I have worked with several EHS departments to increase their performance and cohesiveness. In partnership, we’ve addressed performance beyond simply meeting regulatory compliance, examining ways that they can integrate EHS deeper into the organization and impact sustainability and CSR. In all of these engagements, I have started by getting the EHS management system up-to-snuff and firing on all cylinders. Beyond the EHSMS, we then focused on:
- Team vision: developing a strong vision based in the team’s collective wisdom.
- Communication skills: strengthening internal and external communication and generating alignment.
- Team learning: developing mechanisms for feedback, analysis, and integration.
- Systems thinking: strengthened skills in systems ID and mapping.
The organizations I worked with gained a lot of value through each of these focus areas. Teams reported that operating from a systems thinking perspective was especially valuable. Through this perspective, members were able to see internal and external relationships in a new light.
A tool that helped in this area was causal loop diagrams to visually depict system dynamics. Causal loop diagrams are a simple but powerful way for EHS professionals to see how their actions, as a system, impact other systems in the organization. Two common dynamics that the teams and I saw repeatedly were: Shifting the Burden and Fixes that Backfire patterns (Senge, 1990). These were readily highlighted through the use of causal loop diagrams. For example, these illustrates how rushing through the development of an EHS audit tool led to future problems, or how avoiding an upgrade in a wastewater treatment process ultimately led to higher costs.
© Redinger EHS, Inc. (2010)