Safety Leadership

[Richard Charles Holloway]

Terry,

you've already received excellent feedback...my contribution is less so, but I'm interested in exploring what you're considering doing from the perspective of organizational change efforts in which I'm involved.  So, this will be a little like thinking out loud...and, peripherally, I hope it may be of some use to you.

It seems to me that OS in this context will provide an opportunity for this organization to develop its' capacity for leadership (in the sense that leadership is the capability of a system to initiate and sustain significant change).  Your change effort seems to be focused on creating and sustaining a self-organizing culture that practices principles of stewardship, open communication (inquiry, reflection and advocacy) and, incidentally, promoting safety.  OS models those principles and the behaviors associated with those principles.

As Michael rightly pointed out, there's a performance monitoring (feedback) subsystem needed that provides the organization with real-time capability to adjust and align itself to the organizational purpose and strategic objectives.  OS enables the development of accountability for alignment and performance feedback.  Additionally, OS can model or support 
leadership behavior like coaching, mentoring and adopting effective team practices that deepen and strengthen performance, alignment, sustained change and continual improvement.

It seems to me that an adoption model for this change effort could be visualized with interlocking circles (of OS events), each of which is framed for the interconnecting subsystems of change and which occur within the larger systemic (strategic) change initiative.  One subsystem (OS) could be framed on the context of "behaviors" such as coaching, mentoring and team practices.  Another OS could focus on performance (feedback) and alignment.  Still another could focus on culture (policies, procedures, hiring & promotion) that supports and drives the other subsystems.  Each of these and other OS events, focusing on subsystem development, should align with the overall system purpose that is often defined in terms such as customer satisfaction or loyalty; member or employee satisfaction; and financial success.

Of course, creating a culture that self-organizes change processes by continually using OS principles and practices is probably beyond the scope of your tentative work agreement.  I'm probably just sharing a personal dream.

best of luck,

Richard (Doc) Holloway
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