Visible Leadership

Visible Leadership; A Driver of Company Culture 

After a long haul, a driver parked his rig at a remote distribution center, the truck sitting on a slight incline. He glanced at the wheel chocks in his truck cab but dismissed them, trusting the air brakes to hold. But as he locked the doors and stepped away, he felt a subtle shift. The truck, not properly secured, began to roll slowly downhill. Within seconds, the weight of the rig gained momentum, crashing through the gate and into the street. 

A collision with something was inevitable, but what?  Fortunately, the truck came to rest against a parked car after crashing through a fence.  The driver’s decision to skip the wheel chocks—a simple yet crucial precaution—had turned a routine stop into a costly high potential event.  In trucking, safety shortcuts seldom go unpunished. 

While it may seem like an isolated incident, the responsibility for such a lapse in safety ultimately falls on senior leadership. Leaders set the tone for the safety culture within the company, ensuring that proper procedures – like the use of wheel chocks – are not only communicated to staff, but also enforced at every level. They’re accountable for fostering an environment where safety protocols are ingrained in daily operations and understood by all employees. This begs the question; how do senior leaders reach all levels of an organization to enforce procedures they assume are common knowledge? The answer, visibility. 

Part of the Oxford definition of “company culture” is simply, “the way we do things around here.” Notice, it doesn’t say “the way we say we do things around here.” This distinction is important because company culture reflects the actual behavior and practices within an organization, not just its stated values or mission. In other words, culture is shaped by what’s happening on the ground every day. If a company experiences frequent incidents or issues, it’s an indication of a high-risk, costly culture—one that needs attention and improvement. 

Let’s return to the topic of visibility—what are the cultural implications of invisible leadership in a company? At the core of this issue lies accountability: who is responsible for managing risk at each level of the organization? If senior leaders fail to take ownership for incidents, then who will? Take the example of the driver who knew the wheel chocks were there and understood he was supposed to use them—but chose not to, resulting in a costly and potential disaster of an accident. Does this mean company leadership is invisible? Not necessarily, at least not based on the details provided in the example. However, every incident presents an opportunity for leadership to be visible, and how these situations are handled plays a crucial role in driving incremental cultural change.  
 
In the example above, it’s crucial to figure out if this is an isolated incident, or a systemic issue, and the best way to do that is through observations. We need to investigate why the wheel chocks weren’t used, whether this driver skips this step regularly, and if it’s a pattern among other drivers. These observations will give us the insight needed to develop corrective actions, which will ultimately help foster a lower-risk culture and drive continuous improvement. 

But just identifying corrective actions isn’t enough. A step that’s often missed by senior leaders is putting together a corrective action registry that gets reviewed and updated at regular intervals. The real value comes when employees know they’re being observed for compliance. This kind of visible leadership helps reinforce the culture of continuous improvement and lower risk. Once we have that in place, the company can shift from always responding to incidents reactively to proactively reducing these risks. 

I’ll leave you with a brief overview of how visible leadership can drive meaningful cultural change—each of these practices, and many more, are integral components of the Derisk Safety Management System: 

• Observation schedules: Regular observations to spot both major and minor non–compliances, allowing for early intervention. 

• Inspection schedules: Routine inspections to identify equipment malfunctions and necessary replacements before they lead to larger issues. 

• Thorough incident investigations: Leaders should conduct detailed investigations to identify the root causes of incidents and implement corrective actions. 

• A registry for corrective actions: A system for tracking corrective actions, ensuring they are not only identified but also properly managed, closed and ensure that corrections are implemented. 

• Assigning risk ownership: Clear accountability for risk management at all levels, ensuring everyone knows their role in maintaining safety and compliance. 

• Training and re–training staff: The frequency of training should be tailored to the volume of incidents, the size of the workforce, and the level of risk the organization faces. (For more on this, see Derisk Safety Review post When Will This Training Ever End? by Andy Smith). 

The outcome? A shift in company culture where “what you say you do” becomes “what you actually do.”  

After all, the heart of any company’s culture is its people. When people aren’t properly led, they’ll rely on their own assumptions about best practices. When staff are not trained in the process as well as being trained in why they are being asked to complete the tasks in a certain way, incidents will increase. When they’re not corrected, costly mistakes may repeat. When they’re not observed, corners may be cut. People are your greatest asset and the highest risk, high risk can be costly, and visible leadership is at the heart of a safety management system.  

By Sarah Smith.