| |

4 Questions Board Members Should Ask About Safety Culture

ByTom Krause

It was 1993 and Paul O’Neill was attending his first board meeting as a Director at one of the largest companies in the world. Just as the meeting was coming to a close, O’Neill asked, “Where is the safety report?” As the story goes, no safety report was planned but the question had profound effects. It set the company on the path to creating safety excellence and embedding safety as a cultural value. Board member influence can do that — uniquely — and it saves lives while creating business value.

| |

5 Essential Building Blocks for Improving Organizational Culture

ByTom Krause

Few leaders can honestly say they know how to create, maintain, and enhance their culture. At the same time, the success of a culture change effort depends on the degree to which leaders understand and relate their own decisions, behaviors, and thought processes to the culture itself. The most challenging part of culture change is…

| |

What Does The Practice Of Accountability Mean?

ByRebecca Timmins

When leaders are asked what they would like to get better at, the answer is often accountability. Usually, it’s thought to be about holding people accountable for non-performance, but the leadership practice of accountability can be so much more! Yes, it is about holding people to account, but it is also an opportunity to grow…

| | |

How to Change Organizational Culture and Avoid Catastrophes

ByTom Krause

Catastrophes are a risk in organizational life. From a quality issue that causes consumer fatalities and brings reputational damage to a hostile working environment leading to harassment or to employees becoming seriously or fatally injured. These things are usually a surprise to the senior-most leaders. “I knew we had some issues at that facility, but…

| |

Organizations Are Built on a Cultural Infrastructure

ByTom Krause

Organizational culture has been defined in numerous ways. To some, it’s about what we as a group really value — production, quality, technical excellence, safety, diversity, growth, profit, engagement, goal attainment, and efficiency. From this perspective leaders start by understanding what they value, then develop what they think we should value. Then they develop a strategy…

| |

A Bad Workplace Culture Can Result in a Disaster, No Matter the Industry

ByTom Krause

A bad workplace culture is a hazard in itself. But even a mediocre one can contribute directly to a disaster.  NASA won awards for being the “best place to work” among U.S government agencies. But the Space Shuttle Columbia failure, which resulted in the loss of seven astronauts and countless resources, was directly related to…

VIDEO: What are the key takeaways from “If Your Culture Could Talk”?

ByTom Krause

There are two sections in Tom Krause’s book “If Your Culture Could Talk:  A Story About Culture Change.” In this video he highlights the key takeaway from the initial story, and one of the five, research-based variables that leaders must pay attention to in order to build and maintain a strong culture. For more information…

What Leadership Needs to Know about Changing Organizational Culture

ByTom Krause

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

ByTom Krause

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

ByTom Krause

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…