High Reliability Organizations (HROs) and Leadership

Karlene H. RobertsHaas School of Business

Center for Catastrophic Risk ManagementUniversity of California, Berkeley

karlene@haas.berkeley.edu510.642.4700 (fax)

Agenda• The unexpected happens• Defining a High Reliability Organization (HRO)• Importance of resiliency and adaptation• The leader’s role in a HRO• In reality almost all of us deal with

interdependent departments or interdependent systems of organizations

• Different system components• What kind of leadership works best for teams?

Agenda, cont.

• How does transformational leadership work?• Challenges in team leadership• Common responsibilities of team leaders• Four roles for team leaders• E-leadership• What makes E-leadership work?

When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experience in

nearly forty years at sea, I merely say, uneventful.

Of course there have been winter gales, and storms and fog and

the like, but in all my experience, I have never been in any

accident of any sort worth speaking about.

I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked, nor was I ever in any predicament that

threatened to end in disaster of any sort.

You see, I am not very good material for a story.

Edward J. Smith, Captain, RMS Titanic

© 2005 Christie's Images

Swiss Cheese ModelSwiss Cheese Model

PersonPerson

AccidentAccidenttrajectorytrajectory

OrganizationOrganizationPersonPerson

What is a High Reliability Organization (HRO) ?• An organization–conducting relatively error free

operations–over a long period of time–making consistently good decisions

resulting in–high quality and reliability operations

The Leader’s Role: Cultivating Resilience and Adaptation

• Anticipate trouble spots.• Develop employee capability to improvise.• Improve organizational capacity and resources

to:– Do quick studies– Develop swift trust– Engage in just-in-time learning

The Leader’s Role: Reluctance to Simplify Interpretations

• All organizations must ignore many things.• Doing so may force them to ignore key

sources of problems.• Help employees restrain temptations to

simplify.• To do this establish checks and balances,

adversarial reviews, and multiple perspectives.

The Leader’s Role: Preoccupation with Failure

• Worry chronically and help employees worry chronically about errors.

• Assume each day is a bad day and help employees assume each day is a bad day.

• Realize that what you’re doing is difficult to do.

• Help develop collective bonds among suspicious people.

The Leader’s Role: Sensitivity to Operations

• Pay close attention to operations but don’t micromanage.

• Make sure everyone values organizing to maintain situational awareness.

• Use resources so people can see and comprehend what is happening.

The Leader’s Role: Organize Around Expertise

• Let decisions “migrate” to those with expertise to make them.

• Avoid rigid hierarchies.

Recap – The Leader’s Role

• Cultivate resilience and adaptation by:

– Helping people avoid simplifying interpretations– Helping people to be preoccupied with failure– Helping people to be sensitive to operations– Organizing around expertise

Components of a ‘System’

Interfaces

Operators

Procedures

HardwareStructure

Organizations

Environments

Components of a ‘System’

Interfaces

Department 1

Department 3

Department 5

Department 2

Department N

Department 4

Components of a ‘System’

Interfaces

Org 1

Org 3

Org 5Org 2

Org N

Org 4

Components of a ‘System’

Interfaces

Org 1

Regulation

LegalitySupplier

Org N

Org 2

What Kind of Leadership is Best?

Transactional?• Contracts exchange of

reward for effort• Promises rewards• Recognizes

accomplishments• Watches and searches for

deviations from rules• Intervenes only if standards

not met

Transformational?• Provides vision and sense of

mission• Instills pride, gains respect

and trust• Inspires motivation• Promotes intelligence and

careful problem solving• Gives personal

attention,coaches

How Does Transformational Leadership Work?

• Be creative• Encourage employees to be creative• Be familiar with and agree with the

organization’s strategic goals• Encourage followers to pursue ambitious goals• Believe organizational goals are personally

important• Have vision

Providing Team Leadership: Challenges

• Learn to share information• Learn to trust others• Learn to give up authority• Understand when to intervene

Common Responsibilities of Team Leaders

• Coaching• Facilitating• Handling disciplinary problems• Reviewing team/individual performance• Training• Communication

Four Roles for Team Leaders

Liaisons with External Constituencies

• Upper management, other internal teams, etc.

• Represents the team to other teams• Secures resources• Clarifies others expectations• Gathers information from outside• Shares information with the team

Troubleshooter

• When team has problems team leader sits in meetings and asks for assistance

• Help team talk through problems

Conflict Manager

• What’s the source of conflict• Who is involved?• What are the issues?• What resolution options are available?• What are the advantages and disadvantages

of each?

Coaches

• Clarify expectations and roles• Teach• Offer support• Cheerlead• Do whatever is needed to help team improve

performance

Today’s Leadership Often Means E-Leadership

• This is very important in industries like the energy industry

• We have obvious examples• Almost all leadership research examines face-

to-face interactions

How to Make E-Leadership Work

• Carefully choose words. In e-leadership harsh words can’t be softened by non verbal communication – a smile, a gesture, etc.

• Structure appropriately – phrases are likely to be received as curt

• Make sure message tone reflects the emotion you want to send

• Choose a comfortable style – emoticons? abbreviations? etc.

Wrap up: What we Talked About• The unexpected happens• Defining a High Reliability Organization (HRO)• The leader’s role in a HRO• Interdependent departments or systems of

organizations• Different system components• Transformational leadership• Responsibilities of team leaders• E-leadership