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May/June 2023 issue

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Leadership

The business book club: key lessons from Tom Peters’ In Search of Excellence

Open-access content Andrew Sharman CFIOSH — Thursday 31st January 2019
From the archive:  Just so you know, this article is more than 3 years old.

Based on a study of 43 of the US's most successful corporations, the book explores new management methods -- centred on employee empowerment, fostering innovation and decentralised control -- and reveals the principles of good management that took those organisations to the top.

Excellence is defined as a work culture that empowers, values and motivates people

In my own book From Accidents to Zero I lamented the safety profession's fascination with zero-accident targets, advocating instead the pursuit of "safety excellence". Excellence, though, is subjective. To my mind it is about commitment, it goes beyond expectations. It is passion, pride, quality and competence manifested together. Above all, it is an expression of genuine care and respect for products and services and customers.

In Peters's book, excellence is defined as a work culture that empowers, values and motivates people and whose output is innovative, rich and fresh, and financially successful. The book sets out eight principles to guide the way:

  • Bias for action: use the power of active decision making to empower people to drive forward.
  • Close to the customer: learn from the people served by the business (in safety this could be translated as learning from the workers themselves).
  • Autonomy and entrepreneurship: foster innovation and nurture "champions" in the business.
  • Productivity through people: treat workers as a source of good products and ideas.
  • Hands-on, value-driven: show commitment by being part of the action, guide the way through a set of beliefs that shape behaviour.
  • Stick to your knitting: "know what you do and do what you know".
  • Simple form, lean staff: an acknowledgement that some of the best companies have minimal staff at the corporate centre.
  • Simultaneous loose-tight properties: build autonomy in shopfloor activities to allow workers to adapt behaviour in line with centralised values.

These principles are now 37 years old, but their applicability is still strong. In an interview to mark the book's 20th anniversary he said that if he were to write In Search of Excellence again, he would not tamper with the principles, but would add capabilities concerning ideas, liberation and speed. Leap forward nearly 20 years and those additional three continue to resonate.

Peters was known for eschewing old management models due to his fear of corporations being run by "bean-counters". He wanted to prove how crucial people are to business success. Three themes shine through this book: people, customers and action. Now there are three headlines to add to your personal objectives for the year ahead.

You may also be interested in...

 The business book club: key lessons from Simon Sinek’s, Start with Why

Tuesday 19th February 2019
Simon Sinek’s TED talk from 2009, based on his book Start with Why, is the third most watched of all time with more than 42 million views.
Open-access content

 IOSH’s new Pioneers of Progress project

Wednesday 30th January 2019
In that time, IOSH members and other practitioners in our great profession have been at the forefront of progressive change in the workplace.Work-related accident and illness rates are still too high but have fallen where our profession and legislation, such as the UK's Health and Safety at Work Act, have raised the consciousness of safety and health issues among employers and workers.Yet we know that provisions for occupational safety and health vary widely, and recognition for our role in the workplace and wider society remains lacking.
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 How practitioners can be both moral compasses and business enablers

Thursday 7th February 2019
When I started writing exclusively on OSH management about 15 years ago there was a movement well under way in larger organisations to go beyond compliance with national regulations.
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 Wider lessons from the review into Amnesty International’s staff wellbeing

Tuesday 19th February 2019
An independent review of staff wellbeing at human rights group Amnesty International made the headlines in early February 2019 when it emerged that its working environment was often described as “toxic”.
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 The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Working at Height’s new report, 'Staying Alive'

Tuesday 19th February 2019
Falls from height is the number one cause of deaths in the workplace. Unfortunately, for the ten million people in the UK who work at height, decision-makers have yet to place this at the top of the policy agenda.
Open-access content

 Malcolm Staves, L’Oréal

Tuesday 29th January 2019
Research for an interview with L’Oréal’s global health and safety director, MalcolAm Staves, reveals a paradox. The world’s largest cosmetics group has virtual shelves full of awards for its corporate social responsibility (CSR) work, it rides high in ethical business indices and was No 1 in Newsweek magazine’s global green companies ranking.
Open-access content
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