Managing YourJanuary 2000
Organizations with public safety responsibilities need a
healthy organizational culture. Here
are some tell-tale signs of a healthy org:
1. Goals: Public safety
objectives and policies are taken seriously, with full accountability.
2. Plans: Realistic plans
consider public safety.
3. Processes:
Mechanisms exist to avoid conflict between safety and financial
pressures.
4. People:
People are respected: those who abandon safety in a crisis aren’t
promoted.
5. Communication:
All information meetings are scheduled and structured to ‘stroke’
critical safety information up or down the organization.
6. Inquiry: Everyone and
everything is open question. Honest
answers are the norm.
7. Justice: There is a universal trust and respect for the equitable manner in which justice is administered throughout the org.
8. Learning:
Successes and failures are captured, analyzed, understood and shared
widely. Failure is seen as a form
of learning.
9. Flexibility: The org
adopts improvements and drops ineffective or inefficient practices.
10. Hope: Staff
have faith in their future and that of their leaders and their organization.
How organizations manage information is a key determinant
of their cultural health, says Eastern Michigan University Professor Ron Westrum. Pathological organizations hide info, shoot messengers,
shirk responsibility, discourage bridging, cover up failure and crush new ideas.
Healthy organizations seek information, train messengers, accept
responsibility, reward bridging, inquire into failures, and welcome new ideas.
How would yours rank? Would your
staff agree?
Since communication is so important to a healthy
organization, consider the following principles:
1. Walk the talk: behaviour is the only real message that gets noticed;
2. Talk to me: face to face is better than afar;
3. Tell it like it is: Full disclosure is required;
4. Honesty is not career-limiting: Those who speak the truth should not fear reprisal;
5. Don’t shoot the Messenger: candid feed-back is the best way to learn and improve;
6. Cut the crap: propaganda and spin are out; messages must be clear and simple; and
7. Beat the Grapevine: be quick and be accurate.
Murphy thanks his former Transport Canada - Central Region Communication Corrective Action Team, lead by Larry Wright, for finding these pearls and sharing them with us.
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