Visible Felt Leadership and Operating Discipline

Process Safety and Risk Management
(Series of 6 nuggets for IIChE news letters – 2018-19)
2. Visible Felt Leadership and Operating Discipline.

By Joy M. Shah, Founder and Chief Consultant,
Innov8 ProTech Solutions, Sustainability and Management Consultant.
(Former Sr. Vice President – Technical at Reliance Industries Limited)
“If you put good people in bad systems, you get bad results. You have to water
flower, you want to grow” – Stephen Covey
We have heard about safety culture with medium and large scale companies, still
they face the major loss accident. Had we thought of why is it happening even
though they have good safety culture? Is good safety culture enough? Or should we
target great safety culture? If so what is difference in good safety culture and great
safety culture? This is what is given in title of this article.
Visible felt leadership is the word coined by M/S. Dupont but it is explained and
elaborated by many other companies in their own way. It is the visible management
commitment summarised in first four best practices of short note 1. Felt leadership
starts from top and sends a clear message by their action that leadership is not only
about driving revenue and contributing to shareholder value; but about preservation
and protection of organisation’s most valuable resource – employees.
It is not only to do but it is to be seen and to be believed. Theodore Roosevelt once

said,” Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
Visible Felt leadership is the management’s total actions that lead people at all levels
to understand and “feel” their leaders’ high standards, and accept their strong
commitment to safety as being genuine, caring and respectful.
Visible felt leadership can be practiced in all safety events, meetings;

discussions as well as decision making but following are the main area which will be
noticed by everyone.
1. Work place observations and coaching.

2. Participating in every meetings and discussion related to safety.
3. High potential and serious incident investigations
4. Review of reports to ensure appropriate action and communication have
taken place to prevent recurrence
5. Setting goals and objectives to establish expectations for line management.
6. Town hall meetings
Providing coaching and feedback is the two aspect of visible felt leadership.
Following are the key principles or best practices of Felt Leadership.
Safety is like a lock but you are the key. Page 1

1. Visibility of leaders action on safety within the organisation
2. Relentlessness of leadership about spending time with employees and
contractors and coach them.
3. Not only recognise leadership role as teacher/trainer/coach but recognise all
employees for their role as teacher/ trainer/coach in town hall events.
4. Development of own safety functioning skills and passing them along to the
organisation.
5. Behave and lead all the time as others would be expected to do.
6. Maintenance of a self-safety focus and continuous emphasis and clarity
around safety expectations.
7. Confirm and reconfirm “safe” production as the number 1 value, not only in
policy but action and decision making
8. A visible passion for continuous improvement, ZERO injuries, illness and
incidents
9. Celebration and recognition of Goal Zero success.
It is essential that Leaders “walk the talk” and change their own behaviour, influence
other people’s behaviour such that other people also change their behaviour. For
great safety culture, mind sets and behaviour must be addressed at every level from
leadership to shop floor as every level will look “up” to see which behaviours are
being role modelled by their leaders. Unless behaviour becomes habits, great safety
culture cannot be achieved.
Sum of individual behaviour will become individual performance and sum of

individual performance become organisational performance. Visible felt leadership
lead to Operational discipline and make individual behaviour for safety, a habit.
There are 11 characteristics of Operational discipline divided in to three catagories..
1. Leadership / cultural
1.1. Leadership by Example
1.2. Common shared values
1.3. Strong Team work
1.4. Pride in Organisation
2. Processes
2.1. Sufficient and capable resources
2.2. Employee involvement
2.3. Active line of communication
2.4. Up-to-date documentation
3. Standards
3.1. Excellent Housekeeping
3.2. Practice consistent with Procedures
3.3. Absence of short cuts
There are three major characteristics of Operational Discipline.
1. Innovation, agility, continuous improvement which is evidenced by learning

mindset, adopting best practices and improve upon, Annual improvement of
goals and plans as well as internalise and self assessment.
2. Just and Fair which is evidenced by establishing cardinal rules, just and fair
management review of all violation, recognition of superior performance and
encourage for reporting without fear.

3. Risk sensitivity which is evidenced by risk evaluation for all operating risk, risk
evaluation as a part of budget and personal planning, periodic review of risk to
bring it down to tolerable level.
For goal zero, it is required that safety culture transform from Reactive culture to
Proactive culture. Employees have to transform from compliance to commitment.
There are four phases of this transformation.

1. Natural instinct - People don’t take responsibility and believe accidents will
happen.
2. Dependent Stage - People view safety as following rules. Accident rates
decrease.
3. Independent Stage - People take responsibility and believe they can make a
difference with actions. Accidents reduce further.
4. Interdependent Stage - Teams feel ownership and responsibility for safety
culture. They believe zero injuries is an attainable goal.
Dupont’s Bradley’s curve is shown below for understanding and driving to Great
safety culture.
Outcome of Visible Felt Leader ship and Operating discipline will be Great
interdependent Safety Culture and Operation Excellence.
Author can be contacted on [email protected], +919374715109

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Process Safety and Risk Management

(Series of 6 nuggets for IIChE news letters – 2018-19)

2. Visible Felt Leadership and Operating Discipline.

It is not only to do but it is to be seen and to be believed. Theodore Roosevelt once

Visible felt leadership can be practiced in all safety events, meetings;

1. Work place observations and coaching.

Following are the key principles or best practices of Felt Leadership.

Safety is like a lock but you are the key. Page 1

Sum of individual behaviour will become individual performance and sum of

There are three major characteristics of Operational Discipline.

1. Innovation, agility, continuous improvement which is evidenced by learning

Safety is like a lock but you are the key. Page 2

There are four phases of this transformation.

Author can be contacted on [email protected], +919374715109

Safety is like a lock but you are the key. Page 3

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