munity leaders, and global parent leader-
ship). The participants met for a day to
summarize the strengths and best prac-
tices of the current workplace culture,
imagine together their highest aspirations
for a future culture that would sustain
their productivity, employee well-being,
and overall economic success, and then
design and launch change initiatives to
bring about their desired future.
One new change initiative focused on
safety. A mixed stakeholder group formed
and created their initiative’s aspiration
statement with the help of feedback from
the larger gathering during the summit:
“[Steel USA] is an organization that is
injury-free! All employees understand that
safety is our
#
1 priority. We are all com-
mitted to take action to correct safety
issues. We take ownership in our injury-
free environment and culture.” After the
summit, this change team met and created
a plan subsequently approved by senior
leadership. Their plan was to
aim for a similar Appreciative
Inquiry summit in March or
April 2007, and to prepare for it
by interviewing every employee
in one-on-one conversations
during fall 2006. A cadre of
around 70 interviewers were
prepared, each of whom would
conduct 20 interviews. In total,
some 1400 interviews (out of
1,600 total employees) were completed
between September and December 2006.
Here are the questions, they used
:
• Tell me about a time when you felt most
safe and secure working in this mill. What
in particular helped make you feel safe?
• Tell me about a time when you did
something to prevent an accident from
happening, a time when you did or said
something to keep yourself and/or others
from getting hurt.
• Imagine we are truly injury-free! We
are the safest mill in the entire global sys-
tem. Everyone goes home after work just
as safe as when they came in that day.
What does the mill look like?
Interview summaries were analyzed by
the core safety team and used to prepare
for a summit at the end of March 2007.
From that summit came 11 specific
change initiatives, all aimed at lowering
accidents and creating a workplace focused
on safety at all levels.
Words Create Worlds
T
ODAY WE ARE OVER
-
whelmed with
change models, lists of
failure factors to avoid, and constant
reminders of how complex organiza-
tion life can be, and how difficult it
can be to lead effective change. Indeed,
many change efforts fail, stagnate, or
lose traction, as participants become
more focused on project metrics, data
submission, and other activities, all in
the name of following the plan or
process model championed by leader-
ship or consultants. Far too often, par-
ticipants report that their behavior did
not really change; they just added
more meetings, trainings, and report-
ing to their schedules.
What causes or creates behavioral
change?
Could it be that the elaborate
stage or step models we cre-
ate to deal with complexity
have blinded us to some-
thing very basic, obvious,
and powerful? Could it be
that leading or catalyzing
change could be as straight-
forward as changing the con-
versations we have about the
change focus?
Can words real-
ly create worlds?
Recent evidence from a steel mill
trying to improve safety performance
suggests that organizations go in the
direction of what they most talk and
ask questions about.
Conversations can
dramatically shape behavior.
Safety Improvement at Steel USA
Steel USA (1,600 unionized workers)
had been managed by a progressive team
since coming out of bankruptcy some
seven years prior. Within the global par-
ent steel company, this mill was one of the
most productive in tonnage per man hour.
But its safety performance record, as mea-
sured by US OSHA standards, was poor.
Early in 2006, an Appreciative Inquiry
summit entitled “Embracing Our Future”
was convened to solidify and amplify the
mill’s culture. Around 180 participants
represented all functions, shifts, ranges of
employment tenure, and levels of respon-
sibility at Steel USA, along with external
stakeholders (customers, suppliers, com-
Change Comes From the Conversations
Several months later, the trends on
accidents reported to OSHA
were reviewed:
accidents averaged
46 percent fewer,
and
the drop began
before
the March 2007
summit (the average
number of accidents
recorded
each month dropped sharply
by 58 percent, and in the finishing divi-
sion, considered the most dangerous,
accidents fell to record lows!
Can site-wide conversations between
co-workers somehow catalyze behavior
change—
without meetings, formal pro-
jects, or training? Indeed, these conver-
sations were generative connections:
they generate new ideas about safe
behaviours,
AND
the energy to act on
those ideas took hold. This second out-
come, the desire and energy to act on a
shared idea, is rare in organizational
life. Typically, we wait for the responsi-
ble manager or leader to direct or initi-
ate action on a new idea.
Implications
This story underscores a fundamen-
tal idea about change:
If you want to
change behavior related to an issue,
begin by changing the ways you talk
about it. Change the conversation!
We glean
change leadership principles
from the experience of Steel USA in
stimulating generative conversations:
•
Inquiry drives change.
The questions
we ask daily as managers are fateful.
We move in the direction of our most fre-
quent topics of conversation
. If we ask
about lower morale, we learn to lessen
it; if we ask about high engagement
and enthusiasm, we learn how to create
more of it.
The questions shape the future
as much, if not more, than the answers do.
•
Reconnecting with strengths leads to
positive images of greater possibilities
.
Story-based questions that revisit best
practices, personal and collective
strengths, or high-point experiences,
solidify personal and group efficacy
and propel future images of what’s
possible in the future.
•
Positive affect and positive image
leads to positive behavior
.
Strength-
based conversations that generate posi-
tive affect result in a concern for the
other(s) or for the larger system, be-
yond personal self-interest. This experi-
ence of positive emotion is necessary
for sustained collaboration.
Steel USA experienced a shift in cul-
tural norms.
We help each other stay safe
is the new norm. Generative conversa-
tions about safety that included every-
one resulted in big changes.
LE
Ronald Fry is Chair and Professor of Organizational Behavior
at Weatherhead Executive Education. Visit
ACTION: Learn and apply lessons from Steel USA.
by Ronald Fry
1 2
M a r c h 2 0 1 2
w w w . L e a d e r E x c e l . c o m
PERFORMANCE
WORDS
Change conversations to transform performance.
