After the 1987 global stock market crash, Pehr Gyllenhammar, then CEO of Volvo, popularized the phrase, “cash is king,” reflecting on his belief that, at the time, it was more valuable than any other investment tool. Over 35 years later – at least in terms of success in safety, sustainability and asset reliability – it is STILL king, only as a different form of CASH.
C – Complexity and Context
Understanding that the same complexities and variables exist in processes and procedures in both successful times (“good” days) and times with incidents (“bad” days), and understanding the context when these variables align differently to make things not go well.
A – Ability to Adapt
Being able to adapt and change course, knowing that even the best policies and procedures are only partially effective tools that cannot be stagnant and unchanging.
S – Support Systems and Skills
Continuously implementing and evolving the systems (not just electronic/digital) to properly support your employees as they develop the necessary traits and knowledge they need to be successful.
H – Habits
Establishing the proper habits in your teams and in your own leadership to allow the growth needed to become the type of organization necessary to achieve its goals.
Let’s take a look at C.A.S.H. in more detail.
Complexity and Context
Very few things in life, if any, are actually simple. If human beings are part of the process, you can guarantee it’s going to be a complex and dynamic system.
This is why finding a single root cause can be difficult to nail down, and implementing actions to try and mitigate only one cause can prove to be ineffective over time, or even from the start. It is more likely that there is more than one thing, or more than a few, that has led / could lead to a failure, injury, or escape.
A key to mitigating these contributing factors is to adopt a characteristic seen in high-reliability organizations: a preoccupation with failure and being “chronically uneasy about yesterday’s success.”1
The need exists because the same variables exist in our lives on both the “good” days and the “bad” days. It is how those variables align that define which of those days your organization is going to have.
On a good day (Figure 1), the organization celebrates a record production/ship period. On a bad day (Figure 2), the organization experiences one or more significant negative events. Every day (Figure 3), the organization deals with factors present in each situation.
Figure 1: A good day for an organization
Figure 2: A bad day for an organization
Figure 3: The realities that are part of an organization’s day-to-day landscape
It is doubtful that anyone was trying to damage the equipment, get themselves hurt, or let a customer receive a defective product. So, before you have an immediate reaction to address a person or process, you need to understand the context behind each of the factors and what it is about your current systems that led to the actions.
Ability to Adapt
As you begin to better understand the factors that exist on both good and bad days, and that your systems are complex and dynamic, you need to make sure you are willing and able to adapt and adjust to best manage those factors and systems.
Standard operating procedures (SOPs) and work instructions (WIs) are similar to the saying about painting the Golden Gate Bridge: Once you think you are finished, it is time to start all over again.
SOPs and WIs – even when you are lucky enough to produce ones that are effective to begin with – become less impactful over time. As you continue to study your processes, you need to be able to course-correct and not rely on trying to manage the business and its people with outdated processes and procedures.
Figure 4: Like painting San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge,2 the work is never done with SOPs and WIs
Support Systems and Skills
With the factors of your complex systems understood and the awareness that your SOPs/WIs previously cemented into your culture need routine review (if not consistent) and evolution, you can turn to studying the things you need to consistently execute with precision.
A myriad of tools, technologies and training are offered that are marketed to address the various gaps you feel you have (or that the provider tries to convince you that you have).
Any support system you implement or any training you offer needs to be directly tied to managing your “every day” factors.
You cannot afford to knee-jerk or take a shortcut and implement a system just to check a box. You must have the discipline to have the right discussions with the right people within your organization. Any support system you implement or any training you offer needs to be directly tied to managing your “every day” factors.
No approach or initiative will be effective or long-lasting if the mindset and activities to keep them going are not tightly woven into the day-to-day.
Habits
Ultimately, it is about adopting the correct habits. No approach or initiative will be effective or long-lasting if the mindset and activities to keep them going are not tightly woven into the day-to-day. They must be part of the genetic code of how you do business, “in the bones,” so to speak.
Quite often, individuals, teams and even entire organizations become hyperfocused on the “what” (the goals) without having a path or way to travel down that path. If done well, the previously touched upon C.A.S topics of C.A.S.H. will help you see the “whys” and “hows” so you can grow into being what is needed to be successful.
As life and business strategist Tony Robbins says, “It’s not about the goal. It’s about growing to become the person that can accomplish that goal.”
Conclusion
The factors necessary to determine where in your complex processes you need to adapt to navigate and manage the changes they bring, the skills and systems you must put in place, and the core habits you must adopt will be different to each organization and its teams.
Like the stock market, there are no ironclad guarantees in business. That being said, if a team/organization is willing to invest time in improving how its C.A.S.H. flows, the rate of return can be significant.
