The First Glimpse of Our Purpose

While doing all I could to fulfill my responsibility in the Lean Manufacturing process rollout, I stayed very involved in the behavior-based safety process I was a part of while I was still operating a press. In this role though, I was able to be more hands-on in supporting the new process facilitator (a position I had applied for myself prior to bidding on the position I had just accepted). He had far less experience in the behavior-based safety process but moved from a supervisory position. As fate would have it, the four of us rolling at that lean initiative would soon be reassigned to report to him anyway. 

I won’t go into it here, but choosing to help him be successful in his new role rather than choosing to be bitter because I wasn’t selected for the role played a critical role in everything that’s happened in my life and career since. In complete transparency, I can’t explain why I took that approach - but I’m forever grateful I did. After being in the behavior-based safety process facilitator role about a year, my boss opted to move back into a supervisory position similar to where he had been previously. Having significantly more exposure to all aspects of that process from all I had done to support him during that year, I bid on the position again and was successful.

I won’t pretend that my first year or so in the position didn’t come with plenty of bumps and bruises, but everything I had started digging into with hopes of learning how to build stronger connections and influence with my peers was beginning to show signs of return on investment. Somewhere around the 18-month mark, our corporate safety director contacted me about providing some training on what we were doing to make our process successful for one of the company’s facilities in Georgia. With my (new) boss’s approval, the same boss who suggested I interview for a new position at least once each year, I stumbled through my first attempt at booking a business trip and was on my way (although I’m still not sure why I was selected for this as one of the newest, youngest, and likely least formally educated process facilitator in the company).

The training I provided for the other facility apparently hit the mark. And the results we were achieving through the process at my home facility seemed to be turning heads as well. By the end of my second year in the position, I found myself in a conversation with the same corporate safety director and the fellow who was responsible for providing behavior-based safety training and support for all eighty or so facilities in the organization worldwide, discussing options for me to cover the North American sites since he was based in Europe. Albeit an informal role that wasn’t added to my actual job title at the time, it was an amazing opportunity - and one that gave me my first glimpse of our purpose!

When I agreed to take on the task they described, my boss and his boss still had to sign off on it. They eventually did, but with the stipulation that I maintained full responsibility for the behavior-based safety process in our local facility. That didn’t scare me! I had been working at least one full time job, and usually juggling some extra on the side, for more than a decade at that point so how hard could this possibly be. What I didn’t realize then was that I would be expected to do it all with very little (if any) overtime since I was still in an hourly position and paying OT for indirect labor roles in that company was frowned on more than violating the majority of the Ten Commandments!

So where did I get that glimpse at our purpose, the thing that gave me an opportunity to pursue meaning? When I provided that initial training for the folks in Georgia, I covered the canned presentation as well as I knew how but I also worked to pass on some of the tools I had been digging into on my own with hopes of helping them build better connections with the team members they were working with. Throughout our organization at the time, the behavior-based safety initiative had three core tenets: no names, no discipline, and no sneak-ups. To achieve any last behavioral change and reduce the risk of injury, we relied solely on achieving buy-in from our peers. We had to earn trust and influence, and that rarely happens without connecting with others. I had been working to share those same tools with each of the folks who worked the closest with me in the process locally, and they stepped up big time while I traveled to plants across the continent.

The work I was able to do in behavior-based safety had a direct impact on decreasing the number of injuries, in my home facility as well as at each of the sites I provided training for, but what excited me even more was seeing the folks around me grow in their current roles, get much deserved recognition for what they were doing, and have opportunities for promotions that they may not have had otherwise! Cindy and I had been digging into everything we could get our hands on that would help us develop our own leadership and communication skills, mainly just to survive in the positions we each held at that point, but seeing the difference we could make in others as we passed on what we were learning was indeed something that started the process of finding purpose in our lives. With that in mind, the next thing we’ll look at is how that purpose started coming together then we’ll work through how we became intentional about really honing it.