Who Moved My Behavior?
Businesses concentrate on the tangibles and measurables — “business by the numbers” as they say. This sounds like the way to go, making objective decisions based on objective criteria. Even quality systems are run by numbers. I teach it in my class, “You don’t improve what you don’t measure.” I had to start rethinking that statement because we tend to focus too much on the numeric goals and ignore the intangibles that are not directly measurable in our organizations. These are the soft issues that have a huge impact. We can quote that our turn time is three hours; first pass yield is 85 percent; quality escapes are 20 percent lower than last year and that injuries are five percent higher than last month. But what is our organizational culture number? It’s the soft stuff I was referring to. Most businesses are comprised of machinery, hardware, software, equipment and materials that are easily measured, accounted for and depreciated. Even some intangibles such as production and productivity can be captured as numbers. No matter what business we are in, there are a lot of people involved. Since people are made of mainly soft stuff, it would appear that we should at least be concerned with the soft issues. We want your employees to do what we want them to do — but what if our employees want to do what we want them to do? Wouldn’t that be better?
Compliance
“We want our employees to be compliant.” Is that really what we want? Or, more pointedly, is that really what we intend? Compliance is the common sense reaction to something that is noncompliant. We want to right the wrong. Let’s look at compliance more deeply. I am not going to say that compliance is a bad thing, but it is not the best thing. Compliance means that the employee will conform when there is eminent recourse for not complying. In other words, we will see employees using their personal protective equipment (PPE) when the supervisor is present. They will adhere strictly to the maintenance manual when the FAA is in the building. This is compliance. It is not ingrained in the culture to become a way of doing things, only a means of avoiding something unpleasant — it’s coerced compliance.
Coerced compliance is only effective if there is constant supervision. Thus breeds the helicopter supervisor who oversees all aspects of the operation: the micro manager. It sends a signal of lack of trust. Let’s look at the two extremes. We can have voluminous rules, regulations and harsh punishment for violations to any rules and regulations. At the other end of the spectrum, we can have the employees do what they want when they want to do it. Neither of these is ideal. We see that we can’t let the employees run willy-nilly at work. Some alignment and focus is necessary. It is harder to visualize how further tightening the rules and policies is also not helpful.
When something goes wrong, it is common practice in many organizations to fire or punish the employee and write another policy to document the proper process so it isn’t repeated in the future and then call it “done” or “fixed.” This occurs when our investigation process into root cause falls short of where it should go and we never “fix” the problem, only mask the symptoms. We fail to take into consideration the surrounding circumstances, the prevailing culture or the state of climate of the employee(s). As a psychologist, I tend to look at these issues in one aspect but they are viewed by most as intangibles that are difficult to understand and even harder to quantify so they get pushed aside. Psychology is considered a soft science but, as I said, people are comprised mainly of soft stuff, we need to discuss the soft stuff if we are going to discuss people.
It is easier to fire the person who did not comply than to understand why they did not comply in the first place. If we are firing or disciplining too many people yearly, wouldn’t we think it’s time to change tactics and look somewhere else for a solution?
Looking at things scientifically is often counter intuitive. In management, we are looked upon and assessed by our superiors to make decisions quickly and move on. The technician got a piece of debris in his/her eye. The first question out of a supervisors mouth will invariable be, “Were they wearing their PPE?” As a supervisor, I had an employee slip on some oil and took a nasty fall that put him in the hospital with a neck fracture. The first question from my manager was, “Did you take pictures of his shoes?” The manager didn’t ask how the employee was doing, not how extensive his injuries were, not about the prognosis of his recovery, it was about his shoes! The reason is that if his shoes did not show any tread or didn’t have slip-resistant soles, the organization could avoid some liability. Taking pictures of the soles of an injured employee’s shoes was not at the top of my priority list at the time. After the fact, I was queried by my manager and he understood why I did not initially take pictures, but said I should have taken photos while I was with the employee in the hospital. Still, taking photos of his shoes did not come to mind at the hospital either. I was eventually chastised for poor performance in handling the incident. The message sent was that employee safety was a concern, but not at the expense of performance. The primary concern was compliance to avoid liability.
Management doesn’t intentionally come to work planning how to destroy the culture, just as it is not the intention of an employee to go to work and get injured or cause a quality escape. It is mostly done unconsciously, innocently and accidentally.
Why do we accept compliance and not stress culture? It is measureable, expedient and controllable, and the risk/reward is better for the short term. What does culture have to offer? It can be measured, but the numbers reside in the realm of psychological mumbo-jumbo that managers don’t understand, let along work with. It takes a long time to cultivate and nobody knows how to proceed. Management cannot control it — the only role management can play is to provide support and resources and be honest, fair and patient. The risk/reward is better for the long term.
That last one is the sticky point. Management is often notoriously short sighted and looks at short-term results. If short-term results are sacrificed for long-term, long-lasting gains, the long term will be sacrificed. No manager wants to be at the forefront of a project if you have to report poor short-term results to their superior. Messengers of bad news get shot.
Don’t believe me? What is the first reaction to stopping a push back for an on-time departure because the proper steering by-pass pin is not used? At the least, we are going to get yelled at. “Why wasn’t it there to begin with? You should have checked before hand.” That is true, but the point is that production (the push back) was stopped because of an improper process. That reaction, which is typical, sends an inadvertent message. If you are in the same situation, you have a choice: stick a screwdriver or anything in to replace the by-pass pin and avoid the scolding and have an on-time departure, or stop the process and correct the problem. It’s easier to use the screwdriver and then find a pin later (or maybe steal it from another tow bar, which is probably how this all got started).
These issues are small but occur numerous times in the work day, but we say our quality and safety numbers are good. That might be true, but it is because the issues are being buried and only present themselves when they turn into a problem when they can’t be hidden. The majority of problems go out the door, out the hangar, and off the gate and they reoccur daily.
We have seen risk matrices and they typically measure severity and probability. An example is the five-by-five matrix on the opposite page.
In the aforementioned tow bar by-pass pin incident , you could say the risk of severity is Negligible but what about the Probability? We don’t know that until we do some investigating. If we don’t have a solid quality/safety culture, we will probably not be able to uncover the real answer as it has become buried. We deal with an insidious probability but this was a consequence to the culture at hand. It wasn’t intentionally designed to be this way — it just grew that way. If we see someone raise their hand and it gets chopped off, what would motivate us to raise ours? As that culture grows, this scenario develops a life of its own and becomes ingrained so those far removed from the original action are still motivated not to speak up. Add to that the factor that we don’t know what we don’t know and we wind up with detectability, another facet with which to contend. Now we deal with a 3-D graphic with lots of unknowns.
With a solid organizational culture built on mutual trust, the third dimension will remain low. Issues aren’t buried because there is the freedom from retaliation to speak up. Accidents are painful but the accident should be looked at as an opportunity for improvement. Something slipped through the Swiss cheese, so let’s fix it. Potential surprises are also brought to the forefront instead of ignored and probability issues decrease. The next guy isn’t going to catch it as we might be the next guy. Management can’t build this — they can only supply the material and support. Organizational culture is peer driven and it is truly wonderment when you see it change from “us and them” to “us and we.” If you are involved with this, you will find it painfully slow, but the rewards are worth it! You can dynamite a mountain face quickly but water can do the same thing over time — plus, the mountain sculpted by water is more elegant, less prone to quick erosion and uncovers a solid base.
Be patient. The soft stuff takes time.
Patrick Kinane joined the Air Force after high school and has worked in aviation since 1964. Kinane is a certified A&P with IA and holds an FAA license and commercial pilot certificate with instrument rating. He earned a bachelor of science degree in aviation maintenance management, MBA in quantitative methods, master of science degree in education and Ph.D. in organizational psychology. He has been involved with 121 carriers and held positions from aircraft mechanic to director of maintenance. Kinane currently works as senior quality systems auditor for AAR Corp. and adjunct professor for DeVry University instructing in organizational behavior, total quality management (TQM) and critical thinking. PlaneQA is his consulting company that specializes in quality and safety system audits and training. Speaking engagements are available with subjects in critical thinking, quality systems and organizational behavior. For more information, visit www.PlaneQA.com.