Page 72 - Serious Incident Prevention How to Achieve and Sustain Accident-Free Operations in Your Plant or Company

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50 Serious Incident Prevention

There is a strong linkage between active employee ownership and the
ultimate success of any initiative. The reason we diligently maintain our
yards and gardens through the hot summer is rooted in pride of ownership.
These same concepts hold true in the workplace. Pride of ownership is fos-
tered by providing opportunities for meaningful employee involvement, to-
gether with management’s willingness to entrust employees with
responsibility and authority.
The importance of involvement, responsibility, and buy-in is widely
recognized:

“Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it. No involvement, no com-
mitment.” 2
—Steven Covey, Author and Co-Chairman, Franklin Covey Co.

“Get everyone in the game! With boundrylessness, speed, and stretch” 3
—Jack Welch, CEO, General Electric Co.

“We’ve found over and over again that the true experts in our business are
the people who see it up close every day.” 4
—Robert C. Crandell, Former CEO, American Airlines Inc.
(in announcing the company’s purchase of a Boeing 757
with savings generated from employee ideas)

Synergy

Synergy is the phenomenon that occurs when the whole is greater than
the sum of the parts. The existence of synergistic outcomes, like the creation
of fluffy popcorn from hard kernels and heat, is one of life’s pleasant sur-
prises. The phenomenon makes a treasure of diversity—differences in back-
grounds, personalities, talents, and points of view provide the potential for
achieving greatness as a team. Maximizing the synergistic capability of an
organization requires skills—management, facilitation, and people skills.
The level of synergy achieved through harnessing these skills separates ef-
fective teams from those destined to underperform.
The reality of synergy has been confirmed frequently in workshop set-
tings. A typical exercise demonstrating synergy involves each individual
participant performing a task capable of being objectively graded. Then,
the same task (for example, a written quiz on a specific topic or variety of