Culture
Safety is often focused on numbers, data, and analytical metrics that drive the details of preparation, response, and review. Metrics matter, and data points can help us identify and parse the salient feedback and crucial elements that make critical differences in predicting and managing the health and safety of our programs. Yet safety is not a number. Nor is it simply a formula, or an equation that produces absolute answers. Safety is a dynamic mix of pressures and outputs, a combination of people, conditions, decisions and non-decisions, luck, plans and training, the known and unknown, and always a moving target.
One of those moving targets is safety culture. If we think that a group's customs, styles, behaviors, and identities help define its culture, then a safety culture also includes the expectations, assumptions, personal experiences, professional backgrounds, and organizational traditions that shape how that group understands and manages risk. Safety culture asks us who we are, what we know, what expectations guide our attitudes and interest, how we work together and how this impacts our ability to understand our risks and our willingness to manage them. A culture of safety can be an elusive thing to grasp and understand. Culture evolves as groups change, shaped both by internal dynamics and external influences from the world around us. We continuously shape it is response to a changing world. Like all aspects of safety, it is determined adapting to the shifting conditions and contexts around us.
Unlike numbers, culture is a living thing we must cultivate if we want it to thrive. Why does this matter? Safety culture is the atmosphere in which all our information, tools, and processes can operate. The best manuals and policy aren’t effective if ignored. Systems don’t sync when teams don’t form or communicate well. Culture helps define a common purpose, includes diverse thinking and balances individual needs with collective rules. The ability for your business to come together, embrace both the differences and similarities that make up the group, and collaborate along a common structure is maybe the greatest enabling feature for your programs to manage risk and safety effectively. In my career as a manager and consultant it has been a culture issue that most often breaks things. This happens everywhere, including organizations with really smart people, killer resources, and lots of institutional experience. Programs that take the time to be intentional about defining and cultivating culture, feed it with input and strategic process, and water it with practice, patience and space for individual recognition toward strong teams - tend to out perform others. The goal is teams working with clear mission and expectations, open to structured dissent and adaptation, reliant on a trusted framework and operational plan made possible through combined effort, where hierarchy is understood and positions have some defined discretion to shift with conditions. Safety culture is not a finished product, but more of an organizational progression that is an important element of any productive risk management system.
The artform of culture-building is a big idea filled with many concepts. When building programs and developing safety culture within your organization, there are lots of barriers and challenges along the way; Internal process, external pressures, budgets, capacity, and simple project management. People, however, are often the most complex challenge for managers trying to build new systems, policy, and risk management procedure. These are often crucial stakeholders that are needed for consensus, collaboration, and gatekeepers to subgroups that are important for buy-in and moving projects forward. One of the challenges to approaching building a safety culture is recognizing the personality archetypes that often exist within organizations that can create the landscape of barriers and opportunities for groups to understand and overcome. Here are some classic examples to identify and consider when developing your organizational approach to establishing a positive and productive safety culture through project management.
The Curmudgeon
Attributes: They hate change. Why? Because it’s different. The status quo simply defines the reason to defy any new ideas even if they are the loudest complainer about that same broken standard. They’ve been there far longer than you have, and this is how they’ve always done things - as they often remind you. The brick wall approach filled in with well-worn workload, paperwork, and burnished excuses that have stood the test of time. Tough, never missing a chance to speak up to tear down a new concept, these folks exude an unwavering conviction against change.
Approach: Sell it. Convince them their life will be better, even easier, with a little bit of change. Take the time to explain and show them the why, how, and value of your proposal. Warn them of the reality of evolving best practices, insurance standards, and external compliance needs. Introduce change, often and in pieces, instead of radical disruption once a decade - establish a new habit of continuous improvement. Recognize that previous change done badly, probably formed their aversion to it. So do it better, include their needs and concerns, and sell, sell, sell.
The Newbie
Attributes: Often wavering between silence and trying too hard, the Newbie is both a project’s best friend and worst enemy. Unencumbered by history or the past, unjaded and open-minded, they can also jump around to support conflicting and competitive work projects in their effort to fit in and learn the ropes. A wild card, bringing the promise of sharp thinking and a misunderstanding of place creates all but opportunity.
Approach: Mentor - while learning from them. Help them understand the cultural landscape and traditions that make the organization what it is, and how to navigate it. Express the value of patience and legacy balanced with disruption. They probably have a fresh perspective and good ideas, some maybe better than yours, so help hone them to work within your system. And where possible, alter the system to adapt when needed.
The One-Hit Wonder
Attributes: The same conflict, every time, no matter the project, group, purpose, or year. This person is the champion of some existential problem that seems to pervade every waking moment and can find its way into all aspects of the job. Don’t bother challenging them on the issue, as they intimately know every nook and cranny. Don’t encourage them, or they will ravenously eat up productive meeting time. Always the same unfixable problem set, destined to derail anything it touches.
Approach: Stay focused. Have an agenda, geek out on structure and timelines and execute an exacting schedule of efficiency and details. Manage your project so tightly as to leave no room for any cracks or openings. Can also be used for The Wet Blanket.
The Budget Cop
Attributes: This is a twin of the One-Hit Wonder, except with the mother of all trump cards. Sometimes this angle is played deftly as a subtle yet constant presence, always hanging over any new project like a guillotine ready to drop. Other times they agree and are ‘totally on your side’, and ‘wish it were different’, but they can’t justify spending on unproven or new tools. Often there is the ‘maybe next year’ dangled over like a false promise, that somehow seems to be forgotten when you are back at the next funding cycle.
Approach: This is where data helps - use it to show benefit with other organizations, showing demonstrable track records, likely what you are asking for has already been done successfully. Maybe there is a way to start small and pilot a smaller scale version as a proof of concept. Much of safety management is a form of insurance, so make the argument how you can’t afford NOT to do it, against the cost of a catastrophic incident your idea may help prevent.
The Know It All
Attributes: Expert at everything, especially about work outside of their own job. How do you know they are an expert? They will tell you. At times pushy, interrupting workflow to prove a point. often barely relevant to the discussion. The Know It All can drown out other voices, and have likely tired others out to avoid engaging.
Approach: Validate it when you need it. Gain an ally and lift up their knowledge when it counts and drives projects. Be strategic when designing teams and tasks to be the most productive, and focus their work on the long term goals and success of the project. Set clear expectations about roles and scope of responsibility, and stick to them.
The Wet Blanket
Attributes: They tried this before, it didn’t work. The money? Already spent. Buy-in? Not a chance. The Wet Blanket has a thousand well-rehearsed answers to why your idea won’t ever work, and your project will never get off the ground. Ready to spread the contagion of doubt with any new task force, they can be a poison sapping group motivation. Always there, ready to inject an awkward interruption to progress, like a cold fart in an elevator, The Wet Blanket lurks around to drag all good ideas.
Approach: Anticipate it - and bring a few productive wins to the table right from the start, to show progress that plants the seed of promise. Negativity is easy, so be organized and ready to inspire others -positive energy is just as infectious.
The Stalwart
Attributes: Always taking up the slack, always volunteering for the worst part of the job, the reliable go-to. Often underappreciated, ever present, this person tries but doesn’t inspire. Does but rarely flourishes. They need supervision, support, and never quite bring their A-game. These folks tend to know everyone, and have an encyclopedic understanding of the organization. While reliable, The Stalwart lives in a rut and deserves a new path.
Approach: Support, and stop dumping everything in their lap. They may be reborn and shine with a new duty, new task, new role, or simply a break. Throw a party for them, pick their brain about the past, this person’s deep dedication means there is a lot to emulate from all they have given.
The Die Hard
Attributes: The believer, the purist. Holding the impossible bar, where nothing is good enough. Mission first, mission always. Details, timelines, money, the law - nothing is as important as saving the world. The Die Hard personifies the best being the enemy of the good, and threatens to wreck a good idea with an even better one.
Approach: Stay grounded. Small steps make a long journey and your positive management of projects defines realistic, practical, affordable progress. Steady, consistent progress builds trust and confidence, while aspirational thinking keeps you mission aligned and rights your daily work with purpose.
The Slacker
Attributes: This person often holds a key senior position, and has checked out. They are distracted, apathetic, on auto-pilot and not motivated for doing anything more than exactly what they have to. They don’t have a conflict, they just aren’t interested. Skipping meetings, not following through with promised action items, or delivering weak or counter-productive support is a regular occurrence.
Approach: Do the work for them. They will be on board if you make it easy. Don’t bother wasting your time trying to rally them from the dead. All you need is their blessing, their approval, and to leverage their position in a way that pushes your project over the edge. Hand it to them with a bow on it, give them credit, and get your project going.
People are your biggest challenge and asset - defining your culture and driving your ability to operationalize risk and safety. While this list is incomplete, and intentionally pokes some fun at some generic work attitudes, the barriers your colleagues and partners present will determine not only the culture you have and want to work with, but how you approach the process. The beauty is that digging into this as an organization creates a healthy look at your operations and your overall capacity to best manage the safety, security, and emergency preparedness your business faces. The lesson? Culture matters, and likely makes all your other planning possible. Lead with it, fold it into your risk and safety strategy, and work toward defining safety culture as one of your core competencies. It’s complex, ever-changing, and takes regular attention - and is well worth the effort.