The River Reaches Places the Source Never Knows

The River Reaches Places the Source Never Knows, or A Focus on Individuals, not Corporations.

An interesting thing happened to me on June 1 of this year.  I hired my youngest daughter, Jessica, as a Failsafe employee.  She had just graduated from Virginia Tech as a Mechanical Engineer, and didn’t even interview with anyone else.  She wanted to work with Failsafe.  Before she made her final decision to work with me, I brought her to a few 4-day “Latent Cause Experience” classes.  It was during the second class that she started to wonder:

Why are all these companies hiring you to train their people when it seems few of these companies are actually doing all that you are suggesting?

I smiled internally, because I had to confront this issue about 5 years ago myself.  At the time, I was working with 5 Affiliates, all who were trying to help me drive Latent Cause Analysis(Failsafe's approach to Root Cause Analysis) throughout industry.  They had a common plea:

“Bob, you have to change some of this material because no one is actually doing what you are suggesting!  People are going through the class, and admittedly loving it, but then nothing happens afterwards.”

Nothing happens afterwards?

I really enjoy working with the guys and watching them get traction on this. The one thing that really makes me feel good is when I see them walk away from the class reviewing their whole approach to life.  It’s not just about work, it’s about the way that they can manage their life all the way around. They all seem to have this renewed sense of hope for the future and they leave wanting go out and make changes in their lives at work and at home.  It seems that most of them can’t wait to get home and start applying what they have learned.  It is always very rewarding to me to see these things happen and  it makes me feel like I/we have made a difference in their lives by giving them the opportunity to attend your class…..  Drilling Company VP.

I wish my children could have gone through this class with me……  HSE Advisor, Refining

I wish I would have experience this much earlier in my career.  It would have been better for myself and all the people that worked for me……  Operations Supervisor, Oil and Gas

We are using Failsafe and Latent Cause Analysis to help all our employees, from top to bottom, be more accountable to themselves.  It’s taken us from being a good performer (in terms of safety) to one of the best….. HSE VP, Contracting Company

Sometimes, maybe even most of the time, our attempts at changing cultures are misdirected.  We start out on our “wilderness journey,” thinking we know the path we will travel -- often with grandiose plans and intricate strategies.  We also have expectations of what we will see along the journey -- and they had better appear quickly or “something is wrong.”  I include myself in this description.  This is how I am.  

But is this how I/we ought to be?

Are we to always “know” the outcome before we start the journey?  Isn’t there an “inner knowingness” that is available to all of us that sometimes urges us to “step-out,” no matter what the end result might be?   The river reaches places the source never knows.

Maybe we should be content to “do our part,” even if we don’t see visible and immediate results.

A man who played double-bass in the Mexico City Philharmonic told me that the finest instruments are made of wood that has been allowed to age naturally to remove the moisture.  “You must age the wood for 80 years then play the instrument for 80 years before it reaches its best sound,” said Luis Antonio Rojas.  A craftsman must use wood cut and aged by someone else, and will never see any instrument reach its peak during his own lifetime.  Many IMPORTANT things in life are “next generation matters” – teaching, training, parenting…  David McCasland (author).

Maybe, instead of trying the “change the world” all at once, we ought to be focused on changing individuals, one-at-a-time.

We need to change, but the change must indeed begin with a single individual.  It might be any one of us.  Nobody can afford to wait around and wait for someone else to do what he is loath to do himself…..  Carl Jung (famous psychoanalyst)

Everyone wants to change the world, but no one wants to change themselves…..  Leo Tolstoy (Russian Philosopher)

Maybe, instead of seeing corporate or societal change as hopeless, we ought to embrace the thoughts of Tolkien (Hobbit Author):

Most people believe that only great power can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found.  I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay.  Small acts of kindness and love.

To be honest, it no longer bothers me when an organization does not embrace all that we suggest in The Latent Cause Experience.  It’s not that I’ve given up on them -- it’s that I’ve learned to change my focus.  Whereas I used to be upset when things were not happening at my pace, or as I expected, I am now content  at the glimpses of change that I am seeing.  In other words, I’ve learned to focus on helping individual people, one at a time -- starting with me. Remember one of our bottom-line questions:

What is it about the way I am that contributes to the problems around me?

Individuals ask, and then answer this question -- not corporations.  Individuals can do this whether their corporations want them to or not!  If we instill the need to be introspective within individuals, the world that surrounds them will change in ways we cannot have foretold.  The river reaches places the source never knows.

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