Reducing Risk and Building Reputations

This small cross-divisional team had the monumental task of getting its organization to understand the business risk it had inadvertently accepted through its decentralized manufacturing operation. While the entrepreneurial nature of the culture had many advantages in productivity and service, it was leaving the organization exposed to unnecessary risk that was built into the system. SCG partnered with an industry-leading safety consultancy to lead the internal project team through a multi-phased organizational change effort that introduced a corporate safety management system into an environment with limited receptivity to anything standard.

The Core Team and its Executive Sponsors used SCG’s change process and tools to frame the acceptance-building effort needed to stay funded and make a difference. The Core Team was brought together and immediately initiated a senior leader orientation about the risk and what it would take to reduce it. With the newfound interest and support, the Team continued to build the initiative's structure with an ever-expanding internal team so there were naysayers-turned-advocates in important pockets around the world. Today, these cross-functional, multi-level groups of experts and stakeholders keep the organization focused on results for customer and employee groups, so the promised benefits keep coming. Along the way, the Core Team has been benchmarked by other industry-leading manufacturers and has also been asked to participate in designing federal regulations for this particular area of safety management in their industry. There is still a year to go before implementation is complete, but the foundation of acceptance has been laid and momentum levers are in place.