Doing Things Differently
Earlier this year we were asked by a precious metal mining client to get involved in a cultural innovation project that got us really excited. Taking a skunkworks approach, we were to combine our understanding of cultural development by design with our expertise in behavioural psychology and apply it to the development of a new mine region in South America. The hypothesis was a simple one – by creating a truly strong safety culture from the outset we could ensure zero fatalities and zero long term injuries, and then let that same discipline infuse every other business outcome from productivity through to talent development and cost management. But it all started with a tour of the Boeing plant in Seattle.
A long standing client, with an exceptional safety record, its thinking about a different approach to this mineral deposit had been fermenting since Omada first facilitated a visit for the company’s COO and his Global Operations team to the Boeing Everett plant in Seattle. The aim had been to discover how another ‘heavy industry’ organisation had set about establishing its innovation agenda and about reorganising itself along car manufacturing principles.
Walking a gantry above the 787 production line, Boeing’s newest airliner, the COO pondered on Boeing’s approach to innovation and its Phantom Works – Boeing’s ring-fenced research and development arm – visible across the parking lot as we’d entered this vast production hangar and protected from the influences of the main body of the organisation in every way possible.
‘That is what we need to do in South America,’ he shouted to anyone who could hear him through their ear protectors and above the din coming from the production floor below. At Boeing it is stipulated that each generation of aircraft must be 15% more fuel efficient than the last, and they’re fond of their Big Hairy Audacious Goals; a Boeing team is currently working on reducing the assembly time for the 777 aircraft from 11 days to just 3. They don’t know how they’re going to get there, they just know they need to do so. The COO’s mind was already churning through the possibilities for the South American mine project; to develop a commercially viable resource it would need some Big Hairy Audacious Goals of its own – as it later turned out G&A costs would need to be some 50% lower than those evidenced on the organisation’s last mine development.
Our client had always understood the importance of putting safety first, and recognised that when leaders champion safety and employees work safely, then other key metrics tend to follow – whether they be cost controls, staff engagement, profitability, exploration upside, staff retention or balance sheet strength. So, ever wary of spiralling construction and operating costs across the industry, mindful of the need to protect and nurture innovative ideas, and always intent on improving safety, this mine was to be fashioned as a phantom works-like project, one in which the leadership would champion three guiding principles: doing things differently – nothing was off the table; smashing through G&A; and putting safety first.
There’s something particularly enlightened about this client. They know we aren’t safety experts in the traditional sense, but they’ve always recognised we know our behavioural psychology and how to help a group think courageously, and we’re passionate about their business. So in the spirit of ‘doing things differently’ and bringing fresh perspectives, we made sure our own small Omada project team comprised the right mix of ‘creators’ and ‘facilitators’, with and without mining industry experience, as we challenged ourselves to apply our understanding of personality theory, individual and group dynamics to the creation of a safe mine environment and true ‘safety identity’ in every employee.
We examined the impact of ‘priming’ and how exposure to an earlier stimulus can determine reactions to a later stimulus, thinking about how that principle might influence the design and placement of safety signage. We considered the impact of ‘confirmation bias’, ‘rites of passage’ and ‘social identity’ in nurturing safe behaviour; we considered how immediate family within the home might positively influence safety at work, and how ‘reference groups’ might be leveraged in the selection and induction processes. As we prepared, we also used our academic links to tap into a brains trust of younger minds uncluttered by experience to gather some fantastically challenging ideas around safety culture.
Prepared to the hilt, we brought together the General Manager, Safety Leads, Construction Partners and Management Team at a lodge in the jungle a few clicks from the new mine site. Over two days we introduced them to the fundamentals of behavioural psychology, and our knowledge of why people think and act as they do, all with the aim of together creating a safety culture that would be second to none. We also applied our rigorous knowledge of differing national cultural norms to scrutinise and direct the group’s thinking. And boy did the team rise to the occasion; it was a thrilling and heady mix of familiar faces and new friends, each connected to the next by the excitement to be found in developing a truly new kind of mining business. Our aim had been a simple one: to enrol the newly forming management team into the ‘safety culture by design’ programme, and to develop a game changing approach to safety that leverages our knowledge as psychologists and their mine safety and construction engineering experience, blending the two to venture beyond the current norm – to one in which zero fatalities and zero serious injuries is the norm.
Things are still in their early stages, so we’ll have to keep you posted. One thing we do know already is that this is one of the most important projects we’ve worked on to date … and it’s personal.