Читать книгу Improving Maintenance and Reliability Through Cultural Change - Stephen Thomas G. - Страница 11
Оглавление4.1 An Introduction to Organizational Values
Imagine that you are a foreman in a plant that manufactures a high-demand product. Your company works seven days per week, around-the-clock, to get the product out the door. Recently the plant’s management has instituted a reliability program that has taken many of the mechanics who had been performing day-to-day maintenance away from this work. The program refocused them on preventive and predictive tasks. Also assume that this initiative was in response to poor plant performance reflected by high down time and lost production.
To make this scenario complete, imagine that you are a senior foreman, highly respected by your maintenance peers and production, to whom you provide service. The reason you are held in high regard is that over the years you and your crews have always been available to fix the “emergency of the day” and save the operation. Production has known it can always count on your team to react to its needs, pulling out all stops to get the job done.
But with the new reliability program now in place, you can’t always be counted on as before. Several of your best “rapid responders,” who happen to be the best mechanics, are off performing preventive and predictive maintenance tasks. Their absence has reduced both your crew size and your ability to respond to your customers’ needs. The new program, which you never supported in the first place, has taken away valuable resources. Needless to say, you are frustrated, as are those in production who do not believe they will continue to get the response they need to keep up with the equipment breakdowns.
Today you are faced with the same dilemma you have repeatedly faced recently. A major piece of equipment has failed and production is screaming. Your choices are either to stop one of the less important routine maintenance jobs or to stop the preventive maintenance crew and divert them to the emergency. If you stop the routine job, one of your customers will be upset with your performance. These are the same people who praise you when you rush in and save the day. What do you do? - The choice is yours.
If you divert the preventive maintenance crew, as you have in the past, there will not be any repercussions because operation’s main concern has always been with the daily production quota. They will be happy and, as a result, so too will your boss. Therefore, the answer is obvious. As has occurred numerous times in our own work environment, you divert the preventive maintenance crew, promising yourself that you will reschedule them to these tasks at the earliest possible convenience.
What you have just witnessed is one of the key aspects that define an organization’s culture - organizational values. These values set the direction for the company and help people make decisions when faced with critical choices. In this example, the firm’s values were to fix what breaks as quickly as possible to support plant production. The crews performing other routine tasks could have been diverted, but this would have violated the basic values held by those in the plant. Conversely, preventive maintenance can always be done at another time; no one has ever raised any objection when the preventive maintenance crews were diverted in the past. In fact, everyone is so wrapped up in the day to day, that you face a continual fight getting people assigned to preventive maintenance each week. The most visible evidence of the stated value of preferring a rapid response to emergencies over staying on track with the PM program occurs when senior management, those who created the preventive maintenance program, accept this behavior when it is brought to their attention.
Organizational values dictate how we behave on a day-to-day basis. Of even more importance, they dictate our behavior when we are faced with critical and, often time, sensitive business choices.
Suppose that the plant in this example placed high value on its preventive maintenance program. Suppose too that you were virtually forbidden to divert the preventive maintenance crews without senior management’s approval, which was never given. What would your choice have been then for handling the emergency? The answer would have been to divert a crew from a less important routine task. Not only would this have resolved the problem, but production would understand that this choice had been made because the expressed organizational values emphasized the importance of preventive maintenance.
Examples of this type play out every day in our businesses because organizational values help us decide what is important to the business and how to behave. They are one of the key components of our study about organizational culture.
In this chapter we will explore the topic of organizational values in detail. This is an important concept because, as in our example, values dictate the thinking and decision making process of those in the company.
4.2 What Are Organizational Values?
What are your organization’s values? Thinking about and identifying them may not be as easy as you think; the true values of a firm are not always written down. Instead, they reflect how the members of the firm collectively behave, how they conduct their business, and what they believe are the true measures of success. Nevertheless, take a few minutes and jot down what you believe are your firm’s values. Next, have several members of your organization across multiple departments and at various organizational levels conduct the same exercise. If all of you reach the same set of answers, you most likely will have identified the organizational values of your company. It is my opinion that, except in rare circumstances, a single list will not be the outcome of this exercise. We will learn more about why this mismatch occurs throughout the balance of this chapter.
Our goal is to address the following questions:
•What are organizational values?
•What are their characteristics?
•How can we go about altering them if needed?
•How can we instill a new or modified set of values within the company?
Organizational values for our discussion can be defined as:
A company’s basic, collectively understood, universally applied and wholly accepted set of beliefs about how to behave within the context of the business. They also describe what achieving success feels like. These values are internalized by everyone in the company and therefore are the standard for excepted behavior.
Think for a minute. Would you go out and buy a gun and then rob a store? (The answer should be no!) Ask yourself why you feel this way and you will discover that it violates a core value that you have been taught. It is an act against what you believe, what your family believes, and what is viewed as unacceptable behavior in our society. In other words it is a value that is collectively held by society.
Similarly, organizational values are similarly applied in a business setting. When faced with a problem, those within the organization will invariably make a decision that reflects the organizational values of that business. These decisions are often not made consciously because organizational values are internalized and taken for granted. When you make a decision supported by the values, you feel comfortable. When you don’t, you sense that something is just not right with your world.
Take safety as an example. In many plants, safety is among the strongest organizational values. Numerous slogans, programs, promotions, rules, and regulations have been set up to govern our behavior. But all of these different efforts are in place only to reinforce the already existing organizational value that it is not acceptable behavior to allow someone to work unsafely.
Years ago I was a project manager on an operating unit that was shutdown for repair. We had a serious work delay associated with unloading catalyst from a multiple bed reactor. The project was behind schedule and the company was losing a great deal of money every day that the unit was off-line. At one point I was by the vessel opening talking with the contractor’s employees. When I asked where the supervisor was, the men indicated he was inside the vessel. After about five minutes he emerged; I noticed he did not have on the proper protective equipment required by the permit issued for entry. He explained that he needed to see the workers in the vessel. He added that the required safety equipment was not needed based on the current state of the job, even though the entry permit stated otherwise. The organizational values of my company were not only that safety was important, but also that following the rules to maintain the safety of all personnel was of primary importance. As a result, I fired him on the spot and had him escorted from the plant.
The purpose of this example is to show one of many organizational values at work. Let’s compare what happened to our definition and see how this event was affected by the value system.
Basic belief
Safety through training and continual reinforcement of the rules was a basic belief of everyone in the plant. A company employee would never have entered a vessel without proper safety equipment. Contractors who received comprehensive training should not have violated this rule either.
Collectively understood and universally applied
By continuously applying the same set of rules and regulations, everyone understood and applied them in their daily work. This should have applied equally to the contractor.
Wholly accepted way to behave
The rules were recognized by everyone as the only accepted way to behave. For those who did not follow the rules, the recognized negative outcomes included employee discipline, dismissal, or even worse – getting hurt or being responsible for getting someone else hurt.
What achieving success feels like for the business.
The company lost an additional day while the contractor flew in a replacement supervisor. Nevertheless, the company had such a strong safety-oriented value system that it made clear to everyone it would rather lose money than have someone get hurt.
Internalized
In my case, as with my immediate supervisor, the safety value system was well internalized. When confronted with this situation, I did not hesitate; I shut down the job and fired the supervisor. Upon hearing of this action, my supervisor started screaming, not at me, but at the contractor for violating the safety regulations. Having worked with us for along time, the contractor should have internalized the rules as well.
Organizational values also apply in the area of plant reliability. If the values of our foreman and the plant management in the previous example were reliability-focused, then the question of diverting the preventive maintenance crew would never have crossed his mind. Conversely, when confronted with a rapid response issue, the collective values said that stopping a job for a customer – even one of low importance – was unacceptable, but diverting the preventive maintenance crew was well within accepted behavior.
I am sure that each one of us has experienced the written company value statement.These are often the long written-out documents that are posted on bulletin boards or sent home to us in the mail from the corporate office. Many of these statements represent in fact how the firm at the shop floor level performs, but often this is not always the case. Often the written word describing how those who run the business perceive we should behave runs contrary to what actually takes place. Some examples of this contradiction are show below.
Figure 4.3 Written vs. actual values
In these cases, the daily dilemma that we face as employees is selecting which set of values to follow. The answer is that ultimately we follow those values that are in line with the actual behavior of our work society. We follow the unwritten rules, not the ones posted on the corporate bulletin board. The main reason for this is that the written values are ideal, but not always relevant to the day-to-day performance of our work. Evidence is around us all the time because we see how managers, peers, and the workforce act and react in real life. Furthermore, if we were to follow the written word (when it is different from what actually takes place) we would be brought back into line by peer pressure. We would be instructed on how work really gets done around here.
A wide discrepancy often exists between the written and the actual behavioral values within a company. When both are in alignment, a company or plant can be considered healthy from the standpoint of organizational values and work culture. In a later section I will address the issues around a value system in need of change.
We shall examine four areas in this section so that you will be able to recognize value system problems at your plant. In each case, the values of the organization have gone astray. The areas are: 1) values that are no longer relevant or are obsolete, 2) values that are inconsistently applied, 3) values that fail to match organizational reality, and 4) values that meet resistance from the organization.
No Longer Relevant or Obsolete
Values that are no longer relevant need to be changed. However, the real question that needs to be addressed is how do we know when values that have served us well for years are no longer relevant to our business?
Take, for example, reactive maintenance. For years this was the standard mode of operation for a great many plants. It was an accepted value. It developed from a combination of poor equipment reliability, inexpensive manpower costs, and the high cost and business impact of equipment being unavailable for production. Plant maintenance forces became expert at rapid response or, as it was commonly called, “fire fighting.”
Over time, manufacturing equipment became more reliable and technological tools to predict equipment failure improved. The result was that the strategy of fixing things that broke was replaced by a strategy that targeted predicting failure before it happened. This approach was far more cost effective. Yet the rapid responder value has continued to thrive in many plants. Clearly this value has outlived its usefulness. The way we can recognize this is that the new value, in this case, reliability-based repair, enables us to perform in a much more effective and efficient fashion.
Inconsistently Applied
Another area where values can create problems occurs when they are inconsistently applied. Inconsistent application sends mixed signals to the organization. Standardized behavior with regard to organizational values is essential because it provides guidance, direction, and support for consistent decision making.
Let us look at the example of emergency maintenance. Many plants define an emergency job as one that threatens production, the safety of the employees, or that of the surrounding environment. These jobs are typically worked until completion or until the true emergency aspect of the work is resolved. This approach is a value of the company, indicating clearly that it will take the proper action to correct emergency problems. However with limited resources, production teams frequently label jobs emergencies so that they can divert resources to their problem-of-the-day, away from other areas where they are working. Then when the day tour comes to an end and the maintenance organization is looking for authorization to work overtime, the work is no longer an emergency. If management allows this practice to happen, the value of emergency response will be eroded because of inconsistent application.
Fail to Match Organizational Reality
In many cases, a mismatch develops between the expressed value of the company and what actually happens on the shop floor. This area is similar to inconsistent application but worse because in this case the company’s stated values are not followed and everyone knows it. Inconsistent application of the values can be corrected through closer monitoring, but mismatched values destroy the credibility of the firm. Because everyone knows the value is hollow, they ignore it. This problem can then spread to other values and required behaviors within the business.
For example, a company states for the record that safety is its most important value, taking precedence above all else. Yet the company’s safety record is deplorable, it has no real safety program, and everyone knows that safety takes second place to production. This obvious mismatch of the value system with actual behavior tells people that their leadership doesn’t “walk the talk.” The result is confusion and a loss of credibility. Remember that values are there to guide the decision-making process of the group. What happens to this company when employees are confronted with a safety issue that will cause a loss of production? Some will interrupt production to be safe – the expressed value, yet others may not and the result could be catastrophic.
Meet Resistance
The last area where values have gone astray is when they are resisted by the organization even though they are the correct thing to do. In this case, something is happening within the organization to cause the resistance. This area is the most difficult one to address because resistance is not the root of the problem. Instead, it is a symptom of something else that needs to be addressed. If there is resistance to replacing an obsolete value with something better, why would people not want to change for the better? If the resistance is tied to efforts made to consistently apply values or to correct mismatches, why would people fight alignment? After all, alignment would help them make the correct decisions when faced with numerous choices.
The simple answer is that people do not like change. It removes them from their comfort zone and puts them in unfamiliar and uncomfortable territory. If resistance is to be overcome and the new values are to be institutionalized, then time will be required for people to readjust their comfort zones.
Figure 4-1 Vision vs. values
Vision and value systems go hand-in-hand. As shown in Figure 4-1, without proper implementation and changes to the value system, a new vision will run into trouble. Similarly, trying to institute a new value system within an old or outdated vision will have problems.
Quadrant 1 – Old Values and Old Vision
This quadrant represents the status quo. The old vision is supported by an equally old value system. The combination may work for now, but problems are on the horizon. As the competition improves, a company in this quadrant doesn’t.
Quadrant 2 – New Values and Old Vision
This quadrant represents the case of trying to change the value system within an old or outdated vision of the business. In this case, the internal cultural pressures will defeat the new value system regardless of the benefits that may have been included. This scenario will be discussed in Section 4.7.
Quadrant 3 – Old Values and New Vision
In this quadrant, a new vision is attempted without taking the necessary time and effort to change the values. This case of the vision and the value system being out of alignment will be addressed in Section 4.6.
Quadrant 4 – New Values and New Vision
In this case, the vision and the values are in alignment. They support each other and with proper implementation successful change will be the outcome.
4.6 When Values Are Out of Alignment with the Vision (Quadrant 3)
The old organizational values are out of alignment and need adjustment when they are in conflict with the company’s vision. This isn’t always obvious because values are not something we constantly think about as we go about our jobs. Values are deep within us. They govern how we work and, as stated earlier, they are there when needed to make the critical decisions that make our businesses successful.
How do we know that our values are out of alignment? The answer is when we see that the goals, initiatives, and activities associated with the Goal Achievement Model do not seem to work or reach successful conclusion. The work of the Goal Achievement Model is to promote the vision throughout the organization so that each level is engaged and can clearly see its contribution. When this isn’t working, there is clear misalignment between the vision and what people are doing. Because the values of the organization essentially dictate how we make decisions, the conclusion is that the vision is out of alignment with the values.
Years ago I helped facilitate a work redesign from a reactive maintenance process to a work process in which the work was planned and scheduled on a weekly basis. In the reactive mode, the organization assigned planners, foremen, and work crews to each of the several production areas. The planner job was essentially to assist the foreman as they went about the day-to-day work. Planning was non-existent. The foreman and the work crew were there to respond to the daily needs of production. Because there was only minimal planning, work was never ready for the crews. It was never materialized properly and a considerable amount of productive time was lost.
The new process assigned a planner to each work area, but their new job was to actually plan the work. Once the plan was completed, production selected the work for the next week. That work was then scheduled and work crews were assigned from a central pool. The foremen and the crews no longer worked in a specific area, they worked on the important jobs, regardless of where they were located in the plant.
This was a new and different vision for both production and maintenance. We thought we had created a process that would severely reduce reactive maintenance because we had taken away the ability of the foremen to respond in this manner. We were wrong!
We changed the work process and created a new maintenance vision, but we did not change the core values which were:
•Production felt severe discomfort if any of its equipment was having a problem and not being repaired quickly. The reason behind this discomfort was a history of punishment for production loss and a lack of confidence in maintenance.
•The maintenance foremen felt severe discomfort because the tie with their production area had been broken. They no longer felt committed to any one area because they were never in any area long enough to feel committed.
•The former reward structure was missing for both organizations. Production managers did not receive praise for getting the pump that was not functioning in the morning running by the end of the shift. The foremen did not receive praise from the production counterparts for saving the day.
As a result of the work process change, we had taken a great many people out of their comfort zone. We had caused a major misalignment between the new work process and the existing values of those who we were asking to follow it. The organization reacted in a way that restored alignment with their value system.
•The level of emergency work went up as production forced response to the crisis-of-the-day (whether or not it really was a crisis).
•The few unit mechanics that were assigned to the operating areas for minor jobs began working jobs that were far from minor.
•The foremen working a planned job would divert their crews to other work requested, without approval to change the plan.
•Management failed to address these issues, indicating by lack of action that what was taking place was acceptable.
Needless to say the work process change failed as everyone continued to work within the value system under which they had worked most of their lives.
The scenario above takes place quite often in many of our businesses for the exact reason cited in the example. What can we do about it? As a first step, a new value system must replace the old. In that way, when confronted with critical decisions, everyone will not choose the old way but rather the new. Easily said – not easily done.
To correct the problem in the example, we would have to understand the existing value system and determine how it was not aligned with the vision. Once these areas of misalignment were identified, we would need to develop process changes to address them.
4.7 New Values and an Old Vision (Quadrant 2)
A new set of desired organizational values may be exactly the right thing for your business. However, there still will be a problem if the vision is not changed first. The reason for this is that the vision, often expressed as core beliefs, is reinforced in many and varied fashions. Over time, those values that are in conflict will be eliminated. Therefore, the vision must be altered first; then the values can be brought into alignment.
Suppose that senior management strongly believes that maintaining production levels is the only thing that really matters. The message that the plant receives is to maintain production at any cost. This message has led to unsafe work practices and people taking undue risk with the plant assets in order to keep up the level of production. This company has had numerous cases of safety, environmental, and reliability failures because the workforce made the wrong decisions about how to operate based on a set of wrong values.
Nevertheless, the vision of maintaining production at any cost permeates both the work system and the value system of those involved. Groups and individuals who hold other values, such as proactive maintenance where equipment not breaking is preferable to the “break it – fix it” mode of operation, are quickly corrected and refocused. If they persist, they are replaced with those who hold the same values as the rest of the organization.
As long as the vision and core beliefs of the senior managers remain as “production at any cost,” the value system will remain in place to support it regardless of the fact that it may be incorrect. The conclusion from this brief scenario is that, unless some major event occurs, the existing vision and supporting value system will remain and the new values in conflict will not survive.
Continuing with the example, as a result of the production-at-any-cost philosophy, people were hurt and the company lost money. Ultimately it was sold (the major event). The new owners had a different vision. They believed that safety of the workforce, protection of the environment, and operating the equipment reliably would create a firm that would be both profitable and successful in the industry.
This new vision has moved the company to Quadrant 3 - the value system currently in place is now out of alignment with the new vision. This is the scenario described in Section 4.6. Figure 4-1 has pointed out that to improve, the vision must change first and the values follow. Making change in the reverse order allows the old vision to extinguish the new values.
Changing values to bring them into alignment with the vision is not an easy task. People have lived with the old set of values, which have been internalized. These values have served people well over time; often their performance within the old value system may be the reason they were promoted, retained during a layoff, or even highly respected within their workplace.
The new value system must reinforce the vision that you are trying to achieve. It must be created in such a manner that the organization makes decisions based on the new values, not the old. Additionally, you need to understand that something that has grown and been reinforced over years is not changed in an instant. Nevertheless, changing values is not an impossible task. The steps to follow include:
Step 1 – Develop a clear and concise vision of the future.
Because values will develop to support the vision, developing a clear and concise vision is critical. In addition, the vision needs to be one that will stand the test of time with only minor adjustments. This task must be driven be senior managers. The vision must be an expression of their core beliefs and future direction for the company. Suppose that part of an organization’s vision stated, “We will operate our plant in a manner that treats reliability of our assets the same way we treat the safety of our employees.” One can only imagine the values that would be developed.
Step 2 – Communicate the vision continuously to the organization.
Once the vision has been created, it needs to be communicated. Most people think that this means holding a meeting or a training program and explaining to everyone the new vision. That is a wrong assumption! Communication in this case is far different. Although presentations and training are required, what is ultimately needed is for the behavior of everyone, starting at the top, to change. In this case, communication is achieved through the visible behaviors of those who are designated as leaders. Management must “walk the talk.” If they do not, the organization will cease to believe that the vision holds any value and will instead revert to the old way of doing things. How long do you think values associated with improved reliability will last if production continually forces maintenance to return equipment to service without allowing reliability-based repairs to be instituted?
Step 3 – Build goals, initiatives and activities in support of the vision
A vision can never be turned into reality without goals, initiatives, and activities to support it. This is the Goal Achievement Model, which was discussed in Chapter 3. (It is discussed in even more detail in Successfully Managing Change in Organizations: A Users Guide Chapter 5.) The Goal Achievement Model enables the vision to have an effect on everything that is being done in the plant and helps everyone to recognize this fact.
Step 4 – Hold people accountable to the work they are doing in Step3.
Holding people accountable for accomplishing the goals, initiatives, and activities associated with the Goal Achievement Model in Step 3 is critical. As soon as the leadership takes its attention away from these value-changing tasks, then progress and the tasks themselves have the potential of slowing down or even coming to a complete halt. The process needs constant reinforcement and attention. This is not easy to do because a great many other things pull the leadership’s attention away from this effort. However, without constant attention and accountability, the effort to change the value system will not be successful.
Step 5 – Reward those in alignment and punish those who are not. Maintain zero tolerance for deviation.
This step goes hand in hand with Step 4. Zero tolerance for deviation means exactly what it says – deviation is unacceptable and brings with it severe penalties. This step needs to be expressed in action, not just words. When the organization sees that its leadership is serious, the values will begin to change. If safety of the workforce is an expressed value and a serious violation results in termination, the organization quickly will realize the consequences of violating the new value system.
Changing an organization’s vision and then working via the Goal Achievement Model to change its value system are certainly very difficult tasks. Yet they must be addressed if we truly seek long-lasting change and improvement for our reliability and maintenance work initiatives. Although success may be difficult to measure, you will recognize it when those in the organization instinctively make decisions that support the new reliability-focused values vs. the former “break it – fix it” mode of operation
