Generations of your leaders have never experienced a recession in their professional lives. Are you ready?
When will the recession begin? How bad will it be? The answers to these three questions are anyone’s guess.
What we do know is that a recession is coming – the current geopolitical conditions foretell the future: rapid inflation, spiking interest rates, political unrest, and resulting supply chain issues, as well as the ongoing challenge of a highly contagious virus that will most likely never go away.
The writing is on the wall. At some point, the economic cycle will turn, and the economy will begin to decline or continue to stall.
Recessions happen all the time, it's a normal part of the economic cycle. However, what’s particularly interesting about this environment is that it will likely be the first recession that members of Gen-Z and most Millennials have ever experienced – that is, aside from the initial shock of Covid-19 pandemic. Any Covid-induced economic shrinkage was more of a disruption than a true recession. This type of downturn can be described as “V-shaped,” or characterized by a short duration and swift recovery (for example, Western economies’ post-pandemic growth, driven by lower interest rates, constrained supply, and government stimulus).
Under the current economic conditions, the recession ahead is classic both in the sense that companies are cutting costs and delaying investment in anticipation, and that its causes can be attributed to external factors. Younger leaders are facing a new, but not entirely unfamiliar, challenge.
Over the past few years, Millennial and Gen-Z leaders have risen through the ranks, taking on significant leadership roles across all industries. During the pandemic, these leaders leveraged their tech savviness to weather the challenges of working from home and the shift to a hybrid-virtual environment. Now, new generations of managers and leaders will experience this set of recessionary economic conditions for the first time, and it’s impossible to predict what will happen.
What we do know is that a recession can change many things, from the obvious to the less obvious. Let’s start with the obvious. Companies will quickly look for ways to conserve cash and protect margins, which often means slowing spending, layoffs, and restructuring to cut costs. Tech companies that boomed during the pandemic have started to reduce spending and announcing hiring freezes, signaling for companies in other industries to do the same. Jobs will be at risk. If you cannot prove a good ROI, your project is at risk. There are no longer unlimited resources to try out new ideas, and emphasis shifts from growth to profitability at all costs. An increase in uncertainty will make companies more conservative and tentative. All these are well-known dynamics.
Less obvious is the impact of increased uncertainty on people. Coupled with rising fear in general, volatility is the name of the game. Your investments just lost a lot of value. High inflation means that your purchasing power, and the new house that you stretched for, are declining in value. You’re worrying about your job, or are not getting the bonus you banked on.
The combination of fear and an increase in messy information escalates your “cognitive load,” or the need to tap into your cortex. Responses triggered by fear force you to call on more ancient and less intelligent parts of your brain, effectively reducing your IQ and decreasing the thoughtfulness of your decision making. The solution? While your brain is triggered to respond with its most animalistic “fight or flight” parts, you need to be smarter about navigating your new work and home life.
What are the implications of this on organizations? For one, fear responses may decrease teamwork and collaboration while increasing peoples’ self-interest (aka – the burning need to keep their job). At a time when teamwork and tapping into everyone’s intelligence is more important than ever, external stresses will likely drive your team to be less than their best.
Given this understanding, as a leader, what are you doing to build resilience in your teams? How will you help them tackle this uncertainty and thrive? Resilience can be built on both an individual and team level through intentional coaching and practice. Cultivating these behaviors not only builds a better workplace culture — it also gives your people the tools to bounce back.
You may also need to develop a recession playbook that helps you map out how you’ll support your people while also driving the business forward. It’s no easy feat, but remains critical as you move forward during this challenging period.
One practice we know helps build team and organizational resilience is something we call Future Storming. Future Storming is the process of preparing your business leaders from the “future-back” rather than “today-forward.” This means anticipating trends that have yet to occur and envisioning how they might intersect in surprising ways. This exercise, which can be practiced by leaders at all levels, helps them build the capacity to navigate uncertainty, strengthen collaboration with diverse stakeholders, and bolster your business’ capability to manage risk and uncertainty.
For example, you can run Future Storming exercises where your team thinks holistically across business silos about where the industry, customer trends, technology, and competition will be three, five, or ten years in the future. As your team evaluates the intersection of these trends, they build the capacity to mitigate risk and uncover insights that provide opportunities for innovation. The focus on opportunities is essential, as recessions can be rocket fuel for disruptive ideas and startups. Furthermore, customer buying criteria changes during recessions, and can upend traditional relationships.
A good example of this disruption is Airbnb, which was born during the 2009 subprime mortgage crisis. In a time when many were strapped for cash, but had a few extra rooms to spare, it offered people the opportunity to gain an extra source of income by renting out their extra rooms or vacation homes. By injecting a new supply of affordable short-term rentals into the market, Airbnb disrupted the hotel industry and drove down hotel costs. The hospitality industry was already primed for disruption; the recession was just the multiplier.
In the next recession, which new, disruptive companies will thrive, and why?
Lastly, how can you empower the new generation of leaders to drive the cost and cash flow initiatives needed in your organization? Your team needs to be capable of contributing to improved cash flow ahead of time or just in time. This requires strong business and financial acumen to understand how their decisions will need to change in tighter times to free up cash and realize better margins or returns, while simultaneously continue innovating and testing out new ideas to drive the business forward.
Are your young leaders ready and capable of doing this? Have you developed them to be effective in such a scenario? Up until now, Gen-Z and Millennial leaders have focused almost exclusively on growth. Moving forward, they need to focus on margin, cost, asset utilization, and cash flow. While in growth mode, investment dollars for innovation were plentiful, but now disciplined innovation is the name of the game. These leaders need to be prepared to fail fast and cheap, and move with agility towards the better innovations and investments.
In good times, leaders may not be aware of how the decisions they make every day at work impact margins, but in a recession, leaders need to be hyperaware of how they spend time and resources. Furthermore, funding is easy to come by in the name of growth, but in a recession? Not anymore.
Learned future preparation, resilience, and the financial proficiency and confidence to drive cashflow are critical for success in this new environment. By providing tools, expectations, and discipline now, you can inspire your young leaders to take control of the future. Instead of acting rashly when the increase in uncertainty tricks brains into inaction, acting ahead empowers your leaders to drive the improvements required to be successful.
It’s time to get ready. It’s time to prepare your leaders to flourish in tough times. Prepare your team to storm the future by building the resilience and confidence necessary to make good business decisions when they are in the eye of the storm, all in the name of managing through this recession. Better yet, give them the skills to innovate new products, services, and business models to propel your organization forward, and do it all while using the smart part of your brains.
Related content
Being ready for recession means asking your teams to think differently.
There’s an entire generation of leaders today who have never led through a recession. Now, faced with raging inflation, tumbling profits and volatile stock prices, they are flummoxed. While this is not another global pandemic, there are whispers in the wind that troubled times are coming. How can you help your teams work together in an agile way to prepare for whatever is next?
There are lessons to draw from winners post-COVID who seemed to nimbly navigate the last crisis, and those that lumbered and bumbled their way through.
Among the losers were those that didn’t just get it a little wrong – they doubled down on a single bet. They kept rolling the dice at the same table despite the odds that their “luck” could run out.
- Peloton produced more bikes than people wanted and were left peddling in the wind with quality issues and a saturated market for their product.
- Bed Bath and Beyond bet on branded goods instead of investing in technology that would have brought loyal shoppers online to buy goods for staying home and feathering their nests.
These companies looked like early winners, and yet the falls were more spectacular than the rise. They had a plan. They were aligned. Where they failed was in imagination. Marching in lock step they went right over the edge.
Why it’s easy to go over the edge
In hindsight we can see mistakes. But how does a smart team keep from outsmarting itself? It comes down to a discipline – avoiding the tendency toward group think and coalescing around one possibility.
Breaking the cycle to think differently together
Breaking this cycle of group think is difficult, but there is too much at stake not to do it. The discipline that saves the smartest, most successful organizations in times of uncertainty is a dedication to scenario planning.
Scenario planning is both a process and a discipline that enables your team to imagine “what happens if…” by reflecting on the variables for your business and speculating with the best of your current data and experience how those might play out.
With this process your team can go deep and long before events occur, playing out how they might respond. They can then agree on the critical factors that they’ll need to consider as events unfold. They put together plausible scenarios – not only Plans A and B, but also plans C, D, E, F, and G.
Scenario Planning
Scenario planning is the practice of creating varying courses of action for a business to implement based on potential events and situations, known as scenarios.
It enables teams to challenge their own thinking, consider possibilities, and later, respond dynamically to an unknown future. There are many ways the future may unfold with scenario planning, guiding teams to be responsive, resilient, and effective.
The process begins when you define your critical uncertainties and develop plausible scenarios.
This requires teams to both apply a sophisticated process and develop the team dynamics and characteristics of agile teams.
Scenario planning is a team sport in that it first requires us to acknowledge no one of us is smarter than all of us. When your team develops this capability, you have the ingredients to become agile. Agility is not so much response to crisis as it is planning to pivot when necessary and knowing what you will do. It may mean changing the metrics by which you’ll measure success so that you can manage through a challenging period.
There may be no industry that suffered during the pandemic more than the airlines. Many tried and tried again to “guess” when air travel would resume. CEO of United, Scott Kirby told analysts “We’re not going to pretend we know what demand will be.” After spending months pouring over data, they concluded it couldn’t be done.
Instead they assembled a “bounce-back” cross-functional team to consider slow, medium, and fast rebound scenarios. Conversations on cutting costs were scuttled for debates on growth. Many had never met each other or worked together. But they set a goal of becoming a “just in time” organization, looking at options, risks, plans. Through that they placed some bets. The result was a different version of success – liquidity – which enabled them to ride out volatility in demand indefinitely.
Why can’t more teams do what United Airlines did? The answer is they can if they know how to get there. There are qualities of leaders and teams that give them the capabilities to work together more effectively and thrive in uncertainty, and tools to support them through the churn. Scenario planning is one of those tools – the most powerful way to ensure your team has the debate before there is a crisis. The difficult conversations have been started, the tradeoffs contemplated, so that when it’s time to act, it feels familiar.
Leading a future-proof team
The role of the team leader is to create space and environment for acknowledging what is unknowable and building a process that moves away from report-outs and political debates to alignment around critical factors and criteria for decision-making.
The team needs to be empowered and expected to debate constructively and bring discipline to its decision process. We know from research and through our work with agile teams that there are three qualities of these teams that make it more likely they’ll be able to plan for various scenarios, stay current on the critical factors, and be ready to pivot.
Seize the power of Both/And thinking
Both/And Thinking is the ability to hold that more than one seemingly conflicting fact or set of facts may be true, or there maybe be more than one scenario, potential outcome, or impact of any decision.
Both/And Thinking in teamwork requires all members to hold for the group the notion that seemingly opposing points of view can both contain truths. For example, it can be true that a recession may be painful, but also positive for your company.
To encourage both/and thinking, enable your team to embrace the plausibility of numerous scenarios, as well as options for the best actions based on emerging data. Helping your team to explicitly understand and analyze both sides of the seemingly contradictory truth is a key step forward.
Unlock the creativity that comes with curiosity
In teamwork, curiosity is ability of a team to display humility by soliciting input and other points of view. Curiosity avoids narrow, myopic thinking. It prevents your team from closing ranks at critical moments and helps open the aperture to see all possibilities.
To encourage curiosity, insist on questions even from those who have “been there and done that.” Seek to understand, model the behavior by asking questions yourself, even if you believe you know the answer. You never know when the “crazy” idea will be the one that makes most sense.
Make the path forward real through Decision Savvy
All the curiosity and flexibility in your approach won’t mean much if your team can’t make good decisions and move forward together. Agility requires a discipline around decision-making that encourages the team to decide on the criteria for decision before advocating for a point of view. When your team does this, it is far easier to build alignment and get to the right decision.
To foster decision savvy requires the leader to insist on taking a step back to ask “what problem are we solving” before the team begins solutioning. This step alone will prevent your team from solving before they get to the heart of the matter. Then, simply ask, “what are the criteria that this decision must meet?” and generate those in writing. Use it as a checklist to consider the various options, and then, tally up how well each potential solution meets the criteria.
Scenario planning is not a cure-all for thriving in a recession. But it will give you and your team a multitude of options and a path forward to take now. Perhaps most important, it will change the crisis mentality and alter the chemistry of the team. You’ll be able to meet each challenge head on, with greater confidence, agility, and resilience.
Most CEOs are revising downward their forecasts for business, though they remain reluctant for the moment to declare a recession is at hand. Within the current administration, and in congress, there is broad disagreement about what to do to head it off. This uncertainty is wreaking havoc on business planning. Chief Executive reported in June that 300 CEOs downgraded business forecasts for the next 12 months to 5.6 out of 10. CEOs are telling their people to prepare recession plans.
At the start of the 2020 pandemic, we also lacked foresight to imagine the dramatic swings in the fortunes of companies. There were big winners like technology, retail, financial services, and home entertainment; there were big losers like travel and tourism, hospitality, and energy. The massive shifts in the global business landscape rendered strategic plans out of date and useless.
So, what now? How do we navigate the next big, bad thing?
In 20 years of advising CEOs and senior executives on strategy execution, we’ve learned that during crisis, some teams rise to the occasion, while others are less resilient and more susceptible to doubt, which prompts reaction in the moment and can foster a chaotic sense of doom. While there are winners and losers in industry sectors, it is also true that some defy the odds, look around corners, seize opportunities, and keep steady hands at the wheel.
What kind of leaders weather tough times?
Through a review of our data on leaders and teams, we’ve discovered that inevitably there are qualities of both that drive growth and innovation, even in the most challenging times. These qualities are not always intuitive. In fact, in shorter supply your team is stretched thin, exhausted, and too busy to stop the whack-a-mole game to think clearly and provide direction to others. What do these leaders and their teams do right?
They tap into the stabilizing power of composure and restraint
Leaders who demonstrate a high level of composure and restraint in challenging times create an environment where it is safe to make mistakes, and to tell others when things are not working. Leaders are then able to foster discussion in a calm environment and resolve small issues before they become bigger ones. These leaders get a read on the fast-changing environment and quickly problem-solve with colleagues.
They dial up their antennae of awareness and concern
Awareness and concern are two additional qualities that go hand-in-hand in times of change and uncertainty. As people struggle to navigate the pressures and volatility, it’s more important than ever to know what your team is thinking and feeling, and to be aware of the pulse of the organization. If a downturn is ahead, you may be glad that not every position post-Pandemic is filled. However, the reality for most companies is that their best talent is most at risk and likely to leave. Staying aware helps you shore up your best defense against threats to growth.
They ramp up their curiosity and interactivity
These are two leadership qualities that work together beautifully when you need to solve problems. During challenging times, many leaders turn inward to try to shoulder the burden of solving problems with a ready-fire-aim approach. They hear about an issue and move immediately into action. They may ask for input, but not in group settings. Thus, they put spokes in wheels and their best people are talking only to them; not to one another.
It may feel counterintuitive, but when you can be intentionally curious and convene smart people, you learn that they can solve the problem better and faster than you can. Because they’ve authored the solution, they claim ownership of it and put all their energy behind it. As you move through uncertainty, they begin to feel more confident of their own agency in managing turbulence. As Ken Blanchard once said, “All of us are smarter than any of us.”
They focus on unleashing the capabilities of their interdependent, interconnected teams
Virtual and hybrid work have already laid bare the hidden, destructive issues that can derail relationships and teams. Teams that had less face time and more conflict found the challenge of misunderstanding and unresolved conflict even greater. It isn’t only each team but your network of teams, and how they operate together, that makes your organization resilient.
The performance of teams is vastly more important to the future of work than individual performance. Teams are really the new heroes of organizations. When you see unresolved conflict between teams, you can diagnose, with absolute certainty, the role that the friction is playing in creating drag. As you try to pivot in a recession, it’s time to prioritize how teams in your organization are actively engaging with one another, aligning on the goals, and working with enterprise focus.
Our research on teams has found that in challenging times, trust, support, candor, and curiosity lay the foundation of team culture. Make it a priority to bring people together and resolve trust issues by encouraging candor and looking for solutions. Do this by first being curious yourself, and then encouraging others on your team to seek to understand. Take the time now to ensure that your teams are performing at their best, and you’ll reap the rewards today and well beyond any recession or downturn.
What now?
I remember a CEO that I know telling the story of the commitment he made to retain all of his employees during a downturn, even though he predicted a 20% revenue loss in the first year. That decision, while risky, turned out to be fortuitous, as the economy pivoted and demand soared long before expected. Competitors who had let go of employees struggled, while this company recovered quickly and remains above capacity today.
The decision he made was informed by the values and qualities of leadership that defined this company’s culture. The CEO led by example, demonstrating composure and restraint that others modeled. They spent time talking with their employees about the decisions that they were making and why. They demonstrated concern for their well-being when demand picked up and they were under pressure to deliver.
Take a lesson from this CEO and what we’ve learned about leadership and teams. Keep these three approaches in mind as you move forward:
- Stay focused on what works – good leadership will get you through.
- Double down on your people and your teams – listen, learn, respond, and invest to make sure they have the knowledge, support, and tools to do their best.
- Bring your leaders and teams together to navigate the uncertainty together – forget being a hero and instead draw in your organization to collaborate, cooperate, and invent the future – you will all be stronger as a result.
As the next months unfold, we can all prepare to be better leaders by reflecting on what we already know about leading in uncertain times. Think about what worked and didn’t work over the last two years. Ask yourself: what is the lesson and how can we apply it now?
During turmoil, the business community tends to focus on continuity — emphasizing efficiency in turn. Both are critical. If you were to take any lessons away from the financial crisis of 2008, however, it might be wiser to think about how resiliency is key to long-term success.
Even in the depths of that recession, resilient companies showed a 25-point higher EBITDA than “nonresilient” counterparts and enjoyed markedly better recovery. A large part of this was due to business preparedness, as “resilients” took measures to reduce nonperforming assets, strengthen balance sheets, cut costs and prioritize customer-focused investments.
However, building a successful company involves more than business-oriented resilience (think cutting costs or shifting processes). It also involves organizational resilience: the strength of your people and how they’ll manage and lead moving forward.
4 Tactics for building organizational resilience
Covid-19 reinvigorated the need for both business and organizational resilience. Those at the helm of a business need to not only find ways to lead through uncertainty and anticipate change, but also foster companywide resilience. If you’re looking to do so, focus on these areas:
1. Leadership
Crises often hit companies in many areas at once, whether that’s with teams, communication, or operations. Without the right mindset, leaders struggle to find true north to help everyone see past the present moment. Immersing leaders into similar experiences (through simulations and scenario-planning) can help provide insights into how to ameliorate crises, set clear objectives, and take action holistically — which research suggests has become increasingly important for leaders. Besides this, leadership groups can also encourage an open exchange of ideas and establish new networks.
2. Individuals
Even with Covid-19 out of the equation, there’s no shortage of stressors in employees’ lives. Three-quarters of people admit to experiencing job burnout, with 40% connecting it to Covid-19. Similarly, more than one-third of workers have clocked longer hours recently. To support overall organizational resiliency, companies must start from the ground level by ensuring their employees are fit to work.
With this in mind, offer opportunities to connect with professional coaches. Provide access to platforms or apps (such as TaskHuman) that allow for diverse personalized support. You could also introduce mindfulness training and equip managers with the skills to help them better engage in personal conversations.
3. Teams
Shifting from a hierarchical to a flat structure has been beneficial in many organizations. Zappos adopted a holacracy back in 2014, for instance, and its team members decided to manage themselves as internal “small businesses.” You don’t need to reorganize as radically as Zappos, but it helps to rethink the corporate structure to encourage teamwork. Additionally, invest in collaborative tools like Slack or Yammer, and encourage employees to reach out to colleagues they normally wouldn’t to bring more knowledge into the mix.
4. Talent
Covid-19 brought talent management and business continuity into sharper focus as employees “left the building” — many for good. One CEO at a leading Chinese insurance company utilized a Business Continuity Planning Software and took steps to address job dissatisfaction by investing in employee training and development, reasoning that continued learning will boost growth once the pandemic subsides. This is a solid starting point, but take things a step further and make cultural changes that generate, engage, and empower talent. Focus on solidifying talent in employees in their day-to-day lives — not just through periodic training.
Organizational resilience is a critical component to ensuring success through crisis, and it can only be accomplished by focusing on your most important asset: people. Invest in the right tools, provide the necessary support, and make talent development a priority. Your operations are only as resilient as your leadership.
Related content
¿Se puede cambiar la cultura de una organización?
Hoy en día, hay pocas organizaciones que no se encuentren inmersas en uno (o varios) procesos de transformación cultural. Nuevas formas de trabajar en organizaciones más planas y adaptativas, mejoras en la cultura de seguridad, orientar la organización hacia sus clientes, transformaciones de las áreas comerciales, mejora de la excelencia operativa, por citar algunas.
Y es aquí donde viene una de las grandes preguntas:
¿se puede cambiar la cultura de una organización? Y, si es así, ¿cómo se hace?
Para ayudar a responder a estas preguntas, que a menudo nos hacen nuestros clientes y sobre las que hay mucho escrito, me gustaría compartir lo que en BTS hemos aprendido en los últimos 38 años sobre qué funciona y qué no (hasta ahora, que en esto de los cambios culturales uno nunca deja de aprender).
La buena noticia es que la respuesta a la pregunta de si se puede cambiar la cultura de una organización es sí.
La dificultad viene al responder a la segunda: ¿cómo se hace?
¿Un proyecto? ¿Una iniciativa?
Un punto importante a considerar es que los procesos de cambio o transformación cultural no son un proyecto con un inicio y un fin; es un proceso en constante evolución. Y esto es algo que en ocasiones genera tensión en las organizaciones, a menudo acostumbradas a un enfoque basado en proyectos.
¿Qué es crítico y a menudo se suele ignorar?
Hay una serie de elementos que, si se tienen en cuenta y se utilizan adecuadamente, harán que los esfuerzos de transformación sean mucho más eficaces. Desafortunadamente, muchas veces se ignoran.
Estos elementos críticos son:
- Involucrar a la gente. Cuanto más se hace partícipes de la transformación a las personas (a todos los niveles), más altas son las probabilidades de que implementen los cambios requeridos.
- Para entender el cambio hay que tangibilizarlo y experimentarlo. Consiste en conectar el marco teórico con acciones del día a día. Explicar la foto completa con transparencia es clave.
- Todos los cambios traen consigo cosas positivas, pero también tienen impactos negativos. Explicar la foto completa con transparencia es clave.
- Cambiar la cultura implica tiempo y requiere identificar y cambiar los “mindsets” y las estructuras diarias (símbolos) que definen cómo se hacen las cosas en la organización.
- La cultura debe estar fuertemente conectada con la estrategia.
¿Cómo recomendamos estructurar los procesos de cambio cultural?
Nuestro enfoque se compone de cuatro etapas: establecer resultados, crear líderes de cambio, incrustar cambios clave y sostener las nuevas formas de trabajo.
1. Establecer resultados
El primer paso en cualquier proceso de transformación es establecer resultados claros. Es crucial identificar los impulsores de la transformación y definir los resultados deseados de manera que se logre un verdadero alineamiento a nivel ejecutivo. A medida que se avanza, hay que conectar los puntos entre el propósito y la visión, entendiendo de dónde se viene, dónde se está y hacia dónde se quiere avanzar. Además, es esencial conectar la transformación con los objetivos organizacionales.
Algunas acciones relevantes de esta fase son:
- Recopilación de información (entrevistas, focus groups, visitas a operaciones,…)
- Diagnósticos culturales
- Definición de expectativas (Leadership Profiles
2. Crear líderes de cambio
En BTS creemos que todos los líderes son también líderes de cambio. Adoptar una mentalidad de “líder de cambio” requiere que los líderes experimenten y vean lo que se espera de ellos. Desde el inicio, es vital impulsar a la acción con ‘trabajo real’, como establecer nuevas prioridades y comunicar de forma transparente y eficaz.
Hay que comprometer (emocional y racionalmente) a los líderes con el cambio y hacerles ver cómo pueden impactar en la cultura a través de acciones concretas en el día a día.
Por último, es necesario proporcionar apoyo continuo para los cambios de mentalidad y comportamiento más difíciles y recoger retroalimentación sobre lo que funciona y lo que no en esta etapa.
Algunas acciones relevantes de esta fase son:
- Elaboración de Playbooks para roles críticos
- Despliegue de programas de liderazgo y cambio
- Feedback loops con los niveles ejecutivos
3. Incrustar cambios clave
Para lograr un cambio significativo, es esencial identificar los modelos mentales actuales y ofrecer nuevos que apoyen el estado deseado. Crear rutinas y símbolos que refuercen el cambio, así como identificar procesos, prácticas, eventos o normas ancladas en las viejas formas de trabajar, es crucial.
Cocrear nuevas formas de trabajo para su activación inmediata ayuda a cimentar estos cambios. A medida que se avanza, cambiar los sistemas y procesos que soportan y refuerzan los cambios cruciales es fundamental para el éxito a largo plazo.
Algunas acciones relevantes de esta fase son:
- Coaching a líderes
- Montar Sprints culturales
- Cascadear el cambio al resto de la organización
- Assessments para medir cambios de comportamientos
4. Sostener las nuevas formas de trabajo
El cambio no es solo un esfuerzo individual, sino también un fenómeno social. Por ello hay que proveer de las redes sociales necesarias para apoyar los cambios de mentalidad y comportamiento. Intervenir con apoyo individual para roles críticos y períodos específicos, así como incorporar nuevas formas de trabajo, asegura la continuidad del cambio.
Por último, hay que utilizar datos para analizar lo que funciona y lo que no, permitiendo crear el siguiente conjunto de intervenciones y apoyo necesarios.
Algunas acciones relevantes de esta fase son:
- Integración de los Playbooks en el ciclo de talento de la organización
- Practica de los nuevos comportamientos en el día a día con bots potenciados por IA
- Diseño de una oficina para monitorizar el cambio y definir nuevas acciones
- Diseño y lanzamiento de Comunidades de Práctica (CoP)
La importancia de ser paciente e impaciente a la vez
Los procesos de transformación cultural son uno de los elementos más retadores, ya que nunca existe una receta única.
Ser estratégicamente paciente (teniendo claros esos resultados deseados y evitando dar bandazos), pero tácticamente impaciente (realizando acciones en las fases expuestas anteriormente y viendo qué funciona y qué no, para pivotar y corregir) es clave en los procesos de transformación.
El enfoque de las 4 fases ayuda a ello, posibilitando que estos viajes se conviertan en una experiencia enriquecedora para la organización, y no en un dolor de los que dejan cicatriz en la memoria colectiva.
Este es solo un resumen.
Si quieres profundizar en el enfoque completo, ejemplos y claves prácticas:
Descarga el PDF completo y accede a todo el contenido.
En todos los sectores, la seguridad está experimentando un cambio estructural. Lo que antes se gestionaba principalmente como una función de cumplimiento o una métrica de desempeño se entiende cada vez más como un reflejo de cómo las organizaciones están diseñadas, lideradas y mejoradas de forma continua.
En entornos complejos y de alto riesgo, la seguridad no se logra únicamente mediante un mayor control o programas adicionales. Surge de la interacción entre el comportamiento del liderazgo, el diseño operativo, los entornos de decisión y la capacidad de la organización para aprender y adaptarse.
Basándonos en la ciencia global de la seguridad, el enfoque de Human & Organizational Performance (HOP), la investigación sobre seguridad psicológica y nuestra experiencia en transformación en múltiples industrias, identificamos ocho cambios clave que están definiendo la próxima evolución de la cultura de seguridad.
1. La seguridad como valor organizacional central
La seguridad está dejando de tratarse como una prioridad cambiante. Las prioridades compiten. Los valores guían.
Cuando la seguridad se convierte en un valor central, influye en la toma de decisiones, en los compromisos bajo presión, en la planificación operativa y en la asignación de recursos. La seguridad pasa a ser una consecuencia natural de cómo funciona el sistema, en lugar de una iniciativa añadida a la producción.
Este cambio también redefine el rol de las funciones de seguridad: de supervisar el cumplimiento a habilitar un desempeño seguro y sostenible.
2. El aprendizaje como disciplina operativa
Las organizaciones están integrando el aprendizaje continuo en las operaciones diarias. En lugar de centrarse solo en lo que falló, exploran señales débiles, casi accidentes, fricciones operativas y adaptaciones exitosas.
El aprendizaje se convierte en una capacidad clave que acelera la generación de insights, fortalece la resiliencia y mejora la calidad de las decisiones.
3. Responsabilidad del liderazgo en todos los niveles
La cultura de seguridad se reconoce cada vez más como una capacidad de liderazgo, no solo como responsabilidad del área de HSE.
- Los directivos marcan la dirección y el tono.
- Los mandos intermedios traducen las expectativas en decisiones operativas.
- Los supervisores configuran el entorno de decisiones del día a día.
Las organizaciones exitosas convierten las expectativas de seguridad en comportamientos concretos de liderazgo y rutinas diarias, generando claridad y alineación entre niveles.
4. La seguridad psicológica como infraestructura
Una cultura de seguridad sólida depende de entornos donde las personas se sientan seguras para hablar.
Cuando los empleados perciben seguridad psicológica, las señales débiles emergen antes, los riesgos se discuten abiertamente y el aprendizaje se acelera.
La seguridad psicológica es una infraestructura operativa, no un tema “blando”.
5. Amplificar lo que funciona
Existe un reconocimiento creciente de que la mayor parte del trabajo se realiza de forma segura, a menudo en condiciones variables.
Estudiar el éxito revela la capacidad adaptativa y fortalece la resiliencia. Esto complementa el análisis tradicional de incidentes al reforzar la experiencia y la confianza.
6. Alinear el trabajo “imaginado” con el trabajo “real”
Los procedimientos y planes rara vez capturan perfectamente la complejidad operativa.
Las organizaciones líderes reducen la brecha entre políticas y realidad operativa incorporando la perspectiva del personal de primera línea y empoderando la autoridad para detener el trabajo.
El objetivo es una mejor alineación entre diseño y ejecución.
7. Diseñar para la toma de decisiones humana
Los incidentes suelen derivarse de sesgos cognitivos predecibles como la normalización de la desviación, el sesgo hacia la producción, el exceso de confianza y el sesgo retrospectivo.
Reconocer estas trampas en la toma de decisiones desplaza el enfoque de culpar a las personas hacia fortalecer los entornos de decisión.
8. La evolución cultural como capacidad a largo plazo
Una cultura de seguridad sostenible requiere integración en lugar de reinvención, desarrollo estructurado de capacidades en lugar de programas puntuales y medición del impacto conductual en lugar de métricas de actividad.
Las organizaciones que tienen éxito:
- Integran la seguridad en los sistemas existentes de liderazgo y operación
- Diseñan itinerarios de aprendizaje que apoyan la aplicación en el día a día
- Miden el cambio de comportamiento y los resultados operativos
- Refuerzan el progreso de manera consistente en el tiempo
La evolución cultural es un compromiso sostenido con la alineación del sistema y el desarrollo de capacidades.
Conclusión
La evolución de la cultura de seguridad trata menos de añadir controles y más de fortalecer sistemas.
La seguridad es algo que las organizaciones producen: a través de la claridad del liderazgo, el diseño operativo, la seguridad psicológica y el aprendizaje continuo.
Quienes integren estas capacidades de forma consistente no solo reducirán riesgos. Construirán organizaciones más resilientes, sostenibles y de alto desempeño.
Sources & references:
- WorldSteel Association. Safety Culture & Leadership Fundamentals.
- Norsk Industri (2025). Safety Leadership and Learning: A Practical Guide to HOP.
- D. Parker et al. / Safety Science 44 (2006). Development of Organisational Safety Culture
- Hollnagel, E. (2014). Safety-I and Safety-II: The Past and Future of Safety Management.
- Hollnagel, E. (2018). Safety-II in Practice: Developing the Resilience Potentials.
- Conklin, T. (2012). Pre-Accident Investigations: An Introduction to Organizational Safety.
- Edmondson, A. (2018). The Fearless Organizations
- Reason, J. (1997). Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents.
- Resilience Engineering research (Hollnagel,Woods, Leveson and others).
Across industries, safety is undergoing a structural shift. What was once managed primarily as a compliance function or performance metricis increasingly understood as a reflection of how organizations are designed, led and continuously improved.
In complex and high-risk environments, safety is notachieved through stronger enforcement or additional programs alone. It emerges from the interaction between leadership behavior, operational design, decision environments and the organization’s capacity to learn and adapt.
Drawing on global safety science, Human & Organizational Performance (HOP), research on psychological safety, and our cross-industry transformation experience, eight key shifts are shaping the next evolution of safety culture.
1. Safety as a Core Organizational Value
Safety is moving beyond being treated as a shifting priority. Priorities compete. Values guide.
When safety becomes a core organizational value, it shapes decision-making, trade-offs under pressure, operational planning and resourceallocation. Safety becomes the natural consequence of how the system operates,rather than a campaign layered on top of production.
This shift also redefines the role of safety functions, from compliance policing to enabling safe and sustainable performance.
2. Learning as an Operating Discipline
Organizations are embedding continuous learning into everyday operations. Rather than focusing only on what failed, they exploreweak signals, near misses, operational friction and successful adaptations.
Learning becomes a core capability, accelerating insight, strengthening resilience and improving decision quality.
3. Leadership Ownership at All Levels
Safety culture is increasingly recognized as a leadership capability, not solely an HSE responsibility.
Executives define direction and tone.
Middle managers translate expectations into operational decisions.
Supervisors shape the daily decision environment.
Successful organizations translate safety expectations into concrete leadership behaviors and daily routines, creating clarity and alignment across levels.
4. Psychological Safety as Infrastructure
A strong safety culture depends on speaking-up environments.
When employees feel psychologically safe, weak signals surface earlier, risk trade-offs are openly discussed and learning accelerates.
Psychological safety is operational infrastructure , not a soft topic.
5. Amplifying What Works
There is growing recognition that most work is completed safely, often under variable conditions.
Studying success reveals adaptive capacity and strengthens resilience. This complements traditional incident analysis by reinforcing expertise and confidence.
6. Aligning Work-as-Imagined and Work-as-Done
Procedures and plans rarely capture operational complexity perfectly.
Leading organizations reduce the gap between policies and operational reality by inviting front line input and empowering stop-work authority.
The goal is better alignment between design and execution.
7. Designing for Human Decision-Making
Incidents often stem from predictable cognitive biases such as normalization of deviance, production bias, overconfidence and hindsight bias.
Recognizing these decision traps shifts focus from blaming individuals to strengthening decision environments.
8. Cultural Evolution as a Long-Term Capability
Sustainable safety culture requires integration rather than reinvention, structured capability journeys rather than one-off programs, and measurable behavioral impact rather than activity metrics.
Organizations that succeed:
- Integrate safety into existing leadership and operational systems
- Design earning journeys that support day-to-day application
- Measure behavioral change and operational outcomes
- Reinforce progress consistently over time
Cultural evolution is a sustained commitment to system alignment and capability building.
Conclusion
The evolution of safety culture is less about adding controls and more about strengthening systems.
Safety is something organizations produce — through leadership clarity, operational design, psychological safety and continuous learning.
Those who embed these capabilities consistently will not only reduce risk. They will build more resilient, sustainable and high-performing organizations.
Sources & references:
- WorldSteel Association. Safety Culture & Leadership Fundamentals.
- Norsk Industri (2025). Safety Leadership and Learning: A Practical Guide to HOP.
- D. Parker et al. / Safety Science 44 (2006). Development of Organisational Safety Culture
- Hollnagel, E. (2014). Safety-I and Safety-II: The Past and Future of Safety Management.
- Hollnagel, E. (2018). Safety-II in Practice: Developing the Resilience Potentials.
- Conklin, T. (2012). Pre-Accident Investigations: An Introduction to Organizational Safety.
- Edmondson, A. (2018). The Fearless Organizations
- Reason, J. (1997). Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents.
- Resilience Engineering research (Hollnagel,Woods, Leveson and others).