisions is directly related to the employee's role and function. If you know anything about the Chernobyl disaster, you get just how important a role employee empowerment factored into this horrific event, as well as its impact to raise issues. Engagement is central to our employees’ willingness to speak up and for taking ownership in the work being done. You want accountability? Then engage employees in decision-making. Next time an employee raises a concern, consider pulling her into the discussion to decide collectively how best to resolve it. Work in partnership with your SME’s, and your peer managers as well, and together strive to identify the “what must go right” and “what could go wrong” to turn challenges into growth, collaboration, and performance excellence.  

Raise and maintain awareness of your own behavior’s impact on your environment.

Take action to alter any behaviors you may be demonstrating that that inadvertently undermine the creation of psychological and operational safety and security. These don’t have to be and often aren’t, big actions: If we in our haste to enter a building, let a door drop on someone entering behind us, we have just sent a message about the level of respect that is tolerated here. If enough of us follow suit, it isn’t long before we have a significant set of unhealthy cultural norms in place. 

A Revisionist’s View of the Principles of Culture

In closing this review and reconsideration of culture principles, I have provided a draft of revised principles for the audience to consider as you pursue a healthier working culture within your respective organizations. Though I'm no Todd Conklin, author of Pre-Accident Investigations and The Five Principles of Human Performance or Jim Marinus, Reliable/Resilience Operations consultant, who have both made significant strides to simplify and update existing safety culture principles to serve both high-hazard and non high-hazard operational environments, I have instead chosen to modify the Battelle's Safe Conduct of Research (SCoR) principles that made modifications of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC's) original safety principles . I have taken this liberty in an effort to expedite culture change by revising these guiding principles so they may apply to all in our workforce, not just those working in high-hazard or heavy operational work. In total, I have made these changes to the existing SCoR principles for three reasons: First, as a long-time admirer of Edison's integration of the lightbulb into a culture - a world, actually - that only new candlelight, I have attempted to think similarly when considering change initiatives, large and small. For those of you who may not know the history of Edison's success, he wisely shaped the first lightbulbs in the shape of a candle. I may be assigning him even more brilliance (pun intended) than he deserves since he very likely may have not even conceived of light coming out of an alternate shape than that of a candle, but nevertheless it is instructional: people resist less when there is some semblance of familiarity to be found in the change. The more different it is from what we have known, the greater resistance we will naturally experience simply due to the dissonance that must be overcome in order to embrace it. Pure psychology. Want to freak out your workforce? Change everything drastically and overnight. Want to nurture your workforce into a change movement? Then go where our employees' are, make them a part of the change initiative in a real way, and as a consequence strategically step forward into the light of the future. This forms the first reason I propose we stay close to home as we drive our change. With Edison as preamble as well as rationale for my approach, it seems an easier transition for our institutions and organizations already working from INPO and SCoR principles if we work from what is already known. After-all, these are just a few recommendations to make relatively small modifications to existing principles with the promising intent of expediting safety culture. Second, offered edits take into account the critical role psychological safety plays in the pursuit of healthy culture creation as the complement to operational safety. And third, our organizations currently working from the SCoR principles will benefit from overtly calling out both individual and collective responsibility for shaping and sustaining a safe, healthy, and productive culture. Only by doing so can we better ensure both the individual and the institution thrive.

Current Safety Culture Principles (SCoR) and Revised Culture Principles

These small but mighty enhancements proposed on the right side of this list, are intended to help us over the hurdle that has led to resistance or cynicism around culture change. They may also expedite our change effort. stating again that when the entirety of the workforce can personally relate and aspire to each of the principles, then we are more likely to engage them wholeheartedly in the effort. Let’s strive to make these principles work for all employees, and expand the conversation and conception of safety and its goals. It is not safety for safety’s sake; it is safety for the sake - and consequence - of culture creation and strong managerial, leadership, and organizational performance.  Because we want every employee to:

1.      Go into each day knowing it is different in some way shape or form from yesterday. 

2.     Carry a conscious awareness into each work situation, assessing first what has to go right in order to realize success and a thoughtful review and respect for what might and could go wrong. 

3.     Apply a questioning attitude when exploring what currently exists and what could be improved or could bring a problem.

5.     Be secure enough to know that s/he doesn’t know all the answers and seek to learn from others because learning never stops.

6.     Has the courage to raise issues whether trust permeated or not – they would raise issues because those issues had to be raised whether they had wanted to be heard or not, because it was the correct and right thing to do.  

7.     In their pursuit and commitment to their discipline, whatever that discipline might be, would naturally honor the importance of safely and securely doing her/his work knowing their legacy as well as healthy culture creation is compromised, if they do not.

8.     Recognize safety and security are not just skin deep, but are generated from genuine care for the dignity, respect, and consideration extended to others and a reflection of that shown for oneself. 

I also want to emphasize that the wording of the proposed edits are not meant to be cast in stone. The intent here as it has been throughout the entirety of this nine-part series, is to join you the reader in a critical and thoughtful look at the power and relevance of our existing culture principles, not to have you necessarily agree with the revisions of the tenets I put forth. The intent for this review was also to put the principles to work, inviting us to:

• demonstrate a questioning attitude,
• honor the fact that learning never stops,
• and recognize that each and every one of us play a critical role in creating our collective culture and legacy.

It is hoped that you – the leaders and drivers of this broad-based culture effort continue the conversation and also strive to draft a fresh set of principles within your organizations that resonate and inspire all. And by all means, reach out to Conklin and Marinus if your organization is moving culture from a fresh space; they will work with you to ensure your environment is primed for the change. If the psychological/HR complement to operational culture change is desired, you may of course also reach out to me at [email protected].