Fortune Favors the Bold

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to A New Order of Things, I am your host, Eddie Killian. This is the weekly podcast where creating conversations and community around building winning individuals and organizations is the goal.

This inaugural episode is dedicated to the memory of my mentor and friend Raymond Fonseca. You Sir, are missed.

I figure that the best topic for the first episode should be what events brought me to create this podcast. So, without further ado. Here we go.

By noon on Tuesday, February 8, 2017, all the experiences and skills acquired throughout my life started to coalesce. I was working for a medium-sized oil and gas construction company headquartered in Durango, Colorado, where I had started three years earlier, as a part-time safety technician. I was the guy that stood on a catwalk, two hundred feet up the side of a (pick your favorite medium) tank, container, silo, or giant-cylinder-waiting-to-become-an-impromptu-rocket. Filled with (you pick your favorite danger) flammable, caustic, explosive, near-instantaneous, and painful death-causing gas inhalation or any combination of the listed insidiousness. All the while, hoping something does not happen to the workers inside said hellhole, which requires my rescue expertise. Oh, and all performed overnight. And usually in a snowstorm, or at least torrential wind and rain.

I had worked my way up through the organization and was currently a full-timer that had been “promoted” to the darkest depths of cubiclism. It was less than optimal. The entrance to my little spot of darkness required a person entering to perform a buttonhook turn around the wall. This not-so-well-thought-out combination of wall height and entry design gave no hint that someone was entering my space until they were a foot from my face.

It was on this Tuesday, somewhere around 8am, that the director of our safety program performed the required buttonhook and suddenly appeared in my little cave, his first visit. Raymond was surprised at how small and gloomy the corporate quality control/quality assurance manager and project manager/estimator’s workspace was and let me know it with a snark and a chuckle. Raymond, a Texan of Hispanic descent was average in size, in no way portly, but a fare ponch stressed his belt. He wore brown leather Timberland loafers, saving the discomfort of steel-toed boots for the field only. Ray had retired from the oil and gas industry twice. This was his third go-around. He knew no other industry and it showed. Red Adair ain’t got nothin’ on this guy. After quick morning pleasantries, he let me know the reason for his visit. To notify me that I was being summoned to appear before the organization’s president, in his office. I had never been in there before. Uh oh.

Upon entering his hallowed, brightly lit window-lined office. A far cry from my blind buttonhook cubicle entrance. I sat in one of two firm leather-covered chairs stationed across the expansive desk from the Man. He sat, chair pushed away from the desk, elbows on his knees, smartphone in his hands as he read texts and replied. Raymond sat next to me in my chair’s twin. I can guess from past meetings, that this sharp-nosed, round-faced, and dark-haired man was clad in $150 jeans and $1500 custom cowboy boots. He is tall at well over six feet, and built like a first-string lineman, even folded over behind his giant desk, he anchored the room. Footsteps, I knew to be of the senior vice president stopped in the doorway behind me.

A solid 45 seconds after our arrival, the president looked up and acknowledged my existence with “Eddie, I keep hearing that there isn’t anything you can’t do.” Skipping a short beat, he continued, “Would you be interested in building a corporate-wide program to satisfy the demands of our biggest customer, Chevron?” He motioned to Raymond, who handed me two pieces of paper with Chevron header saying, “This is all the information we have concerning the program.” With a quick scan of the wrinkled pages, I saw Chevron was expecting a program based on human performance. Never heard of it. And some little tidbits about mitigating hazards of high-risk tasks by stopping drift. What is that?

Though I had no idea how I was going to do this, I followed the advice of Sir Richard Branson, “Say Yes. Figure it out later.”  I promptly said… “Yes.” From the doorway, the senior vice president asked, “When can you go live with the program?” Taking a mild pause for prayer performed under the guise of turning in my chair to speak to him directly, I, at least outwardly, confidently answered, “July 1”. In those 2 seconds, I had to turn around, I decided that 6 months would sound too long, less than five months, and the beginning of Q3 seemed like it would sound good. “Excellent,” he answered. I looked to the president, “I have one question. What is my budget?”  turning back to his folded body phone pose, and without even a glance, he flatly stated, “Whatever it takes.” Thereby signaling the end of the conversation.

With that, I left the office, walked back to my blueishly purple cave, and started reading Chevron’s minimal information. By noon, I had sent multiple emails to my connections in our Texas office, where most of our Chevron work occurred at that time, and had them get more information about the current Chevron program. It was noon when I received confirmation that more, collected information was on its way via Fed-Ex Overnight.

By Friday afternoon I had collected enough information about the Chevron program, called Verification & Validation (V&V). I had a good handle on how the processes mitigated Significant Injury or Fatality (SIF) in the field and what metrics and data were being gathered and how it needed to be monitored. The idea of V&V is to perform verification that work is being performed in the field to a standard and validation of the worker’s knowledge of what to do and why. Tasks which, during their performance, may include errant actions or events that result in unintended SIF outcomes to the worker, equipment, or the business (more on this later) are defined quickly and succinctly, maybe even a little morbidly, as: The high stakes tasks that can put you in the hospital, or the morgue.

1.  

As I researched, I found the reasoning behind Chevron’s push for this V&V program. Being in the inherently dangerous business of extracting crude oil from the ground Chevron’s leadership identified fifteen high-risk tasks performed in the field, examples include working at heights, working around and digging excavations, lifting, and rigging, and working in areas with H₂S gas exposure potential. Chevron was able to identify that a defined set of training and supporting resources were required to assist the workers to perform safe work, in a way that, should an unexpected event occur, like a crane falling on your head, the hazards would be mitigated.

Wanting to grow these processes and make the oil field a safer work environment, Chevron expanded the implementation of the V&V process into their Mid-Continent Business Unit (MCBU). The MCBU saw immediate safety improvements. MCBU leaders (Warning: Chevron loves their acronyms) made the decision to mandate all their sub-contractors utilize these systems as well. Chevron held quarterly meetings where all the bigwigs of the business partners (Chevron speak for sub-contractor) would hear all about what was going on. At one of these Business Partner Safety Improvement Council (BPSIC) meetings, the plan for all the partners to start their own internal V&V programs was announced. After a few months of hemming and hawing about how to implement a program like this, Chevron called Ezra out about not moving forward with implementation fast enough. That is why I was called into his office that Tuesday.

2.  

Drift was originally defined by Diane Vaughn in 1994 as being the normalization of deviance. Since Vaughn’s introduction of the idea, significant research and written word have been produced on the topic. But this has been aimed at drift’s presence and effects on whole organizations. Notable examples of organizational drift are NASA with both the Challenger and Columbia catastrophes (Did you catch that? NASA failed twice, some people never learn), Enron’s epic deterioration, the Three Mile Island Accident, and numerous infrastructure fails, plane crashes, and the gross inabilities for government entities to see a massive terrorist act in the making. But researchers have spent little effort studying the areas where drift is first recognizable. The frontline worker.

When workers drift, it happens slowly. On Day 1 of a new hire’s entry into the field, they follow all the required processes to the letter, meeting the 100% organizational target. By the end of their first year, that same worker has drifted all the way down to 30% of the required organizational target. This happens prolifically across business and industry. It is in the oil field, your local big box retailer, where you bank, and among the workers at your favorite restaurant. None of the workers or their leaders recognize it. Liken this to the toad and the pot. Put the Mr. Toad in a pot of boiling water and he jumps out faster than his wild ride. But if you put Mr. Toad in a pot of cold water and ever so slowly turn up the heat. Dead Mr. Toad.

To combat drift, Chevron looked to the recently created Human Performance (HP) ideals. HP became a thing after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. But it took the Department of Energy (DOE) almost 30 years of study and research to release a pair of handbooks about it. Utilizing many of the ideas gleaned from the DOE’s work, Chevron leadership decided that keeping drift from occurring in the oil field required a defined path outlined via checklists and a book full of information about how to get to the desired end, they call the Managing Safe Work handbook (MSW). A collection of field coaches who observed the work being performed and supported the proper performance and use of the MSW and its checklists. Effectively, Chevron personnel created these checklists to be used prior to the start of work to identify high-threat activities within the task, modeled after the checklists pilots utilize before every flight.

These basic ideas of V&V that Chevron mandated were good. Really good. But I felt much more could be done for our organization through this safety program. It could be an operational excellence program, and change management process, or a corporate culture-changing system. But how? I began reading everything I could find on human behavior. Piles of investigations on train wrecks, plane crashes, ship collisions, and engineering failures. Oodles of research papers on everything from cognitive processes to chaos theory. Scores of books, well over a hundred. One of those books, thankfully at the beginning of the list, was Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit, which includes a story about the positive organizational change Paul O’Neill, an obscure lawyer cum CEO of Alcoa created unintended culture change using safety as the foot in the door.

In 1987 O’Neill came into his CEO position hot and heavy with safety as the main thing. During his introduction to Wall Street investors and analysts, O’Neill stunned and scared the lot when he said, “I intend to make Alcoa the safest company in America.” He didn’t talk about Shareholder dividends, or how he was going to expand into new markets like all other incoming CEOs do. He spoke to safety. Nobody talks about safety. Some moments later O’Neill gave an overview of the plan, “If you [shareholders] want to understand how ALCOA is doing, you need to look at our workplace safety figures. If we bring our injury rates down, it won’t be because of cheerleading or the nonsense you sometimes hear from other CEOs. It will be because the individuals at this company have agreed to become part of something important: They’ve devoted themselves to creating a habit of excellence. Safety will be an indicator that we’re making progress in changing our habits across the institution. That’s how we should be judged.” Within a year of that speech, and contrary to common belief, Alcoa’s profits hit an all-time high. And incidents, accidents, and deaths were at an all-time low.

EUREKA!

            No, I did not actually say “Eureka,” but it did hit me that utilizing this proven V&V operations safety program as a foundation was the missing piece to corporate changing initiatives that usually have a 70% failure rate. I began to incorporate the V&V safety process with added culture-change processes such as heightened communication up and down the hierarchy. And built in a customized leadership training and mentorship program for all employees. The V&V field coaches became cheerleaders too. They would take pictures of crews going the extra mile like adapting task performance to be safer, and more efficient than expected. I would then give accolades and post the pictures in the weekly newsletter I published, the Operations Excellence Newsletter. Original, I know. The newsletter brought consistent and common communication to all employees, every Monday. I was able to finagle guest submittals from Ezra, the VP, and key divisional leaders every other week or so. I also created an email account outside of the corporate servers (thank you Gmail) that allowed employees the freedom to submit ideas like MSW improvement or adaptation. The email address more importantly allowed employee’s concerns about coworkers and leaders not following the processes to be aired without repercussions. I replied to each message and fixed or worked to adapt hot spots as needed.

Taking a lead from the law enforcement special operations community, I created a one-inch circular sticker our employees could put on their hardhats. The only thing on the sticker was, 1*. This translates to “one ass-to-risk.” As the V&V coaches met up with crews in the field, they would give every worker a sticker. And tell them what it meant and that they only have 1*. This always brought laughs and pride to the worker. It meant something. It meant we cared about them as individuals. It was not a corporate advertisement like all the other stickers supplied to them. Workers in masse placed the stickers in prominent places and on their hardhats. If a worker replaced a hardhat, they would beg for a new sticker. New hires received them with their handbook. Once we had given one to every worker, I had larger versions made, three-inch circles. These were installed on the driver and passenger windows of every vehicle in the fleet. 1*.

            I recognized early on that the disparate ideas of operational excellence, safety, and culture change do not effectively produce positive and lasting effects on organizations most of the time. So, I took full advantage of the complete autonomy afforded me. And it worked. A little bragging here; Under my two-and-a-half-year tenure directing the program, the organization saw $10m in annual revenue tied directly to my program and shrank employee churn to minimal levels. I was tasked to scale the systems from the original employee base of 1,800 to over 8,000 after we were bought by a larger organization. I created organization-wide moral growth and personal pride among the workers. Legacy divisions utilizing these systems collectively experienced only two recordable injuries during this time, down from the once-a-month average prior to the program’s implementation. Whereas corporate divisions where these systems were not yet implemented continued to see the one-injury-per-month average.

I tell you this story because the experience I gained as I encountered problems that needed answers. I learned to look widely for answers to the questions.

I have created this podcast so this journey of learning, experimentation, and winning technique development can be shared. There is nothing more important than facilitating the empowerment and growth of others. If you desire to be a part of creating foundational systems that help you and/or your organization reach goals and win, you are in the right place. I have the same desire.

Niccolò Machiavelli in his 1532 treatise The Prince offered up the title of this podcast when he warned, And I quote:

“It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.”

I challenge you to join me, as we travel the path of what is difficult, perilous, and uncertain as we explore introducing A New Order of Things.

I am your host, Eddie Killian. And this is the end of Episode One.

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