For a baseline, The U.K. Health and Safety Commission developed one of the most commonly used definitions of safety culture:

“The product of individual and group values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies, and patterns of behaviour that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organization’s health and safety management”

Tosan would focus this a bit by saying that the values, assumptions, and expectations of groups and individuals define the parameters and boundaries for behaviors. If these boundaries establish a strong value for life and health, a safe work environment is the outcome and can be sustained.

To help organizations improve their safety metrics, Tosan collaborates with them to understand their existing cultural foundation that supports safe behavior. We do this by looking at organizational results that illustrate adherence and execution on safe behaviors. These results are then researched more thoroughly to understand the driving values, assumptions and expectations that are driving these behaviors. The combination of these understandings gives us clear insight into how and why an organization is achieving its current levels of safety.

To impact safety results, we work with clients to identify what behaviors would increase their specific safety results and then work back, or down, to define the necessary parameters that support these new behaviors. This change takes place at the cultural level by understanding how existing assumptions, values, and/or expectations are establishing a behavior that circumvents safety. Then, we can expose the cultural factors that are inhibiting the organization’s safety and drive change from the culture up.

To help you begin looking at your organization’s propensity for safety, think about where your company is as a whole, and then at the team level, how would you rate on the following safety behavior markers:

–   Teamwork

–   Respect and Inclusion

–   Fairness in both reward and punishment

–   Group, and cross-functional communications

–   Civility in language

–   Trust between supervisors and employees

–   Job satisfaction

–   Feedback and recognition

–   Use of threat or fear

If you identify your organization as being poor at a marker (rather than strong), what is the root cause? What assumptions are at play? What does positive change look like?

Obviously, performing a cultural intervention to improve safety is not as cut-and-dry as this outline, but these basics can help to identify the key factors for change for you and your organization to consider.

Should you find yourself wanting to better understand where your organizations culture is supporting and challenging safe behaviors, drop us a note, we’d be happy to open a dialog in helping you succeed.

Stay safe.

This begins with the behaviors of our principal consultants. One of the building blocks of our approach is our belief that leaders create and define the organization for all other employees. Part of how our leadership models the way is to regularly give lectures on accepted organizational development theories and models, and discuss these in depth with the entire staff. This serves as a method of reinforcing the founding tenants and mission of our organization, as well as maintaining a base level of subject comprehension and applied theories among the staff. Thankfully, even when our travel schedules take us away from the office, we have these sessions using interactive online technology.

As part of a larger employee development initiative, all Tosan employees have taken the behavioral-based surveys we give to clients. This provides employees with an inside knowledge of the tools we use, but it also allows us to see how our own behaviors may be effecting our approach to work and interactions with co-workers and clients. We then use this input to develop personal action plans to strengthen the productive and stop or lessen the unproductive behaviors we each tend toward.

Furthermore, we are encouraged to share the results of our survey openly with each other. This allows us to more effectively implement personal changes that will not only make us better employees, but it can also provide useful insights about how to best engage with our co-workers and strengthen teamwork overall. We have also all taken the “Myers-Briggs Type Indicator” which further allows for understanding of how to best work together as a team. We also periodically conduct team survival simulations, and then we use a team assessment tool to provide feedback real-time as to how we believe we are all working together.

In the office, a standard of collaboration has been established amongst our team. Rarely is one employee given a task that requires solitary work. All projects, programs, clients, and marketing are delegated to a lead person with an expectation they collaborate with and utilize the support of the rest of the staff. This ensures that work is being filtered through different idea chains and work revisions before a final product is given to clients. The major benefit to such a collaborative working environment is that it constantly reinforces our reliance on team while emphasizing the role of the individual in the process sequence. For Tosan, this allows us to create and support an environment of Accountability within our own organization; everyone owns their respective tasks while still providing ample opportunities for everyone to contribute to the firm’s overall success.

Tosan, having less than 15 employees, gains many benefits from our intimate office environment. We have the ability to communicate with each other by simply talking across the room; if we need to have an impromptu meeting to go over a project it is simple and easy to arrange; it allows us flexibility and freedom to work with individual schedules in order to accomplish tasks and prepare projects. However, along with these benefits, also come a few challenges that must be managed in order to work successfully as a unit.

One pitfall is that conflicts are not always dealt with constructively. It is common for teams, especially ones who work together closely, to know each other very well, both inside and outside of work. This can contribute to a tendency for arguments and disagreements to become personal rather than rooted in task orientation. Sometimes avoiding a conflict rather than facing it head on and finding solutions is the easier choice, especially during large projects when there is work to be done. This undermines the effectiveness of the team, and because of the intimate nature of our office the effects of this are greatly amplified. In order to overcome this obstacle we have set a clear expectation of each other. When there is a conflict the staff members who are not directly involved are to address the situation directly; they should encourage and facilitate, if needed, a dialogue between the involved parties to talk through the disagreement.

Another pitfall we have encountered is maintaining good communication while traveling, which can be a difficult problem to tackle in many organizations. An example: Some of us are consulting in Spain, while someone else is conducting a follow-up session in Pennsylvania, still others are at the office in Denver developing new marketing content, and others are traveling from California to meet colleagues in Detroit to set up for a program later that week. Maintaining continuity and good communication regarding ongoing work and projects can be hard with everyone in different locations and time zones. It is easy to overlook or neglect pieces of work, or to forget to include someone in a communication regarding the ongoing projects.

We have begun developing and implementing solutions to this problem. We have set-up shared calendars to track client engagements, vacation schedules, marketing deadlines, and other important business dates, we have set up remote access to a centralized server where we store important documents for project collaboration, we have implemented a cloud based customer database and have developed a process for titling and versioning documents to allow for better collaboration and co-authoring of documents. Even with these technological solutions, we still maintain an agreement to interface with each other when possible, regardless of time zones; as this provides us with the best opportunities to clarify expectations of each other and ask questions regarding the ongoing projects and collaborative efforts.

Every company has a unique growth pattern which aligns with their corporate standards and long-term goals and where obstacles must be overcome or mitigated in order to accomplish tasks. Tosan is not an exception to this notion.

We coach our clients to create a constructive environment within their organizations in order to engage their employees in achieving corporate goals. This requires Tosan to lead by example. We constantly strive to provide superior training internally for our employees by reinforcing the fundamentals of organizational theory, allowing personal experiences and ideas to permeate our culture, and to create a highly supportive and collaborative work environment that supports both our mission as a company and the deliverables we promise to our clients. We are not perfect, and we have many of the same challenges and struggles we see within our client organizations. The key is to be aware of those similarities, and consistently and constantly strive to overcome and work through them together as a team.

So why would an organizational effectiveness firm with a majority of our experience in Nuclear, Fossil and T&D be speaking, much less co-chairing?

Well, the first connection is the overarching industry of Energy. As our traditional resources are challenged, and regulations progress, all aspects of the Energy industry are evaluating how renewables will fit into their product mix. But whether an operator or owner chooses Wind, Solar or Bio, it is still in the pursuit of safe and compliant energy produced and sold as efficiently as possible.

This key position is what links Tosan to the Renewables world. Manufacturing, deploying, operating and managing renewable resources requires the same core tenants of running Fossil or Nuclear assets, as well as Transmission and Distribution operations. These key factors include safety as a leading factor for success, strong process and procedural orientation, and regulatory awareness and innovation.

This is what Tosan excels at – working with organizations across their entire enterprise to drive high levels of sustainable operational effectiveness. We do this through the mix of Organizational Understanding, interventions and products targeted toward Leaders & Individuals as well as Teams, and evaluation of existing Processes.

For a sneak peak at the discussion we’ll be having, you can enlarge the comparison below. Or, if you’re in the area, stop by and say hello (BOOTH NUMBER 438). We look forward to being a part of and serving this rapidly growing sector.

We talk a lot about corporate cultures and how humans are the driving force that shape, bend, twist and form them. We also know that people are the single greatest contributing factor in achieving and sustaining the success of an organizations performance.  Human-centered, cultural and behavioral focused efforts drive innovation, collaboration and promote personal and team development within organizational culture.

Yet a key and often-overlooked aspect of such efforts is the actual, physical environments in which we work. Companies with insufficient work environments tend to find their cultures struggling to move forward. Poor environments simply do not motivate employees. Perhaps a change in environment is what’s needed.

Have you ever walked into an office, perhaps your own, and immediately feel like you have had the energy sucked right out you? No, I’m not talking about the 5 cups of coffee crash. I’m talking about the environment you just entered. You’ve seen it: the low ceilings, the maze of cubicles, bad lighting, and no windows. If grey was a feeling, that’s what grey would feel like. Tosan’s work has taken us to many such environments and every time I’m given the “office tour” I think to myself, why is this the standard? Why is this acceptable?  Are these the reasons their communications suffer or their teamwork lacks and innovation moves at the pace of a snail? They are not likely the only reasons, but we contend they are significant influences.

Why is the work environment an influence? I like to think the answer is rather simple: these environments’ allow your employees to hide. They don’t foster collaboration, innovation, communication or change. They hinder your employee’s ability to align with your mission and vision. Yet inadequate work environments have become the standard for so many companies.

We’ve found that organizations wanting to maintain and foster a strong culture or those seeking to move forward into a stronger constructive culture must have an office space that reflects their goals. Companies who provide workplaces that better support collaboration, learning and socializing see higher levels of employee engagement, relationship building, brand equity and productivity than those with less supportive work environments. Edgar Shein in, Organizational Culture and Leadership,” describes a number of embedding mechanisms that help shape culture. One of these mechanisms is the design of physical space and buildings.  Remember: your work environment reflects your culture.

I hate to follow the trend of using Google as an example, however ideal their culture is for them, they illustrate the optimal work environment, which models their cultural beliefs. They built their offices with their employees in mind. The result is an office environment that supports socializing, collaboration and learning. For example, they have thinking rooms. Yes, a room to let leaders and employees just think about the possibilities for innovation. Google has bicycles and scooters for efficient travel between meetings; dogs; lava lamps; massage chairs; large inflatable balls, sharing cubes, yurts and huddle rooms – and very few solo offices. The result is a healthy culture congruent with their beliefs. Google is a trendsetter; therefore their office environment must embody that.

So what’s the ROI?

According to the Gallup Management Journal, in a national employee survey, they confirmed uncomfortable work environments make for disgruntled employees. Also, according to a Gensler survey of the connection between workplace design and business performance the following was found:

• 90% of knowledge workers agree that workplace design affects productivity
• 70% of project specific knowledge is gained from peer interaction
• Knowledge is transferred more between people than any other sources of information by five times (5x)
• 32% of knowledge workday is spent in collaboration

Tosan’s partner and environment designer, Hmarq Studios, says the number one reason companies come to them is to seek a more effective work environment and gain more productivity from their employees. Hmarq Studios believes designing the right work environment promotes team building and collaboration, which results in a highly engaged and more efficient workforce.

If you’re seeking culture change within your organization, having the right leaders in place is crucial, gaining mass support is a must, training is essential and typically a change of environment is the missing, yet compulsory set piece needed to fully integrate your change efforts! Remember, your office environment reflects your culture and you are asking your employees to move with you, the right office environment can go a long way.

My question seems to be a straightforward line of thought however, like so many grandiose, underdeveloped ideas, once spoken these thoughts tend to lose their luster. So I set out to do some modest research, attempting to indentify what theoreticians believe when it comes to how best to manage emerging cultures.

I consulted Organizational Development (OD) text, numerous online resources, the thoughts’ of colleagues and fellow practitioners, and even the personal insight of an iconic management professor, but no answer seemed complete and I found no major body of research concerning the management of emerging cultures.

Why? Is there no set of OD guidelines or rules that would allow a start-up’s leaders to prepare themselves when their new culture does emerge so they already have strong mechanisms in place? Or are we as practitioners of OD condemned to be reactionary entities in a constant buzzard-like holding pattern waiting until a potential client recognizes they have a need for change?

The best answer I found, however insipid it may seem to me, leads to a central precept of organizational theory; that culture is most influenced by the values of the founders and leaders. The values they formulate and how clearly they communicate and emulate the norms, mission, vision, etc. of the organization or their failure to do so, is the single greatest factor in ascertaining success.

In my emerging culture query, I will only accept the influence of leadership as part of the answer because it prompts another question concerning the genesis of a culture: If leadership is primarily responsible for the successful assimilation of a culture, then should we assume that emerging organizational culture begins with the leadership as well?

Management icon Edgar Schein states, “Culture is a learned product of a group experience and is, therefore, to be found only where there is a definable group with a significant history.” According to Schein, the number within a group is not as important as the amount of shared experiential products between members. So, if a group fulfills this criterion, then the culture does indeed formulate through leaders. As a practitioner of OD consulting, one should be able to manage an emerging culture through this group of leaders.

One final consideration though: Does culture have to be present before someone takes actions to shape it?

I know some of your immediate reactions, “How can you shape something that does not exist?”

Try this on: If you have ever worked at a company that has standards and/or behaviors that drive you crazy, or may not be congruent with your beliefs and work ethic, you say, “If ever I start a company I will make sure never to do “x” to my employees,”?

In that moment of enlightenment, you are preparing your future professional self by setting guidelines in which your theoretical organization will better function based on your beliefs…

Would you consider BMW owners to be passionate about driving? Are Apple users open to new products and ideas that come from the Cupertino headquarters? Is your friend that supports the New York Yankees, or only uses their Dyson willing to tell you why they think their team or vacuum are great? The answer to all of these is obviously yes. The reason why, is because of strong brands. The thing to consider, for the purpose of this post, is that all of these people, at some point, changed – and now support the new norm. The BMW driver might have always had Hondas, the Apple user might have had a PC or a Sony Walkman, and the Yankees fan may have preferred football. But at some point, they changed. And now, they support that change.

If a BMW driver is passionate, an Apple user trusting, and the Yankee fan is loyal (maybe I should have used the Cubs), I think we can all agree that they are engaged.

Your employees can be just as engaged and advocate for your change. Ironically, it takes the same efforts that the marketers of these brands have mastered, to keep their constituents engaged, loyal, and even forgiving. The key factor in building brands like these, and in driving your organizational change initiative in such a way that it truly becomes the norm, is communications. Consistent, compelling, targeted communications delivered in the right way, and at the right time, are key factors in building the understanding and buy-in, support and loyalty, and commitment to doing something new, and sticking to that decision. Interestingly, we could say that implementing a change and building a brand are nearly the same thing. In either case, you’re asking someone crucial to your existence to do something new, or to do something differently; this by definition is change.

As you implement you next organizational change effort, we invite you to, “Brand your Change.” Treat your change initiative like the launch of a product that is crucial to your survival – because it is. To do this, you can employ the following principals to help your employees embody, advocate and normalize the new way of working, long past the initial trainings and roll-outs.

1. Get the story straight – If customers don’t quite know what your company does, or why your product better meets their needs, they wont buy-in (pun completely intended). The most important issue in change is communicating the reason for changing. To this end, the leaders driving any change should have a strong, concise set of key messages that explain why change is needed, why it’s not only good but in fact crucial, how each employee plays a part, and what success looks like. In other words, what is the copy for your brochure about the change? What are the two or three sentences you would say at the press conference about your change effort? These key messages are the core points that will brand the change in your employees’ minds and hearts.

2. Align to the front line – Every employee needs to know how he or she contributes to the change effort, otherwise they won’t fully support it. Keep in mind; different employee audiences will need to understand different aspects of the change to become engaged. Some BMW owners connect to the German style and performance of the car, some may feel that the support offered is the best, or some may like the fuel efficacy aspects. As you lead the change and build your key messaging, keep in mind that each employee audience may need to hear the case for change from different perspectives.

3. Empower communicators – As you deploy your change process, you will build advocates for the new way of working, just as a Dyson owner will tell you their vacuum is the best. However, not everyone may come along as easily so it is our job to supply managers and supervisors with strong communications tools to help them deliver a consistent but tailored message of change to those within their span of control. This comes through building tools such as presentations, speaking points, and question and answer guides based on the previous two items, as well as knowing your audience and the message they need. What goes in your instruction booklet for change, and how can you do it in the way instructions and benefits are delivered with a new MacBook computer?

4. Infuse into the culture – You’ve got the messages, you know your audiences, and you’ve even built tools to help others deliver your change. The mission critical success factor is having the new way become the old way. This is accomplished by figuring out where in your culture the new change can continually be reinforced; on the intranet, as a standing agenda item in the weekly meeting, as part of the performance review process. What channels and events already exist in your organization to keep your employees understanding the change and seeing or experiencing its success? Just as with any of our examples, brand loyalty is truly built in the months and years after the sale. It’s our job as strategic leaders to understand that how we do things is represented by every part of our organization.

Hopefully these analogies may spark some ideas in how you can communicate your change for better reception and ongoing success. Let us know how you do!

We hear and use the words interchangeably, unaware that there may be subtle differences between them.

When Tosan approaches our work with clients it is to invoke specific meaning of the word accountability as this aids them in understanding how to coach employees while establishing ground rules for delegating and producing tasks. Tosan distinguishes meaning between responsibility and accountability in the following way:

Responsibility can be seen as A being given a task to perform by B. A accepts the task, making an often unspoken agreement to provide their best work to accomplish a given set of outcomes and goals by B.

Accountability has the same definition with one important addition:

Accountability can be seen as A being given a task to perform by B. A accepts the task, agreeing to provide their best work to accomplish outcomes and goals by B, while also taking responsibility for the results, whether good or bad.

The difference between these two words as they relate to our meaning is focused on the expectation set forth by “A” in delegating a task and the reasonable results that the “B” is to produce and be held accountable for.

One must take responsibility not just for completing our role in a task, but also for the results of that task. In this way, personal development has greater effect in that people can not only see how their efforts make an impact (both good and bad), but they are given the opportunity to participate in the full process of task accountability; from delegation and expectation to development, through feedback and finally to the ownership of results. This helps clear the path of obstacles for those involved to more accurately assess what was successful in order to repeat it and what was unsuccessful so as to identify and mitigate the same pitfalls next time.

Additionally, problems can be more quickly assessed because the “blame game” is diminished, and it allows for managers to more accurately offer feedback from both successes and failures. True accountability leads to greater empowerment and engagement by the employee because the employee is now asked to provide the follow through on their tasks.  Setting the expectation that individuals are responsible not just for delivery of a task, but the consequences of their deliverables will aide them to do more accurate and more solid work, especially if they know that at the end of the day, their name is on the report being given to clients, board members, team leaders and colleagues.

Whereas, the verbiage between these two words may be inconsequential in our modern day interactions, we ask that all of you reading this post take into consideration that in order to hold true accountability, as members of an organization, we all need to better practice moving responsibility to the higher, better place of accountability.

The question we would like to answer is: “What can your company learn from these types of organizations?” HRO may be elite operators but they have similar values of operation to most other businesses.  They differ from most operational models in two main ways:  1.) Teamwork, communication, safety standards and organizational culture must all function at very high levels of consistency and effectiveness. 2.) They have elevated risks associated in failure and are evaluated by standards commensurate with their risks in operation.

However, HRO, just like all organizations, rely upon the clarification and assimilation of behavioral norms and operational standards, which are invariably communicated throughout the organization from leaders to front-line workers. Mindful adherence to these norms and standards nurture an environment, which both mitigate risk and achieve results. If these processes are successful and can be repeated, then they become part of the operational culture.

The point to remember for us non-HRO folk is that the structured procedures of an HRO presuppose that organizational culture forms the foundation for success in safety and reliability. It is sustained by open and precise communication coupled with the interdependency of team contributions, which supports a ubiquitous and effective safety culture.

HRO also display a strong commitment to resilience. They rely on strict obedience to regulations and safety norms but also must constantly be learning and revising their processes through the ability of individual contributors to maintain a questioning attitude toward the rules and processes. Thereby constantly testing that the operational norms are the most efficient for continued safety. For many companies, we tend to become locked into certain processes or rules if they have proven to work in the past. Overtime, inflexibility to change becomes known by the moniker “just the way we do things around here” which stifles our ability to question the norms that may not be serving the best interests of our organization anymore.

So, what can we learn from HRO principles and how can we apply them? Their success is really about how pervasive and targeted their culture must be to support the mission of the organization. Understanding that obedience to rules with the ability to test and modify them, and awareness by employees of how they contribute, both individually and on the team level, works to maintain safety and productivity. These values are not endemic to HRO but instead are comparable to most business values and practices. Just because an organization may not have “the capacity to damage permanently surrounding communities” does not mean that the values they espouse are different than the values of a non-HRO organization. What matters is how we choose to use them in supporting our mission and goals and in elevating our business practices to develop into sustained, high-performance instruments.