At the Pegasus Conference 2010: Systems Thinking in Action, held last week in Boston, several pioneers—including Daniel Kim, Robert Fritz, and Peter Senge—presented nuggets of wisdom for EHS, Sustainability, and CSR professionals. I’ve shared a few of them below.
Building upon the concepts he introduced in his groundbreaking book, The Path of Least Resistance—in which he presented his landmark model on the structural tension between vision and current reality—Fritz discussed the Structural Dynamics of Leadership.
The role of leaders, he said, is to change or alter the underlying structures that affect culture and behavior. This is important because structure is more causally dominant than individual talent, good intentions, past experiences, creativity, or capacity. The most effective leaders possess strength of character, are able to work with structural forces, and have the ability to create a shared vision and shared structural tension. Read More
“What gets measured, gets done” is a popular saying in performance improvement circles. There is more though. Yes, true as this is, measurement—and I’ll go a step further here and say auditing—is just part of the “gets done” piece. When crafted within a context of breakthrough performance, EHS auditing and the audit function in an EHS department can be a catalyst for accelerated performance improvement and EHS integration. EHS auditing is commonly viewed as a necessary evil or burden to satisfy regulatory and legal requirements. Within this context, the results are predictable. There is little if any enthusiasm; there is a struggle; and there can be challenges with inter-rater reliability.
Organizational culture is complex, and according to many experts, not well understood. EHS professionals often think about culture in terms of safety. Yet, while safety is clearly important, the topic of culture is all-encompassing.
