From safety to safe production

Posted on by
Reply

Safety
Why shifting mindsets is essential to achieving production predictability and increasing performance

No company will argue that safety is not a strategic or operational imperative. But rather than treat safety as a standalone issue with bespoke procedures, strict policies, and tailored training programs, our advice is for organisations to take a more radical, holistic approach. In our opinion, the start point is to change employee behaviour at the point of execution so that safety shifts from being safe by compliance to safe by choice.  This, combined with initiatives to change the way people work to promote reliable and predictable operations will help embed safety as part of an organisation’s operating procedures and ultimately its DNA.  The direct knock-on effect is greater production predictability and performance improvement.

In working with companies across the natural resources sector, we have developed an eight step guide on how to make the shift from safety to safe production and have achieved notable success as a result.  However it goes without saying that we strongly believe this approach rings as true for companies in the mining and minerals sector as it does for chemical, engineering and many other manufacturing and service organisations.

So, for any organisation struggling to reduce “at-risk” behaviours and wishing to focus on the behaviours that maximize the overall health and safety of employees while they are on the job, then this eight step guide may just help provide the silver bullet they were looking for.

Reducing energy usage without capex

Posted on by
Reply

A 6-step guide to achieving greater energy efficiency …… by looking beyond technological investments alone

With successive hikes in the price of energy, any energy-intensive company must have felt as though lying on the railway with the oncoming train thundering down the track towards it at an alarming rate.  It will comes as no surprise that we are increasingly observing companies using technological developments to slow or stem the progress of that oncoming train.  Whilst these initiatives should be applauded, we believe business leaders need to look further than exploiting technological advances alone if they are really serious about improving energy practices and cutting costs.

Energy management is now as critical to so many companies in the same way that safe production is crucial to say the mining industry.  Indeed many high-usage sectors are setting themselves ambitious targets to cut energy consumption in a bid to better manage their energy and input consumption and cut costs as a result. We know that these companies have the capabilities and capacity to improve energy usage and so what is it that is holding these companies back?

We see the shortcomings primarily in two areas: energy consumption measurement and operational management ownership.

Addressing the shortcomings

Recording energy consumption may not have been historically high on their list of operational requirements because, in the days of cheaper energy, it did not account for a major proportion of their operating costs.  But given that you can’t manage what you don’t measure, this has to be the logical place to start.

All too often what we find is companies using a variety of tools and systems and all with varying levels of success and all feeding varying data onto management, whose decision-making options are pretty limited as a result.

We believe a top down approach needs to be adopted with senior management taking the lead.  Energy management needs to be made a priority and positioned at the very heart of the way the company operates.  Basic awareness of energy issues and policies is simply not sufficient. What is required is a robust management system with the right key performance indicators that is capable of providing an accurate and consistent measurement of energy consumption plant or location-wide.

Responsibility for monitoring and measuring energy usage needs to lie at the first line of supervision or management level.  Energy levels must be considered a key performance indicator with budgeted goals and given the visibility necessary to be tracked on a daily or weekly basis. Most importantly, managers must demonstrate a consistent commitment to conserving energy as well as raising awareness about usage initiatives.   With the right tools, management focus can be shifted from actions to outcomes, with accurate data driving decision-making.

With the right tools in place, the focus must them shift to engaging the workforce at large and making them clear about what the company is aiming to do and why.  Training and coaching can be used to explain their role in that, making the new approach tangible and relevant to them.

Through our experiences at Proudfoot, we have seen how the energy efficiency work done at a technical level can be magnified when costs are concurrently addressed through behaviours, ensuring an impact at both the process and people level.   When operators, supervisors and first line managers are aware of and are actively managing these critical factors, you have the makings of a true energy management programme, one that is embedded into your operating model and the very DNA of your business.

According to the International Energy Agency, global primary energy demand is set to increase by 1.7 percent per year until 2030, an increase that equates to more than two-thirds of the current energy demand during the next 20 years.

The Path to Success

Based on these shortcomings, we developed six elements critical for an energy culture to pervade an organisation and achieve visible success.

  1. Lead from the Front: Success requires visible commitment, active involvement and true leadership from the top of the organization.
  2. Dedicate Resources: Energy champions should be identified within the organization. Managers have existing responsibilities that can, and probably will, distract them from energy projects, especially when issues become urgent or difficult. Dedicated champions can maintain the right level of focus and time to get the job done.
  3. Communicate Constantly: Communicate constantly with everyone involved in a project. Let everyone know what you are trying to do, why you are doing it, when you are trying to do it by, who is involved in getting it done, and what everyone’s part will be in making it happen.
  4. Change Attitudes, Behaviours and Skills: Be prepared to commit to a change in culture as people engage with the company’s revised/more focused approach to energy management. Place energy efficiency as high up the list of operating priorities as health & safety.
  5. Be Flexible: Circumstances evolve and thus, energy policies must evolve in kind.
  6. Celebrate Success: This is not just about team building. Key milestones, deadlines and achievements should be celebrated and the next big milestones talked about so that the full.

 

Driving Competitive Advantage through C-Suite Effectiveness

Posted on by
Reply

Read the full reportHarnessing the collective expertise of the management team to drive effective execution

The key to effective execution is to lead from the top.  But, by top, we mean not just the chief executive rather the entire C-Suite team.  By tapping into the combined strengths of the management team as a whole, exploiting their diversity and fully harnessing their collective expertise, a chief executive officer has, within easy grasp, the potential to achieve the company’s goals that much faster, thereby driving true competitive advantage.

Tapping into such collective strength remains however a challenge for many CEOs today.  Such engagement is not automatic and needs to be nutured.  With input from Dr Ulhrich Middelmann, Bob Lutz, Ellen Marram, Michael Miles, Christopher Sheridan, Roger Kenny and Hank McKinnell, we identify three fundamental building blocks to better exploit C-Suite effectiveness.

1.       Instilling confidence within the executive team: driving understanding of what individual team members bring to the table fosters a collective confidence and the reassurance that executives can rely upon each other to execute established priorities.

2.       Putting commitment and confidence on display: communicating clearly and consistently, from the top downwards cultivates a feeling of trust amongst the workforce, promotes stronger employee engagement and fast tracks progress.  The parallel is conflicting messages, general misalignment of goals, silo-mentality and crippling corporate inertia.

3.       Leading for execution:  With management team alignment secured, commitment assured and confidence levels bolstered, the final ingredient is for this team to employ an implementation roadmap.  The change blueprint provides one and all clear sight of the intended results and must have:
-Open lines of communication
-Feedback mechanisms
-Key performance indicators to track progress and identify if and where corrective action is required.

Driven well, C-Suite effectiveness is instrumental in driving competitive advantage.  Executive team members are hired for a reason; by working together as a team, they add pace and momentum, meaning a company achieves its goals that much faster, outpacing rivals along the way.

Establishing the solid foundations of a collaborative and effective team, with a clear road map and accountability to one another for results provides for a disciplined approach to execution – the cornerstone to growth and success in today’s world.

Read full article

Creating and Embedding Sustainable Change

Posted on by
Reply

 

Read the full report

Head, Heart and Hands
Shoulder–to–Shoulder Together

For a company to be successful, Chief Executives need to formulate the right strategy and then execute it.  Sounds simple – in theory!  Set this against the backdrop of a constantly evolving business landscape and the dynamics shift considerably.

Chief Executives battle on many fronts.  As the pace of change accelerates, strategies are frequently obsolete or in need of significant adjustment part way through the execution phase.

Any canny Chief Executive needs to keep ahead of this curve and needs to bring the workforce along that path too.

Research tells us that up to 70% of change programmes fail. The reasons for this failure lie less in the lack of a vision, viable strategy or well thought-out plan, but more in the company’s inability to execute successfully.

For many Chief Executives the greatest challenge is in the journey: the charting of the right path through the change process. Transforming an organisation is a daunting task. To be successful, the Chief Executive must ensure all the resources are in place to achieve the plan and crucially that the people and organisation are capable of sustaining the new direction over time.

With input from Paul Manduca, Ed Hanway, Gordon Peeling, Bernard Attali, Jim Roberts and Warren Holmes, we underline the power of disciplined execution and identify the key to success for embedding sustainable change.

Executing with discipline

Executing the plan with discipline requires getting into the very tissue and fibre of an organisation, where the work actually gets done. The two fundamental building blocks that create the infrastructure to execute on strategy are sound processes (improving the organisation through redesign) and a measurement system (installing Key Performance Indicators). All too often, transformation initiatives, including many of the popular management methodologies such as Lean, Six Sigma or the hybrid of the two, focus on these two elements. What they lack is the power that turbo-charges improvement initiatives, namely people.

Capturing heads, hearts and hands

The large majority of executives recognise the need to shepherd people through change.  Fewer, however, know how to achieve this in practical terms. Yet it is this concept of capturing the “head, hearts and hands” of people that truly unleashes the full power that the workforce represents in any change programme.

Getting the change message out is the first critical step and then pragmatically helping people apply it at the point of execution in the actual work environment will ensure success. In essence getting the understanding and conviction are the “head and heart”.  But, in order to make this sustainable, any new behaviours need to be embedded to avoid slippage and prevent people reverting to their old ways of workings. Thus, it is this final step of continuous coaching that represents the “hands” and the ability to execute the new ways of working on a consistent and unwavering basis.

So, for companies wishing to be part of the 30% of organisations whose strategy is executed and the change programme a success, capturing heads, hearts and hands may just tip the odds of success in their favour.

Read the full report.

Disciplined execution is key to success

Posted on by
Reply

A Winning Strategy

Achieving business growth is the agenda topping issue facing CEOs. The board and shareholders charge the CEO and management team with two primary duties: fashion a strategy to steal an advantage over primary competitors; and manage the business operations so the strategy and business plan deliver the targeted revenue, profit and shareholder value.

No growth strategy, regardless of how well devised will be successful without the most important element – effective and disciplined execution. The failure rate among CEOs is currently at an all time high. Too many find themselves all too soon on the perilous tightrope between success and failure. A CEO’s demise is rarely caused by the failure to develop a good strategy. Their downfall is more often a failure of poor execution.

In the words of military theorist Clausewitz, “amateurs worry about strategy, professionals worry about logistics and execution.” This rang all too true to former CEOs Jean Peyrelevade, Rolf Stomberg, Mike Critelli, Hank McKinnell, Ed Hanway, Gordon Ulsh and Ozires Silva, all of whom have first-hand experience of what this means in practice.

In identifying the reasons why strategic initiatives fail, this esteemed group refers to poor strategic choices but emphasises the importance of the role of front-line management. Execution is about institutionalising change in the way members of an organisation think about strategy, the way leaders select and motivate people, develop processes and measure and reward people. Success rests primarily in the hands of first-line management – their ability to plan the work, assign the work, follow up, act as mentor, coach etc.

Most formal management education that takes place focuses on MBAs, who aspire to the role of CEO, COO or CFO. Typically, first-line management is promoted out of the ranks because they showed particular aptitude for their given job. So the top ranking salesman becomes the sales manager, the lead engineer, head of maintenance etc. Given their rise through the ranks, they tend to be reactive managers, responding with urgency and skill when something bad happens, but rarely are they educated and given the skills training to anticipate off-plan events occurring and, therefore managing to plan. And yet no other level of management has a greater impact upon the ability of the company to achieve its strategic goals than these front-line managers.

There are three primary requisites for executing with discipline and optimising the chances of achieving the business plan objectives:

  • Sound processes that organize work in a way that eliminates the non-value added content;
  • A cadre of first-line supervisors who proactively manage and ‘expect the unexpected’ so anticipate unforeseen events happening; and
  • A management operating system, with actionable KPIs, to identify on a ‘short-interval basis’ when off-schedule events are occurring. Why? So that first-line management can address events as they occur and get the plan is back on track again.

CEOs worry about execution and rightly so from their personal perspective and the perspective of their business and its people. Their concerns have been intensified by the current economic conditions and the shorter timescales they have to deliver the strategy and thus the results. In spite of the obstacles to executing well, they can be readily overcome.

 Read the full article.