This week we talk about cultures that erode good people practices
This week we talk about cultures that erode good people practices
This week on the podcast, we're talking about Boeing in the culture that leads to lack of quality, and lack of safety.
Announcer:Welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. Your host is Dr. Mark French marks passion is helping organizations motivate their teams. This podcast is focused on bringing out the best in leadership through creating strong values, learning opportunities, teamwork, and safety. Nothing is more important than protecting your people. Safety creates an environment for empathy, innovation, and empowerment. Together, we'll discover meaning and purpose through shaping our safety culture. Thanks for joining us this episode. And now here is Dr. Mark French.
Mark French:Welcome to this episode of the leading in learning through safety podcast. Hi, I'm your host, Dr. Mark French, and I'm so happy that you've joined me this week. This week. It's really hard to ignore it. It's been all over the news is the Boeing incident that happened with Alaska Airlines where a door came off in flight causing unbelievable amount of panic for sure, I would have been panicked, it would have scared me to death right there. But also it leads to the culture that has been coming out more and more, as the discussions continue on about Boeing and their culture of quality, their culture of safety and what has led for this to happen. Now I want to begin with Boeing has become kind of the proverbial scapegoat. Here, we're all pointing family and they have a lot. I'm not saying that they don't deserve what they're getting. They do. They have issues, they knew they had issues or should have known the head issues. And it led to what it led to. And it was very lucky that it did not lead to something worse as their quality issues back in 2018. Dead with actually a crash that did cause fatalities. They have a history recently of quality issues, and the lack of the culture that creates good quality, good safety and good people that come from that. And there's a lot of great articles, if you do a quick Google search, you find it it's oh man, there is all kinds of just articles and knowledge out there about what happened and what's being investigated. And ultimately, what led to this issue with them. Now what I mean by the fact that we're pointing at them is that they've had a big issue is caused a lot of outrage, they are in the news for it, they're going to be in the news for it. But if we're being honest, if we're really looking each other eye to eye, this is a common occurrence. Unfortunately, in a lot of organizations, these issues this culture, of out of sight, out of mind, is way too apparent in a lot of businesses in a lot of places, in that culture is scary. And it's becoming if it's happening with something that is so life critical. As an airline, an airplane full of people. It's happening with smaller items, too. It's happening in other industries. And believe me, I've seen it, unfortunately. And I'll start with some of the more interesting ideas that came from this. One of it was, as they were leading production, and there's great articles, I'll post a link to one of them out of the Wall Street Journal that I think really captures everything. Well, that'll be in the links on my Facebook page and LinkedIn page. Feel free to look at those comments and that link will be right there for you. What's interesting is they were trying to catch up with production quotas. They were behind they needed to get stuff going and so they had to get there. Now we'll take one step back part of a lot of organizations a lot of places do this is where they outsource their parts and they have one cent whole assembly place. And instead of having all the supply chain under your name or within your group is diversified, it is private, Lee owned or it's owned by other companies that are doing that in step one is they felt that private equity would bring better quality and better diversity to the supply chain. I've never heard the word private equity and improvement with quality and safety in the same language ever. Private equity is there to make money, they are there to buy something, do whatever needs to be done to make it show value. And sell it. It's dollars. It is truly production value it is cost of goods. And I'm not. I try not to be this negative. But it's to me very truthful sounding that when this happens when private equity gets involved, I see. And this is my own personal opinion. As I caveat everything my own personal opinion, I'd love to hear more from your experience is that when private equity gets involved, it's all about the dollar and safety and quality costs money. When you look at it on the spreadsheet, when you look at it on the bank account. Safety and Quality is a cost. And it's usually a big cost. And so the first thing that happens is the appearance of safety and quality is there, the appearance they're in, shows up, they talk a good game, they show these books, they they talk about it and it looks shiny, and you take just a little bit deeper look, and it just falls apart. It's not there. It's not even close to being there. And so when I the immediate thing is when they're proud of the fact that oh, we thought this was going to be a great idea when we sold this parts company to a private equity firm, basically to generate capital for themselves. No, not unless you're going to be highly integrated there at the end. There is parts of the article to talk about that. They were highly integrated there. But it seemed that it wasn't for a quality item. It wasn't for a safety item. It was there to assure production was hitting quota. That Are we shipping out the parts on time in the quantity that we need. Good to get the work done. That sounds impressive. We send people there to oversee their process. I have had a customer come into my site and oversee my process. They did not care about quality and safety. They cared about getting something out the door and sold. They wanted their parts at their manufacturing site. They did not care about the rest. There was no oh look that maybe that maintenance just saw maintenance guy not do a lockout tagout No, no, no didn't matter. They were happy to see that until it was questioned. And that's usually why there's only one or one person that's overwhelmed with safety trying to get that done, so that it can't be seen and can't be caught. And they keep going to run it even faster. Now, the focus of this has been a lot on quality thus far. Let me take one step back and go quality and safety go hand in hand. If you have poor safety. Why would your people care if you have good quality? Makes perfect sense. quality and safety are usually in the same buckets. They are a soft cost. That brings exceptional value when you do it right. And there's been study after study after study that for longevity, long term profits, long term investment in quality and safety will absolutely pay dividends will exponentially help bring value to your organization when you look at how your people are performing in your overall processes and how they work. There are measurements out there that can show it. Yes, but it's still the math is fuzzy. And it's hard to estimate I mean, what is the true cost savings of doing it right the first time. There are some measurements of you know generalizations out there. But if you look at companies who have had sustainable work and processes, sustainable growth, sustainable profit, there is a strong element of quality and safety. So these two things go hand in hand in if you if I don't see that culture of quality or safety, that the culture itself is fundamentally flawed. There is something going wrong. There is something that is not right there. Sure, let's deep dive that culture just a little bit further. On the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast, DSD
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Mark French:And welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. So glad you're with me. We're talking about Boeing this week and the quality issue that led to the Alaska Airlines door. Disappearing midflight scary, it is so scary. And I'm a frequent flyer, I'm usually in the air, if not three times a month, or traveling back and forth three times 50% of the time, I'm in the air regularly. Now, I'm not the super road warrior that a lot of people are. But I'm up there enough that this worries me. And given the history of just six years ago, there was another catastrophic issue with a Boeing plane, it leads to a lot of talk about what kind of culture is really there. And this is not. This is not something that that is uncommon. There's a lot of companies that have cultures that are so similar to this. And I've seen them. Unfortunately, maybe that's maybe that's where I end up. But I've seen this, and I've heard about it, and I've talked to others who have experienced it. And it's unfortunately too common that we get so caught up with making what we need to make in an organization, we get so focused on the short term, that we're not willing to stop and call it like it is. And you look at some of the disasters of a lot of places, whether it be NASA, you look at the chemical industry that have had catastrophic issues for the airline industry, there's a common thread. And it comes back to a culture that has stopped listening to what's going on. One of the stories is that is talked about as how that in this one parts was they were going to their supplier and being on site with a supplier that they had a big pizza party celebration for fewer defects found that hey, quality is improving. Fewer defects are found in at the same time that people are eating pizza the laughing and joking in the break room is well yeah, because we're don't have enough time to look or they've reduced the the quality inspection time where they've reduced the quality inspectors, or in some cases replaced the union quality inspectors with contractors have another, someone else to come in and do the quality checks. And so when you're graded on the metric of speed, if that is your your metric of grading, quality gets in the way, Safety gets in the way. And so it passes and then you see fewer defects if you can't report it. Well, then how on earth do you have it and I'll tell a story about safety that I thought was absolutely one of the funniest things I've encountered sad at the time. But very funny now that I look back on it, and just shake my head. It this is the stuff that just just riles me up and really upsets me as a professional. So there was a huge decline in safety reports for a while at this one organization. And it was just I mean, it was huge. It was like night and day like a switch just flipped that you couldn't you didn't see any safety reports like negative safety reports. I just quit coming in why the system broke. That was an online portal system that you could use any computer. They had kiosks everywhere. You can just walk up to a computer, make a safety report, super easy to do click a button type in and hit send boom, safety report. It was it was actually a really good system. And it created engagement. It created a online site that you could see EMR I mean, it was very transparent, very visible, and evidently became too visible and too problematic to manage. And so they decided that their corporate wide that there'd be a, you had to go to a supervisor to report it, or you had to go to, to safety to report and you couldn't just do it on your own. Because that increased the personalization, it made it more human. It really did was stop all reporting. And so it was dramatic, it was huge. And when Mom, how did you how did you make those improvements will be don't let people report or you make it hard to report an issue. You don't see any issues. It's as easy as that. It's a double edged sword. When you turn on the spout. Now I like to almost think of it like a water hose, almost, when you turn it on full, you're gonna get what comes out of the hose, it has, there's been a lot of dirt sitting in that pipe or hose, it's going to be dirty in the beginning, and then it's going to clean itself up. But it's still going to be a lot. But the feedback is necessary. If you if you truly want that transparency, you've got to be able to get the information out. Good, bad, indifferent, silly, good. You just, it's data, and you've got to take it and do something with it. But instead of discouraging it by just turning it off, if that works, too, is no system, no reports don't see a thing. And look how improved we are from that. That is the culture that plagues a lot of places. And as a safety professional I, I have been at the end of a couple of conversations. And I I still cringe when I think about that piece of my history, and walking up to someone who has come to my plan and embedded themselves saying, Hey, you're not getting product out the door, you need to get product out the door. And I look over and say well, my maintenance people are scared to do a lockout. And they kind of lean down and whisper in my ear that they don't care and stuff better get out the door. Or it's or it's my job. Because that's what stuff has to happen that safety matters. But hush hush not nod that's going to get out the door regardless. Or else and who that's scary. When you're young and your position, maybe a young family person and you're worried about your job that carries a lot of weight. And I don't know if I handled it right back then this is years and years and years years ago. I don't know if I handled it right or not. But I remember it. And I remember that culture and I hate it. Oh with a passion. And so when I see these reports, and I hear about things that put so many lives at stake, I personally get fired up. Because this is the culture that we absolutely have to hate. We have to go out and just do our best to not have it to be able to find a way to overcome it. And it takes all of us doing it. It takes it a lot of work. Anyway, thanks for joining me. On this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast, I got a chance to vent and talk about culture, that culture of safety and quality of investing in people. How do we do it? How do we make it better? And we can accept cultures that will put lives at risk. Thanks for joining me, I'm so happy you've been with me. Hey, if you're in Austin, Texas, or around that area, there's a great conference coming up in February, the alert media employee safety conference. It is phenomenal. I will be there talking a little bit about how to leverage resources to get your job done in safety and HR. If you're in the area if you're interested, alert media fantastic. That's not a product endorsement is just hey, I'll be there and I respect the work they're doing. Listening
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