StrategyDriven Risk Management Point of View Document

StrategyDriven White Paper Advises Leaders on Preventing Catastrophic Industrial Accidents

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StrategyDriven’s Preventing Catastrophic Industrial Accidents reveals how high-risk industry leaders can reduce their significant event risk exposure through application of safety-first principles.
 
 
StrategyDriven Safety Culture Point of View DocumentStrategyDriven released Preventing Catastrophic Industrial Accidents, a white paper revealing how high-risk industry leaders can reduce their significant event risk exposure through the cost effective adaptation of key aspects of the U.S. nuclear industry’s safety-first principles.

After the several recent catastrophic industrial accidents within the United States, including the devastating explosions at a Texas fertilizer plant and Louisiana chemical plant, StrategyDriven wanted to help industrial and utility leaders reduce the risk of similar accidents at their facilities.

“Many of today’s significant industrial accidents are preventable, the byproduct of human errors made when safety was subordinated to other priorities,” explains Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “By fostering an organizational culture that puts safety-first, executives and managers create a workplace environment where errors are recognized and proactively corrected before they result in a material event.”

“An effective safety culture is far more than slogans and posters,” continues Greg Gaskey, StrategyDriven’s Chief Operations Officer. “It permeates the organization’s performance standards, operating processes, training programs, rewards systems, and, most importantly, the decisions and behaviors of everyone from the C-Suite to the shop floor.”

Nathan and Greg authored Preventing Catastrophic Industrial Accidents based on their decades of experience managing nuclear and industrial complex operations. Additionally, Nathan led the development of the nuclear industry’s operational risk management, high-risk decision management, and plant operations performance standards while working at the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations.

Highlights from Preventing Catastrophic Industrial Accidents include:

  • Safety Culture Attributes – safety focused executives, managers, and employees collectively assume responsibility for both their and their co-workers’ safety; embody a questioning attitude; encourage issue reporting and priority-based resolution; employ error reduction techniques; embed safety-first features within operational, training, and rewards programs; and embrace ongoing organizational learning
  • Identifying the Strength of Your Safety Culture – artifacts of the safety-first values are not only found in the outcomes achieved, but also reside in the organization’s goals and performance measures, standards and expectations, policies and procedures, rewards systems, training, and organizational learning and continuous improvement programs
  • Improving Your Safety Culture – individuals at all levels of the organization must be engaged in order to foster a robust safety culture; originating from executive defined attributes and goals and translated to the day-to-day decisions and actions of all employees

Preventing Catastrophic Industrial Accidents is being distributed to StrategyDriven’s clients, including some of the world’s largest utility operators. Download the white paper by clicking here.

About the Authors

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal, and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Greg Gaskey, StrategyDriven PrincipalGreg Gaskey is a StrategyDriven Principal with over twenty years of nuclear plant operations, maintenance, and large-scale program and project management experience. An experienced Operations Manager, he has managed critical Department of Defense programs, projects, and business lines; spanning multiple engineering maintenance disciplines including mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, and instrumentation and controls systems. To read Greg’s complete biography, click here.

StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice Article

Performance Metrics Inventory Database

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StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Best PracticeOver time, leaders can grow their performance measurement systems to include almost countless numbers of interrelated metrics. Ensuring these numerous metrics remain well aligned, their output quality and relationship integrity preserved, and their meaning well understood while continuing to be of value to executives, managers, and employees necessitates a method of inventorying the measures themselves and their underlying construction characteristics. In our experience, the optimal method for maintaining such an inventory is through the use of a centralized metrics inventory database.[wcm_restrict plans=”41669, 25542, 25653″]

Information Captured by the Performance Metric Inventory Database

In order for the performance metrics inventory database to support achievement of the aforementioned goals, it must contain the definition, construction, relationship, ownership, and revision data associated with each measure and be broadly accessible in at least a read-only format. Metric elements that should be captured within the database include:

  • Metric Title – name of the metric
  • Purpose Statement – written discussion of why the metric is being employed, including performance drivers (see StrategyDriven article, Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice – Documenting Performance Measure Drivers) and the performance observers are likely to see
  • Word Definition – written description of the metric including what it is monitoring
  • Mathematical Definition – calculational description of the metric including a written description for each variable. Variables that are themselves constructs of several underlying components should be further defined in mathematical terms so that each defined point is associated with a single data source
  • Data Sources – explicit application and application field from which each mathematical term within the performance measure’s definition draws its data (see StrategyDriven article, Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice – Get Data Directly from the Source)
  • Metric Type – bar, line, pie, etcetera graph
  • Graphed Lines, Bars, Pie Segments – items, by name, whose performance will be reflected on the metric
  • Graphed Line, Bar, Pie Segment Colors – color coding associated with each graphed line, bar, and/or pie segment
  • X-Axis Label – x-axis descriptive label applied to the metric chart
  • X-Axis Unit of Measure – quantity used as a standard of measurement for the x-axis, typically time
  • X-Axis Scaling – start and end points of the x-axis
  • Y-Axis Label – y-axis descriptive label applied to the metric chart
  • Y-Axis Unit of Measure – quantity used as a standard of measurement for the y-axis
  • Y-Axis Scaling – start and end points of the y-axis, commonly using a zero reference frame
  • Secondary Y-Axis Label – secondary y-axis descriptive label applied to the metric chart
  • Secondary Y-Axis Unit of Measure – quantity used as a standard of measurement for the secondary y-axis
  • Secondary Y-Axis Scaling – start and end points of the secondary y-axis, commonly using a zero reference frame
  • Z-Axis Label – z-axis descriptive label applied to the metric chart
  • Z-Axis Unit of Measure – quantity used as a standard of measurement for the z-axis
  • Z-Axis Scaling – start and end points of the z-axis, commonly using a zero reference frame
  • Frequency of Measure – this may not match the x-axis displayed time measure. The frequency should typically be equal to or more frequent than the x-axis displayed interval
  • Direction of Goodness – direction in which a positive performance trend is indicated
  • Performance Thresholds – written description identifying excellent (green), average (white), below average (yellow), and unacceptable (red) performance levels
  • Performance Thresholds Numeric Values – measured value above or below which each performance threshold is achieved respectively
  • Primary Action Threshold – written description of the general actions that should be taken and the desired outcomes to be achieved (see StrategyDriven article, Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice – Predefined Action Thresholds)
  • Primary Action Threshold Numeric Value – measured value at which action should be taken
  • Secondary Action Threshold – written description of the general actions that should be taken and the desired outcomes to be achieved (see StrategyDriven article, Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice – Multiple Action Thresholds)
  • Secondary Action Threshold Numeric Value – measured value at which action should be taken
  • Relationships to Higher-Tier Performance Measures – there can be more than one senior performance measures contributed to by the metric
  • Relationships to Subordinate Performance Measures – there can be more than one performance measure feeding into the metric particularly if it is an index metric
  • Relationships to Peer Performance Measures – there can be more than one instance where a performance measure is shared/common among workgroups across the organization (see StrategyDriven article, Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice – Horizontally Shared)
  • Core Performance Measure – special Yes/No metric designation field (see StrategyDriven article, Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice – Core Performance Measures)
  • Reports the Metric is Included In – listing of the reports containing the individual performance metric (see StrategyDriven article, Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice – Diverse Metric Groupings)
  • Accountable Person / Metric Owner – individual who is accountable for the performance/outcomes reflected by the metric. Should include the individual’s name, position title, and contact (phone, email, and location) information (see StrategyDriven article, Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice – Map Performance Measure Ownership)
  • Accountable Person / Metric Owner Organization – the company business unit, division, department, and/or workgroup to which the metric is assigned
  • Responsible Person – individual(s) who maintains and updates the performance measure. Should include the individual’s name, position title, and contact (phone, email, and location) information
  • Informed Person(s) 1 – Persons whose performance contributions are reflected in part or whole by the metric’s indicated outcomes (by position titles or groups)
  • Informed Person(s) 2 – Executives, managers, and supervisors who through lines of authority or functional collaboration need to be made aware of the metric’s reflected performance (by position titles or groups)
  • Informed Persons(s) 3 – Public locations where the metric is to be posted (see StrategyDriven article, Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice – Broad Communication)
  • Informed Person(s) 4 – Accountable individuals and contributors who are notified of changes to the performance measure (by position titles or groups)
  • Consulted Person(s) – individuals consulted when changes to the metric are proposed (by position titles or groups)
  • Concurrence Person – name, position, and a date/time stamp of the person whose approval is required prior to changing the associated performance metric (see StrategyDriven article, Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice – System Approval by the CEO). This data is collected and stored for each metric revision (by position titles or groups)
  • Metric Revision Number – automated count each time a metric’s update is approved
  • Revision Reason Text Field – documentation of the background reasons for changing/updating the metric
  • Metric Revision Date – date the new, revised, or updated metric is authorized to be placed in service
  • Metric Creation Date – special field noting Revision 0 of the performance measure
  • Metric Termination Date – special field noting the metric’s removal from service
  • Comments / Notes Field – elaborating information

For additional background information related to several database fields see the following StrategyDriven articles, podcasts, and whitepapers:

Articles

Podcasts

Whitepapers

Performance Metric Inventory Database Construction

The performance metric inventory database should be constructed as a relational database given the multiples associated with several individual metric elements to be captured. Additionally, the user interface should be aligned with the performance measure development form used during the construction of the overall system. In this author’s experience, customizable interface applications such as Adobe Flex are useful when employing complex ERP systems as the metric repository whereas Microsoft InfoPath easily accommodates Microsoft Access or SQL databases.

Performance Metric Inventory Database Governance

Performance Metric Inventory Databases should be governed to control both access and changes to measurement characteristic data. While broad access to database information is desirable, access should be limited based on legal, business, and ethical grounds to protect individual privacy and the organization’s intellectual property. Additionally, some information is appropriate for only company executives and senior-level managers. Maintaining data integrity is often served by limiting change access and, therefore, read-only access is recommended for those not directly involved with database information maintenance and approval. Electronic security protocols can help ensure access and data changes are authorized in accordance with established procedures.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”41669, 25542, 25653″]

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Jeffrey Gitomer

The POWER of Sales Success. It’s all within you!

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Last week I talked about the power of sales success and gave you the first ten personal powers you need to possess in order to have all of the sales success you desire. As a professional salesperson, you want more selling power and this two-part article reveals the sources.

Let me share with you the remaining powers you do possess and how you might be able to use them and take advantage of them to build sales, build relationships, build referrals, earn testimonials, and achieve the sales success that you are striving for…

11. The power of relatable example. Please don’t tell me how the product works. Rather, tell me how someone else is using it and winning right now as a result of it.
12. The power of truth. It’s sad I have to write about this. The elusiveness of truth has caused more business deals and more relationships to be lost to lack of truth than to lowest bid. Truth starts with you.
13. The power of trust. Trust is built slowly over time by taking consistent, value-based actions. Trust is lost in a minute by taking inappropriate actions, tellinguntruths, or failure to deliver as promised.
14. The power of service. The power of service is realized through actions, not advertisements. There is no power in telling me how great your service is, there is power in delivering it, and there is HUGE power in having your customers talk about it, brag about it, on social media.
15. The power of a relationship. Real relationships mean there is no bidding involved and no proposals involved in earning a sale. Relationships are based on mutual value provided, mutual loyalty exchanged, truth, and trust. Take a moment right now and list the ten customers that fall into this category. If there are less than ten your power isn’t close to what it could be.
16. The power of loyalty. I define loyal customers two ways: will a customer do businesswith me again and will they refer someone to me. Many customers may never be satisfied, but they continue to do business with you. That’s loyalty. Repeat business and unsolicited referrals are the report card that everything else in the relationship is excellent. Keep in mind that loyal customers are also your most profitable customers.
17. The power of reputation and social brand. Social media presence is no longer an option. And the most powerful part of it is the fact that your customers can interact with you one-on-one. They have access to your Facebook page. They can tweetabout you with a hashtag. They can post a video about how great you are on YouTube. Social media can make you a fortune or cost you a fortune. It all depends on the way you respond and the speed of your response.
18. The power of proof. When you make statements or claims about yourself, it’s bragging. When your customers say the SAME THING about you, it’s proof. Proof is a reputation builder, proof is a sales tool, and proof reinforces the belief of everyone in your company that you are who you say you are, and you do what you say you’ll do.
19. The power and joy of rejection. It’s amazing what you can learn when someone says no to you. Much more than when someone says yes. In both cases you need to understand why the yes or the no occurred. Celebrate the no. It will help you understand why and ultimately get to more yeses. The power of rejection, and learning from it, is the foundation for your resilience and your success.
20. The power, joy, and celebration of victory. YES attitude! When you’re in sales, nothing feels better than making one. The power comes one minute after the celebration. That’s when you start making the next one. Most salespeople stop after one. Big mistake. Your assertiveness is in high gear, your belief system is in higher gear, and your attitude, your YES Attitude!, is in highest gear. Once you learn that the best time to make a sale is right after you have just made a sale, you’re on the path to doubling your sales.
20.5 The power of opportunity. The most important realization in sales and selling is the one you give to yourself. You do not have a job. You have an opportunity. An opportunity to earn while you’re learning. An opportunity to earn based on your results. And an opportunity to grow without limits. If you look at your present position as an opportunity, then all barriers and all negatives will fall by the wayside as you challenge yourself to be your best regardless of your circumstance, regardless of your boss, regardless of the marketplace, and regardless of any obstacle that is in your way. I challenge you to take full advantage of your opportunity.

NOTE WELL: These powers do not act alone. Rather, they act in harmony with one another. One power will not put you over the top. It’s important to know them all and it is equally important to execute them all at their highest level.

Many of you are probably frantically searching for the first part of this article that appeared last week. Your search is over. Go to www.gitomer.com and enter the word POWER in the GitBit box.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at salesman@gitomer.com.

Key Leadership Strategies to Identify, Manage, and Prevent Office Idiocy

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Office Idiots are those individuals whose actions, inaction, antics, and ridiculous behaviors generate widespread dissatisfaction and undercut the performance and productivity of fellow employees near and far and at any job level. Importantly, an organization’s leadership plays a critical role not only in terms of identifying office idiocy, but also from the standpoint of taking corrective and preventive action. The overarching theme is that when management ignores, tolerates, or even enables office idiocy, the outcome is destined to be a continuation and expansion of these counterproductive antics.

Not surprisingly, when managers and leaders act like office idiots, the population of office idiots in their departments tends to increase. There is no question that employees learn from their managers, and it is well understood that managerial behaviors and actions serve as models for the employees to emulate. As a result, when you find a manager who sits in meetings while texting and surfing the Internet on his smartphone, you will also find that his or her employees are far more likely to engage in the exact same idiotic behavior. And what should you do if you are trying to have a serious discussion with your manager or colleague and he or she is texting, glancing at the computer screen, and pecking away at the keyboard at the same time? You should say something, lest you are actually enabling this behavior. Tell this individual that you need his or her attention in order to discuss an important matter. And if the glazed look continues, simply suggest that the two of you meet later. In terms of the bigger picture, leadership assertiveness is a key element in dealing with most forms of office idiocy.

[wcm_restrict]As part of the process of identifying and neutralizing office idiocy, one of the most important strategies is to manage by wandering around. The idea is not to micromanage the team, but rather to get out on the floors and use all of your senses to gather a clearer and more accurate understanding of what’s going on and how things are going. By definition, this practice also increases a leader’s visibility and accessibility, while providing ongoing opportunities for coaching, feedback, and guidance. This practice also provides numerous opportunities for a manager to identify office idiocy as soon as it occurs, and to then take immediate and appropriate corrective action.

This raises the question of how to provide meaningful and productive feedback to employees whose actions clearly merit the label of office idiocy. Some leaders unfortunately convert this practice into an opportunity to demonstrate their own idiocy, such as by providing feedback that is vague, personality based, and void of any type of corrective plan. Feedback that is premised on labeling employees, such as by saying they are lazy or uncooperative, as well as feedback that is too general, such as by telling employees they have a bad attitude, are all trademarks of the card-carrying office idiot. For feedback to be truly effective, it should be focused on performance, outcomes, and results.

With such a huge variety of office idiots populating today’s workplaces, it is also important for a leader to vary his or her strategy and use an approach that best fits the specific idiocy that is being encountered. Interestingly, this parallels the steps that today’s best leaders follow in guiding their teams. Some situations call for a leadership style that is highly participative and inclusive of employee ideas, input, and suggestions. However, there are also situations in which the required resources and time constraints call for a leadership style that is more firm and direct. Better leaders are sensitive to these variables and adjust their approach accordingly. The same idea applies when dealing with office idiots. For example, when you encounter office idiots who are engaging in behaviors that fall into the zero tolerance category, such as sexual harassment, a manager needs to immediately investigate the matter and take appropriate corrective steps. This type of urgency is necessary in all situations in which the office idiocy is particularly egregious. At the same time, if you manage an employee who needs constant recognition and praise, sometimes a little silence can help this person see that he or she can actually survive without constant reinforcement pellets.

The most effective way to deal with office idiocy is to review each instance on its own individual merits (or demerits), and then craft and implement appropriate steps to stop it. At the same time, there are some ongoing steps for leaders to take in order to create an atmosphere and culture in which such idiocy is less likely to survive. One of the centerpieces of this approach is to treat all employees with respect and trust. By doing so, not only will you be displaying support for your employees, you will also be engaging in the precise behaviors that enhance motivation, and this includes well-deserved recognition, enriched responsibilities, and opportunities to learn, grow, and advance. Other steps that help prevent the proliferation of office idiots include active listening, working with employees to establish challenging yet realistic goals, and treating employees as you would like to be treated. There’s no question that there will always be office idiots. However, if you engage in behaviors that are the hallmarks of effective leadership, office idiots will be less likely to find a home or be at home in your organization.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Ken LloydKen Lloyd, PhD, is a nationally recognized Southern California management consultant, author, speaker, and newspaper columnist. He has taught numerous MBA classes at The Anderson School at UCLA and lectures at many other universities. He is the vice president of planning and development at Strategic Partners, Inc. and a frequent television and talk-radio guest, as well. He has authored several books, including Jerks at Work and Performance Appraisals and Phrases for Dummies. A member of the American Psychological Association and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, he graduated from UC Berkeley and received his MS and PhD in organizational behavior from UCLA.

StrategyDriven’s Online Advisory Forum – The Advisor’s Corner

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StrategyDriven's Online Advisory Forum - The Advisor's CornerAs a business leader, you face mission-critical challenges every day. Working through these important issues in a deliberate way increases your chances of making the right decisions.

So does having an experienced, outside perspective. To further aid you in your ongoing strategic planning and tactical business execution decisions, StrategyDriven is proud to host an online advisory forum, The Advisor’s Corner. This forum provides you an opportunity to pose questions anonymously and receive real-world insights from our experienced business advisors and community professionals. Questions and answers are published in The Advisor’s Corner for the benefit of all site visitors; providing an ever growing library of experiences for you to draw from.

Submit your questions to The Advisor’s Corner by email at: TheAdvisorsCorner@StrategyDriven.com. Let us know your question’s priority and response by date so we can reply in a timely manner. All questions submitted will remain anonymous to maintain confidentiality.

Want to learn more?

Click here to visit The Advisor’s Corner and learn from the many questions and answers already posted within this unique knowledge sharing forum!