What Leadership Needs to Know about Changing Organizational Culture

SAY you have a manufacturing location with problems — three plant managers in two years, unusual variation in quality and/or safety, seemingly unpredictable swings in productivity. The options senior leadership considers may be to sell it, give it a defined period to show or go, or take on the task of rehabilitation. Leadership may wonder…

For A Positive Workplace Culture, Make Words Match Decisions and Actions

If organizational values on paper don’t match up with employee’s day-to-day experience, culture suffers. Here’s how to back them up with action. How often do organizations go through the motions of defining their company value statements, only to leave them to languish like just another exercise checked off the list? When organizational values such as…

How Leaders Can Prevent Disasters:  Learnings from NASA’s Space Shuttle Columbia Failure

CNN’s four-part series, “Space Shuttle Columbia: The Final Flight,” tells the story of how a series of decisions made by competent, dedicated, and well-intentioned leaders set the stage for a safety exposure that brought down the Space Shuttle Columbia — an exposure that was not understood at the time. As an organizational psychologist, I’ve studied decision-making…

VIDEO: What is the book, “If Your Culture Could Talk,” about?

Tom Krause’s book “If Your Culture Could Talk:  A Story About Culture Change” uses an entertaining, narrative format to shine a light on the ways in which the leaders of a troubled organization have shaped that organization’s culture.  In this video, Tom summarizes the storyline and introduces each of the main characters. For more information…

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Serious Injury and Fatality Prevention – 15 Years Later

Our first study on serious injury and fatality prevention revealed that these types of incidents had very different precursors compared to other types of injuries. Now, taking this understanding to the next level, our continued research has shown the need to look at where organizations sit on the SIF Maturity Curve.

Aligning Executive Pay with the Goal of Fatality Elimination

In the complex landscape of corporate governance, compensation committees and boards of directors face the critical task of designing executive compensation packages that not only drive performance but also align with the organization’s core values and safety improvement strategy. This alignment is crucial in industries …

How Leadership Decision Making Influences Worker Well-Being

Organizational leaders are increasingly concerned with the well-being of people in their organization, and they should be. Interpersonal conflict, frustration, detachment, absenteeism, and chronic stress are all signs that burnout or turnover are approaching. At a deeper level is the person’s sense of connectedness, inclusion, and efficacy. Deeper still, people want to be part of…

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Organizational Decision Making for Safety: Part 2

When we think about the sheer numbers of decisions made by leaders the task of improving them all seems quite daunting. The study identified a subset of decisions which had the greatest impact on 60 serious and fatal events. This article outlines an improvement strategy for organizations based on the findings.

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How Safety Improvement Works, Part 3

Recent studies have made something new and exciting clear: The central theme, the through-line most useful to SIF prevention, is all about decision making for safety. Yes, reducing exposure to risk and improving the culture are crucially important. But how do leaders at different organizational levels influence those things most effectively?