Challenge
After making dramatic improvement in its performance
at the turn of the century, Fermi 2 Generating Station began
to see its top quartile performance slip. It had recently received
feedback from self-assessments and external industry assessments
that it had deficiencies in some basic supervisory functions
including: setting clear expectations, conducting human performance
observations and confronting and coaching performance shortfalls.
Coupled with this, Fermi’s leaders decided to address a
deep-seated culture that was seen as an anchor in sustaining
the desired high level of performance. The leaders desired an
integrated change effort that would change culture and build
basic supervisory skills. An additional challenge was the deeply
rooted negative perception that accountability equated to a disciplinary
type of interaction.
The leadership team set an expectation that the initiative:
- Build an understanding of current culture’s limitations
- Clearly define an optimal culture
- Engage the entire leadership team in an effort to change
the culture
- Build competency in setting expectations, observing employee
performance and coaching employees to improve performance and
change behavior.
Solution
Model the Current and Desired Culture – Fermi’s
leaders acknowledged that they needed a practical way to define
the current culture and its impact on performance. In addition,
they desired the ability to articulate a tangible, behavioral
based definition of the optimal culture. The leaders engaged
Tosan to conduct an assessment of the current and optimal culture.
This assessment was completed and revealed that the culture
created high expectations for an aggressive/defensive approach
to work and employee interaction. This resulted in an employee
population that was under engaged, overly dependent on leaders,
frequently passed the blame and demonstrated low accountability
for performance standards. After reviewing the findings, the
leaders launched two developmental strategies. The first was
to provide behavioral based feedback and coaching to the senior
leadership team in support of aligning their leadership style
to the desired culture. The second effort was designed to build
basic supervisory skills in the area of accountability and
coaching across the entire leadership team, including the bargaining
units leaders.
The Constructive Leader Accountability and Coaching
in the Workplace –Tosan was engaged to
custom tailor its Accountability and Coaching program to
meet Fermi’s unique needs around culture change, leadership
behavior alignment and skill development. The leadership
team acted upon Tosan’s recommendation to co-deliver
this workshop. Fermi elected to license the workshop and
train a cadre of senior leaders to co-deliver this program
with a Tosan trainer.
This initiative was built upon the already completed cultural
survey of the current and optimal culture. The intervention was
larger in scope than a traditional leadership-training course
in that it was designed to change employee’s perceptions
of accountability, build skills and produce behavior change (accountability,
coaching and meaningful involvement) across the organization.
It was intentionally designed to have a cross-section of functional
organizations, allowing the group to create common expectations,
confront and change limiting beliefs and behavioral patterns,
build skills and commit to support each other. This workshop
provided the participants with behavioral based feedback and
was filled with practice, including real-play scenarios depicting
actual employee challenges faced by Fermi’s leaders.
This workshop included the use of Appreciative Inquiry interviews
to produce a change in employee perception about accountability
and to define an optimal work culture. The interviews and a behavioral
based survey were completed prior to a two-day workshop. Knowing
that workshops without follow-up with colleagues produces no more
change than pure chance, the initiative was designed to engage
the leaders in a four-week structured application and formal ½ day
follow-up session. It also included ongoing follow-up sessions
facilitated by the plant manager. A cross section of leaders is
brought together to share best practices, support behavior change
and problem solve challenges.
Results
Fermi 2 is waiting a full six months to conduct an After Action Review. Meanwhile,
external industry observers have reported an increase in accountability and
real-time coaching to reinforce standards and improve behavior. The number
of Human Performance observations conducted by leaders has doubled and the
quality of the observation reports has increased substantially.
Level One assessment of the participants at the end of the workshop
revealed high scores in the quality of the course content, facilitation
and perceived relevance and applicability of the content.
Level Two measurement of participant learning was assessed during
the follow-up sessions and through real-time observations of
participants. The follow-up session assessment revealed a very
high application of action plans to change behavior and antidotal
stories of actual behavior change back on the job. Trainer and
senior leader real-time observations revealed consistent behavior
change across the leadership team.
As one leader put it, “I have really concentrated on providing
clear expectations and positive reinforcement. I received strange
looks at first, but I am impressed with the results. I see an
increase in work products and quality. Personally, I am
not reacting as much. I respond in a more positive and constructive
way. I found that writing down expectations really helped make
them clear and product quality is up.” |
