Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
TH
Laura, Id like to start off with a question about the
relationship between leadership behaviour and culture. What is the
thread that links all of them?
LM
Well, if we start with the definition of culture that we use at
CLG, we say that culture is really the set of behaviours and norms
for behaviour that are reinforced and encouraged over time by
people, by systems.
TH
Lets talk about the kind of leadership - everybody has a
different definition, but what for you makes good leadership
and what is the importance of leadership within the operational
excellence framework?
Speaker key
TH
LM
LM
Thats a great question. We kind of think in terms of a
bunch of different bottom lines in the business. So, theres your
typical bottom line that business people think about. Thats the
impact on revenues, profitability - in industrial settings its usually
around safety and environment, reliability, cost-effectiveness,
production etc.
But theres also culture as a bottom line. What do you want
So, what do the leaders that live within Q4 do? Its not about being
nice. Its not about being pleasant. In fact, if you shoot to be liked
as a leader, very likely youre going to end up in a pleasantly noncompetitive situation.
If you put those two things together, where our most positive
leadership impact comes together with the highest results, is in the
upper right-hand quadrant of that matrix - Q4.
TH
So, youve outlined and defined the five core leadership
behaviours, but, in chicken and egg terms, which needs to come
first?
LM
Interesting question. To me its a dynamic system and so its
either the chicken or egg depending on where you enter into the
system. Culture influences what people do. Its a set of rules or
norms that guide people in what they say and what they do;
leaders included.
And then finally the fifth would be around knowing when to up the
dialogue into a coaching conversation. So, that could be coaching
for improving performance that isnt quite there or it could be
developmental coaching - that the leader has spotted that an
individual is ready to raise their game and take it to the next level.
So, wed hope to find out what that looks like in the new culture?
What will people be saying and doing differently that demonstrates
involvement and ownership and accountability and how do we help
translate that into real behaviour change for both leaders from the
executive level right own to boots on the ground frontline?
So, I hope that answers it. It is a dynamic system in that the rules
that are there in the culture at any point in time do influence the
behaviours that people engage in what people say and do but
leaders can come in and create the conditions to change those
behaviours and thus resulting in a new culture.
our culture to be and are very rigorous about how theyre going to
get there.
In large organisations, cultures are big and they take a long, long
time to move. So, envision a multi-year shaping curve where maybe
you started in 2010-2011 and you said, were going to start building
some momentum around having a continuous improvement mindset in our organisation. Alongside that were going to work on
building our leadership capacity from the senior levels right down
to the front line. That may take a year or two to do.
TH
Its not the rosiest of metaphors but is your operational
excellence management programme the parasite in the host which
is culture?
Now lets make sure that were getting the results of that
endeavour. Were going to raise the bar on, for example, safety
and environment, reliability, cost, productivity, public relations,
community relations, and so maybe thats the next part in our
shaping curve is. Your endgame might be, from starting in 2010 to
shift our focus into continuous improvement and leadership
capacity so that by 2015 we are working on operational excellence
as the definition of our culture.
LM
Thats a cool way to think about it. Maybe a slightly more
positive metaphor coming from modern medical research is how
researchers are taking viruses and inserting DNA into the virus to
have that virus propagate throughout a sick body and take the new
DNA and make the body healthy.
I work with clients who use the term operational excellence as the
culture they want to reach as an end state. You can sit back and
passively allow culture to evolve because it will. New people will
come in.
TH
Laura, from your experience as a doctor of behavioural
psychology, how do leadership culture and behaviour interface
with operational excellence in oil and gas? How do you actually
engineer the conditions for that to exist in a business?
about operational excellence. Youve got the vision for what this
looks like, what you want your business to look like. Thats all well
and good, but really the only thing thats going to bring you there is
the people in your organisation behaving in a way thats consistent
with your operational excellence vision.
What brings together strategy, process, even technology
implementation, and your operations excellence vision is
behaviour. Its what your people say and do at work. Thats where
it all comes together and behaviour must be positively managed by
very intentional leadership in order to make that happen.
TH
Youve said that culture cant change without behaviour
changing. How do you manage the process of that change?
LM
That depends on very intentionally defining of what you
need people to be doing. So, in an environment of operational
excellence youve got people very focused on using the work
processes effectively and managing the work outcomes.
5
TH
And does that come in the form of incentivisation of a
monetary kind, a status-based incentivisation, the use of
champions?
LM
All of the above. Having incentives certainly doesnt hurt.
Its really interesting; the most impactful consequences for
behaviour change tend to be those things that happen regularly
and immediately. So, good, supportive feedback feedback from
leaders based on your KPI data system.
TH
Theres a lot to be said for creative imitation in the business
world, using an example of a company thats actually doing this
correctly and trying to follow that example. From your perspective,
who is getting the balance of leadership, culture and behaviour
right to actually drive to operational excellence?
LM
Thats the model that Mosaic uses and they go through making
sure that theyve got their KPI cascade in place, but they start with
their lagging outcomes. Throughout the organisation they identify
at an area and team level, what are your results numbers that
One of our clients that really is doing it right and its Mosaic
contribute to the outcome, and then, what are the behaviours for
the people in your group they need to do to get there?
Making sure everybody goes home safe? Ensuring you dont harm
the environment? That youve got safe, reliable, cost-effective
production? Define your perfect day and then make sure
everybody in the organisation knows what to do to contribute to
that and that theyre reinforced for doing it.
TH
Laura, thats everything I wanted to ask. Thanks so much for
your time.
TH
If you had 30 seconds to explain to somebody the key thing
that you should do to get leadership culture and behaviour all
working together for operational excellence, what would that be?
Go!
LM
LM
I would make sure that your senior team is absolutely
aligned on what operational excellence means and what that
means in terms of your outcome measures. Sit down. Define what
a perfect day in your organisation looks like vis--vis operational
excellence. Make sure you understand what the drivers of
LM
[Laughs] Was that 20? Well the notion of the perfect day is
critical because operations excellence is the sum of what so many
people do every day and so operations excellence is not at a given
point in time. Its the sum of many people doing the right thing day
in, day out, day after day. So what does your perfect day look like?