My Influencer Holistic Approach: Engaging Senior Management in Safety and Quality
Navigating ten pivotal hurdles, the article proposes an Influencer Holistic Approach with six enablers to secure leadership sponsorship for Safety and Quality investments.
In the ever-evolving landscape of Safety and Quality Management, organisations are on an unwavering quest to safeguard their employees, uphold product integrity, and ensure customer satisfaction.
Also, balancing Safety and Quality with cost. While investing in root causes and regulatory compliance is clear, often repetitive underlying conditions are overlooked, and when left unaddressed, costs can escalate.
Communicating these less urgent concerns to senior management in monetary terms can be difficult. However, failing to consider human factors can lead to visible costs like accidents and injuries, as well as less visible ones like impaired performance and damaged reputation.
Measurable benefits include accident reduction, first-time quality, and improved safety culture, while less tangible gains involve enhanced performance, reputation, and organisational culture.
In today’s article I cover:
10 Safety Challenges
The Safety Catalyst Assessment Matrix (SCAM)
My Influencer Holistic Approach
Conclusions
Let’s dive in! 🤿
10 Safety challenges
Think about the following ten challenges you might have faced on this journey:
Lack of a Robust Problem Definition: Organizations often struggle to clearly define and document recurring problems, making it challenging to convey their severity to senior management.
Absence of Clear Root Cause Statements: Enforcing necessary measures becomes difficult when there's no clear understanding of the root causes behind problems.
Reactive Organizational Culture: Some organizations tend to be reactive, focusing on containment and firefighting rather than proactive problem prevention.
Insufficient Performance Indicators and Historical Data: Inadequate data and performance indicators make it hard to identify trends, assess risks, and evaluate the severity of issues.
Incomplete Business Case: Business cases may fail to encompass the full quantitative implications of post-event actions, such as rework, work stoppages, and investigation time.
Misalignment of Key Performance Indicators: Safety and Quality indicators may not align with financial or board-level indicators, causing challenges in prioritizing issues.
Indirect Customer Payments: Safety investments may not have direct customer-related costs, making it challenging to justify them.
Outdated Perception of Safety and Quality: Some organizations still view Safety and Quality as costs rather than tools for enhancing efficiency and achieving first-time quality.
Lack of Accountability and Responsibility understanding: An unclear understanding of who is accountable for addressing issues can hinder effective problem resolution.
Weak Business Ethics: Ethical decision-making is essential, as organizations are comprised of people, and their choices significantly impact the decision-making process.
These challenges are diverse and complex and overcoming them demands both a strategic mindset and determination.
The Safety Catalyst Assessment Matrix (SCAM)
In my article Safety Catalyst Assessment Matrix (SCAM) [resource] I introduced the SCAM matrix I've crafted to evaluate if your organisation possesses the necessary enablers, catalysts and foundational capabilities to effectively engage senior leadership and secure sponsorship for safety decisions.
My experience acquired in aerospace in highly operational environments has demonstrated to me that there are at least six foundational capabilities to effectively engage senior leadership alongside the Safety and Quality Management Systems.
This matrix offers a structured evaluation of ten key areas that may require improvement.
You can access to the scoring instructions and criteria through the above link.
My Influencer Holistic Approach
Turning theoretical concepts into actionable strategies, this experience has been crucial for implementing tested solutions leading to tangible results in Safety and Quality, achieving strategic balance guiding long-term improvements and transforming culture and leadership.
This is what I have named the “Influencer Holistic Approach”. Although there is not a definitive recipe, the combination of the following approaches could support to enhance the engagement of senior management:
Safety Vision and Strategy: To create an effective Safety and Quality vision, it should be aligned with the organization's broader strategy and Safety and Quality policy, include specific objectives and measurable targets, undergo regular reviews to stay relevant, and inspire positive safety behaviours throughout the organization.
Business Ethics Initiatives: Not all organizations, especially small to medium-sized ones, have well-established business ethics programs, or existing ones may not effectively identify ethical issues. In cases where ethics programs are absent or need reinforcement, my proposed approach involves integrating ethics into aerospace Human Factors programs or addressing them separately by emphasising on the significance of ethical decision-making and its connection to Human Factors, Safety, and Business Performance by using industry specific use cases.
Leadership Development: Gaining a more comprehensive understanding involves participation in leadership development programs that incorporate systemic enhancement approaches to highlight the ethical and legal obligations tied to Safety and Quality, stress the importance and necessity of leaders at all levels actively aligning their decisions with the Safety and Quality vision and strategy, promote the competitive advantage of being notably superior to peers and spotlighting the secondary advantages that Safety and Quality bring to business efficiency, product quality, employee morale, and on-site supervision/management.
Quantitative Tools: Safety and Quality managers face the task of identifying quantitative methods to impact Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs) and Return on Investment (ROI) calculations. These methods along with trend and pareto analysis should enhance the significance of safety reports and make a persuasive argument for senior management to invest.
Problem Solving Culture: It is crucial to create a culture that values and encourages problem-solving across the organisation in detriment of having a reactive organisation. To achieve this, problem solving needs to be understood as a critical part of our daily work in the organisation and a core competency/skill to allow employees to exercise proactive control on the processes. It is also vital Problem Solving is not own by a single department, despite on some occasions advanced experts can be required due to the complexity. By identifying and addressing problems, companies can continuously improve their processes, products, and services, leading to increased efficiency and effectiveness.
Business Performance Indicators: Safety and quality indicators discussed in various forums may differ, but the connection between safety and profitability is evident, especially when customers stop buying tickets after an aircraft accident. Preventing smaller daily incidents and error hazard reports is crucial to avoiding performance issues, productivity loss, and financial setbacks. Therefore, Safety and Quality Managers must design relevant indicators and demonstrate how they contribute to operational effectiveness and business strategy achievement.
Various strategies can be used to measure the impact and demonstrate the benefits of implementing the Influencer Holistic Approach in Safety and Quality Management Systems.
Creating a dashboard to display trends or rates of Safety and Quality incidents, calculating the Return on Investment (ROI) for specific initiatives, and conducting surveys to assess levels of Leadership and Commitment are only a few examples.
Demonstrating the tangible benefits of these strategies further strengthens Leadership Management's engagement, reinforcing the value of continuous investment in Safety and Quality.
Conclusions
Is 'Safety and Quality first' just a slogan? Is this message reaching the boardroom?
Over the years, I have developed this Influencer Holistic Approach to help Safety and Quality managers shift senior management and finance perspectives on Safety and Quality investments.
Experience has shown me that success depends on organizational culture and system maturity.
Without the right foundations or catalysts, Safety and Quality Management Systems may not prove effective.
These foundations encompass Safety and Quality vision and strategy, business ethics initiatives, leadership development, quantitative tools, a problem-solving culture, and relevant business performance indicators.
Future research should explore the integration of emerging technologies as Artificial Intelligence.
It's essential to create urgency based on risk-based thinking and emphasize that Safety and Quality go hand in hand with profitability, boosting business margins and ensuring compliance.
This is all for today.
See you next week 👋
Disclaimer: The information provided in this newsletter and related resources is intended for informational and educational purposes only. It reflects both researched facts and my personal views. It does not constitute professional advice. Any actions taken based on the content of this newsletter are at the reader's discretion.