Companies are Like Faces

Article by Dr. John E. Kello

Here at the outset, I must acknowledge a bias, but one which I believe is very well-founded. In  my first few years working as an organizational consultant and applying behavioral science based principles to real world problems, I was impressed with the extent to which people see  their industry as unlike any others, and more specifically still, many people tend to see their  particular company as distinctive, even singularly unique within their industry. The extensive  literature on corporate culture can be taken as supporting this widespread view of the  uniqueness of companies. 

Some consultants niche their practice to be industry-specific. Working mainly or exclusively  within a particular industry, they have neither need nor basis to challenge the industry uniqueness assumption. They still have to deal with the less extensive divide between different  members of the industry. On the other hand, some consultants intentionally work with a wide  variety of industries. I am one of those. I cast my consulting net wide, and thus I have worked  with a very broad range of industries and governmental agencies, each of which may claim to  be unlike any other. But I was struck early on in my wide-ranging consulting career not so much  by the claimed uniqueness of each organization within each distinct industry, but (to the  contrary) by the commonality among the issues faced by the companies that I supported as an  external partner, regardless of their differences in detail. Yes, operating a nuclear reactor is not  the same as driving a forklift in a warehouse, and a flour mill with 25 employees under one roof  is not the same as an auto assembly plant with 2500. By the same token, Delta Airlines is not  the same as Spirit Airlines, and Ford and GM are not the same. Different industries and  different players within the same industry do have different constraints and requirements, and  cultures. But still, the commonalities are striking to me.

I began to observe early on that whenever two or more people join together to produce some  product or service, significant common issues arise. There are essentially always prospective  issues of communication (widely identified as the number one problem in many industries),  teamwork, shared values, clear direction, keeping score, giving and receiving feedback, selling  and marketing, producing, providing positive leadership, and on and on. Even in industries as  ostensibly diverse as manufacturing and commercial aviation, the form these issues take is  remarkably similar.  

I also learned early on that it is unwise to suggest to folks in, say, a tech industry that solutions  from a smokestack industry could ever apply to their supposedly unique setting. I have literally  been told by airline pilots that airline pilots have nothing to learn from someone who does not  fly... “How could you possibly understand who we are, what we do, and the challenges we face?  

Come back when you have 5000 hours in the 767, professor.” On that point, as I worked with  pioneer psychologists who developed Crew Resource Management programs for the airlines, I  learned that the delivery of such high-impact safety programs would not be done by the  behavioral scientists who developed them. Rather, our role was to teach CRM programs to  check airmen, who were experienced senior flight instructors but not behavioral scientists, who  in turn led the training sessions. Pilots would only listen to other pilots, even when those pilots  were not expert in the content being delivered. I have heard similar comments about and from  Space shuttle pilots, research chemists, financial analysts, and medical doctors, just to name a  few.  

I also learned that my wry rebuttal to the above, along the lines of “You know, my wife’s  OB/GYN has never personally had a baby, but my wife swears by his work” was not the right  tack to take. 

In some of my occupational safety consulting with traditional manufacturing companies I use  examples from my research and consulting experience with the airlines. On a few occasions I  have been told (more or less good-naturedly) that "we make cleaning products… we don't fly  airplanes… examples of pilots making mistakes don't apply to our work…" To which I say, yes, of  

course, the technical aspects of your work are definitely different, but a miscommunication, or  an unchecked assumption, or a loss of situational awareness, or fatigue, or getting in a rush and  cutting corners… all of those apply equally to workers in your industry and theirs. Further, I try  to make the case that industries such as commercial aviation have focused intently on  controlling error and thereby reducing accidents, and indeed that all industries can benefit from  the strategies and tactics developed in the cockpit. Pilots are not firefighters or surgeons or  public safety officers, but all of those professionals in what are called collectively High  Reliability Organizations (HROs) face similar challenges. They can’t afford to make mistakes.  They have to do it right every time. Otherwise, really bad things can happen. 

I see great value in good analogies. "X is a lot like Y" can help us reach a higher level of  understanding about X and Y. After considerable thought, I finally came up with an analogy that  captures my bias, my view of the simultaneous distinctiveness and at the same time  commonality of organizations. It is simply this: companies are like faces. Each is, of course,  unique (we are leaving out identical twins, as my swell analogy breaks down there)., but each is  made of the same parts. Two faces are visibly different from each other (ignore the twins  please), but they are both faces. Neither will be mistaken for a hammer, an oak leaf, a flamingo,  or a box of cereal. And indeed, while no two faces look just alike (I asked you to stop thinking of  identical twins!), there are just a few kinds of eyes, eyebrows, lips, hair, chins, ears, noses, and  so on. That is how police artists traditionally were able to develop a sketch of suspects. They  would have eyewitnesses pick out from a standard set, the nose, eyes, etc. that were like that  of the suspect, and put them all together into the composite sketch. 

Given my bias, which I think is eminently defensible of course, I believe passionately that  significant common denominator issues arise in essentially all organizations, and that it is not  wrong to import strategies from other companies and other industries. Not only is it not wrong,  it is often a breakthrough, an “aha moment” when a client learns how their issue of concern  has been addressed by those outside their company and/or their industry. As a stark example,  gold-standard strategies for safe work drawn from the nuclear industry, the airlines, first  responder teams, or healthcare providers (again, all identified as HROs) are equally applicable  to other work settings too. Communication problems are communication problems, whether in  the cockpit with a pilot talking to a co-pilot, or in the factory with a shift supervisor talking to a  machine operator. Why would we not want to draw from best practices developed and vetted  in industries which cannot tolerate error, and apply those strategies in other work settings?  

Again, I find great value in good analogies.