Corporate Core Values, Worldview, and Operational Controls

Prógono is the Manufacturing Director in charge of four Manufacturing Sites of a multinational company in South America. The significant injury rate chart is showing an alarming increase after several years of continuous improvement. The situation makes him very uncomfortable, as he thought he had solved the Safety issue once and for all. He is preparing for the monthly Management Review Meeting and does not find words to explain what is happening so that he could persuade his bosses that Safety in South America region is under control. The improvement seen in previous years had been achieved by following the strategies defined by his Company's Global Sustainability Board, and a tool that was developed and implemented to engage Supervisors in Safety issues in an unprecedented way. In parallel with the Safety issue, Prógono is implementing the Shingo Lean Manufacturing model in the region. The Shingo Model was developed by the Shingo Institute after researching recipients of the Shingo Prize that face periods of declining results after cycles of improvement. His understanding of the Shingo Model literature was that only companies that base their strategy on Principles or Values are able to improve performance year on year in a sustainable fashion. A strategy that is based on Benchmarking, Best Practices, Projects, Initiatives, and the like is bound to encounter cycles of decline after cycles of improvement. The Shingo Model states that Safety must come first, but unfortunately it did not say how Prógono could solve its Safety problem. Prógono decides to assume the Safety Values exists and asks himself the following questions: What does it assert? What does it require? What does it guarantee? Having found the answers, he is now able to scrutinize his company's Legacy Safety system in light of the Safety Values. In doing so, he realizes his company Legacy Safety system is not geared to connect his organization with the “zero injury” aspiration. He makes the decision to reform Safety systems, methods, tools, and behaviors so that the Safety Values becomes the DNA of Operational Controls. The discovery is so extraordinary that Prógono then sets out to find other Values such as Quality, Lean, Freedom and Morale, and proposes to reform the management systems in his Region in a similar way. During the process, Prógono realizes that there was a disconnect between his Company's Mission, Vision and Corporate Core Values statements and day-to-day management. In practice, his organization monitored the Dashboards of Performance Indicators on a monthly basis, coding the gaps between the actual and planned performance using traffic lights. His organization assumed that if the managers in charge were able to present action plans to close these gaps, he/she was in control of the situation. Prógono realizes that this management philosophy is based on the Quantities Worldview. He then proposes that his organization incorporate the management of violations of the different Corporate Core Values, in addition to continue monitoring the KPIs’ Dashboards. By including action plans to track and manage violation of Core Corporate Values in day-to-day management, the company moves from the Quantities Worldview to the Consciousness Worldview. He then produces a contrast of the role of leadership in the Quantities Worldview and the Consciousness Worldview. At last but not least, he proposes to change the Budgetary process so that the Organization can achieve its Vision and fulfill its Mission by managing Violations of its Corporate Core Values.