Re: A Safety Case LO2417

Andrew Moreno (amoreno@cyberspace.org)
Tue, 15 Aug 1995 14:31:08 -0400

Replying to LO2402 --

Hi,

Clyde Howell wrote:

>The president of the company, in the face of much information showing the
>positive effects of this approach elsewhere, has chosen to stay with the
>old system.

Yeah, in my post on Geof's case study, I wrote some stuff with the
assumption that the president was accountable to the customers. I think
that assumption is false for a lot of organizations.

The president is usually accountable to the shareholders or possibly the
board of directors. Since any initiative for change will ultimately affect
the shareholders or BOD, I think what's needed is a person, possibly an
outside consultant, who is committed to operating from a set of safety
based values and can shmooze with the shareholders and BOD and convince
them to at least consider the effects of the change. The approach will
need to be customized to the shareholders and BOD's values. IE,
credentials, track record, etc. Once they consider the effects, maybe they
can be persuaded to (the shareholders and BOD) accept a set of safety
based values.

Of course, I'm writing from a theoretical bases here. To be successful
requires more skills than I have. One of the important things to note is,
sometimes it's best not to go in the front door. Sometimes it's necessary
to find alternate routes which lack the usual obstacles,(in this case
beliefs and behaviours revolving around maximizing profit or the
bottom-line.)

One of the ways to do this is to find out where the Shareholders live,
what organizations they belong to, which shareholers have the most
influence on other shareholders, etc. Do this for the BOD also. Then get a
group together and systematically start shmoozing them in their "leisure
time" territory. This territory could be rotary club meetings,
toastmaster's meetings, etc.

It seems to me that many consultants work from a, "I only do
organizational change work when I am paid for it." This means, X hours
allotted to work, X hours to family life, etc. Maybe I'm wrong, but I
think that if a person is really committed to changing an organization and
getting results, it's a full time affair. Being commited usually only
comes with focus. The interesting thing is that serendipity also kicks in
when commitment is present.

All sorts of neat things happen that a person never considered as a result
of serendipity.

Anyways, once the BOD or shareholders can accept a set of safety based
values, I think it's more likely that organizational change will happen.
It's great because many BOD's belong to boards for different companies. It
might be possible to affect change in multiple companies by influencing
the BOD's in just that one company.

--
Andrew Moreno
amoreno@cyberspace.org