1/17/2021 Five Questions That Lead to Commitment, Engagement, and Accountability | EHS Today

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SAFETY LEADERSHIP

Five Questions That Lead to Commitment, Engagement, and

Accountability
Successful leaders rely on ve questions when it comes to accountability.
Bart Gragg and Peter Krammer
AUG 04, 2020

Willa Rhodes answered the phone—it was the call that everyone dreads. A long wharf
superintendent told her that one of Willa’s protégés, 32-year-old Sandy Redstone,
was dead. Sandy had fallen to her death while inspecting a terminal bridge
construction project. [1]

Willa is the CEO of GTS, a family business with a 70-year history of building port and
terminal facilities all over North and South America. Along with its reputation for

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excellent work, GTS has long been known and often awarded for its safety program.
Its safety standards were considered to be gold standards.

Maintaining the GTS safety record was more difficult than it appeared. Despite the
awards and millions of dollars spent in training and software, GTS was troubled by a
slow upward trend of incidents over the previous two years. GTS numbers were still
excellent, but safety and project directors had few answers for Willa’s inquiries about
recent events.

Early investigations into Sandy’s death were inconclusive. Conditions were dry, winds
were calm, no machines were operating in her vicinity. Eventually, inspectors found
that a fall protection barrier had been removed by a crew member just before Sandy
arrived. She had walked right past where the barrier should have been and fell
through a hole in the roadway to her death.

Sandy was a respected superintendent. She was a smart, careful manager, well-liked
by crews and colleagues. Sandy was also a single mother of three children. Willa was
heartbroken when she attended the funeral. As she looked around, she could tell that
Sandy had been deeply loved by her friends and community.

For Willa, this was a personal tragedy. She had mentored Sandy since hiring her out
of a community college program 12 years before.

Willa came home from Sandy’s funeral a changed person. At the Monday senior
management team meeting, she started by publicly declaring, “We killed her! We left
three young children without a mother. Ultimately, the responsibility for Sandy’s
death lies with me, but we killed her, and we need to know how this happened.”

Who is Accountable for What?

Willa asked for an investigation into the incident and GTS conditions in general. She
told her team to assume nothing and to look at the GTS culture specifically.

But who is accountable in this situation, and what are they accountable for? We all
have different opinions – we can blame Willa because she’s the CEO, or point fingers
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at the onsite superintendent, GTS safety policies, the worker who removed the
barrier, or even Sandy herself, who neglected to watch where she was going. While we
search for whom to blame, we must ask ourselves why are we searching for anyone to
blame? Certainly, lost lives, lost jobs, fines, lawsuits, and PTSD are severe enough
consequences of this tragic accident. But, do consequences change anything? Are we
only accountable for rewards and punishments? Or does accountability belong
elsewhere?

Damning though they were, the results of the GTS investigation were not a huge
surprise to Willa. GTS is a large enterprise. While everyone is well aware of the “safety
rules,” no one is held accountable to them. At the time of the accident, there were
clear communication problems and frequent misunderstandings of priorities. These
happened at all levels, including between corporate offices and the field, between
senior managers and project managers, and between superintendents, foremen, and
crew.

Accountability Happens When?

When considering accountability, a good place to start is with Merriam Webster's

definition: “An obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for
one's actions.”

Problems happen when we see accountability as something we can demand or make

happen: I tell you what to do, then tell you the consequences for not doing it; and, if
it’s your lucky day and you get done early, you might get a little reward. This isn’t
accountability, it’s pure behavioral conditioning. Great for mice or dogs, not much
good for adult humans.

When people don't meet their obligations, we feel that they have violated our
expectations. We begin to tell ourselves stories about what mean, uncaring,
indifferent people they are. We treat them like criminals and want to punish them as
such. A good leader knows to stop, challenge the assumptions, and focus on the
problem.

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Interestingly, determining whether someone can be held accountable in a safety

incident mirrors the process of finding the right suspect in a murder mystery. Who
has the means, motive, and opportunity? Real accountability can only happen when
the person meets these conditions:

Means is the ability that comes from the required knowledge, skills, and
tools.
Motive is an internal, personal reason to act. The person must truly care
about the job they are doing, due to pride, morals, ethics, self-interest, or other
personal reasons. Unless a person believes in what they’re doing, they will not
commit to it. Fear of fines and firings are external motivations and are never
effective for any great length of time.
Opportunity is just that – they have the time and place to do the work.

Setting the atmosphere for these conditions to happen is the project leader’s job. They
do this by having conversations, making decisions, and documenting the input and
decisions into a plan.

Successful leaders rely on five questions to govern this process:

1. What are the interests of each person or group involved?

2. Where do each of their interests connect and how can we strengthen those
connections?

3. Where do each of their interests differ, and how can we bridge the gaps?

4. Meeting standards, whether government regulations or company policy, is

always a requirement. What are the options and how do we come to an agreement
and move forward?

5. If we can't come to an agreement, what are the alternatives that meet the
standards, and can we agree upon them? Or, does the problem need a re-think -
which may include redefining the problem itself?

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The answers to these questions energize the decision-making and planning process.
This, in turn, sets the right conditions for commitment, engagement, and
accountability to happen.

When Willa received the results of the GTS investigation, she clearly understood that
safety was about far more than training and compliance. She and each manager at
every level hold the primary responsibility to lead the organization to safety. Despite
the awards, it was not safe. Willa decided that the only acceptable injury rate at GTS
was zero. To her, the awards GTS had gained over the years were recognition for
being nothing but better than average. A woman had died and left three children
without parents. Better than average was not good enough.

In the five years since Sandy’s funeral, GTS has changed. Everyone at every level is
engaged and accountable to a relentless pursuit of zero incidents. Safety is the first
leadership, management, and personal priority. “How do we complete this task
without incident?” is the first and last question asked at every meeting – in the office,
on the job, in the pickup truck, and in the crane.

At the time that the Sandy Redstone tragedy occurred, GTS had better compliance
metrics than most companies. Since starting the drive to zero, GTS has lowered their
incident rates 95% – twice. And, during the past five years, its workforce has
increased by 35%. Willa and all of her teams understand that the key to zero incidents
is everyone being engaged with and accountable to each other – from the head office
to the field office, from core leaders to crew members.

The key to GTS’ success in changing its safety culture was taking a scrupulous
approach to decision-making, safety planning, and accountability to what really
counted – bringing everyone home safely at the end of every day.

[1] This is based on a true story. Names and other data have been changed.

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