When bosses don’t listen
I recently listened to a podcast about psychological safety with organizational psychologist and Wharton business professor, Adam Grant. In the podcast “Is it safe to speak up at work?” he interviewed Ed Pierson, an engineer at Boeing who left just prior to the 737 Max catastrophic crash in Indonesia.
Ed Pierson repeatedly warned that problems at the factory and at the company could lead to a crash. He saw overworked employees, damaged parts, missing tools, and mistakes being made. Pierson brought these concerns to the factory manager but his concerns were dismissed. He believed that production deadlines were being prioritized over safety concerns. As well as problems on the factory floor, he felt that meetings had become antagonistic and the atmosphere had become one of stress and fear.
In June 2018, according to a New York Times article, Pierson sent an internal email that said, “And for the first time in my life, I’m sorry to say that I’m hesitant about putting my family on a Boeing airplane.” He retired in August 2018 after 10 years at Boeing when he believed that continuing to voice concerns would lead to him being fired.
The first Boeing 737 Max crashed in October 2018. Mr. Pierson now brought his concerns to the CEO and the company board. No changes were made and a second airline crashed in March 2019.
A culture problem years in the making
The changes in company culture that led to the engineer’s concerns likely started decades prior when the company decided to move its headquarters away from its airplane factories in Seattle. Phil Condit ,the CEO at the time, explained the goal of the 2001 move was to “create psychological distance between the corporate leadership and the manufacturing sites on the ground.” While other stated reasons included that it improved travel times across the country, it also separated the engineers from the finance people. This was a complete 180 degree change from the previous decades when Boeing had functioned as group of engineers where safety trumped finance. As reported in the Atlantic, Boeing President Stonecipher, stated in the early 2000s,
“When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm.”
When the machinists’ union organized a strike in Everett, Washington in 2008, instead of listening to the machinists’ concerns, the company opted to further decrease the workforces’ power by building a second airplane assembly site in South Carolina. Boeing’s leadership chose South Carolina due to its anti-union focus and its lowest union membership rate in the United State. In 2012, the governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley stated, “We’ll make the unions understand full well that they are not needed, not wanted, and not welcome.”
With increased separation of the financial people from those doing the work, focus on the product slipped. Instead, the focus was on ways to cut corners to increase the bottom line. The relationship between the financial folks and the engineers became antagonistic. Meetings became top down with a lack of welcomed input. People were publicly called out and admonished. When safety concerns were discovered, people were now afraid to push too hard. Those who expressed thoughts about problems risked their jobs and careers.
And slowly the culture of safe, engineer centered air flight was damaged and tragedy resulted.
The power of psychological safety
Psychological safety exists when people feel that they can speak up with concerns, with new ideas, and to report mistakes and trust that they will be treated with respect. Amy Edmondson studies businesses and the impact of psychological safety. She has found that businesses are more effective, innovative, and safe when they have cultures in which people feel safe to speak up. Her research has included healthcare and she has found that psychologically safe hospitals are safer for patients. Errors can be prevented when healthcare workers voice concerns.
In a large study at Google, psychological safety was found to be a key ingredient of the most effective teams. Teams that built trust, had members who voiced concerns, and wanted to hear new ideas were more successful than those teams in which people were reticent to speak up.
What does an Airplane Company have to do with veterinary medicine?
When companies become separated from their product, the risk is exactly what happened at Boeing. The company switched from a culture where the airplanes mattered most to one in which share price was king. When veterinary hospital leadership only includes financial folks in remote locations, there is increased risk of prioritizing profit over quality safe patient care. When cultures change and employees are afraid to express concerns, simmering risks are more likely to explode.
Luckily, the risk in a veterinary hospital is not the same as an airplane crash. However, the loss of a pet due to error is heart breaking. Risks in veterinary hospitals include heating pad burns, escapes, anesthetic complications, and medication errors. Risks also include infectious disease spread among pets or even from pets to people. The conditions at Boeing – overworked staff, and an emphasis only on the bottom line – are becoming more common in veterinary medicine.
In at least two instances, veterinary consolidators have made decisions similar to Boeing’s. They decided it was better to have hospitals close than negotiate in good faith with veterinary unions. Would there be less burnout and more open veterinary ERs if consolidators listened 5 years ago when employees were starting to voice concerns?
So, What Do we learn from Boeing?
- Companies that don’t listen to their front-line workers will be less effective and less safe than those that do
- Companies with C- suites that do not include people who do the work risk making decisions based only on dollars. These decisions can cause safety risk for employees and for customers.
- Catastrophes are more likely to be prevented when small problems and near misses are taken seriously.
