UTILITIES
In 2009 , Oklahoma Gas & Electric ( OGE ) saw that they needed to change — communication barriers , finger pointing at all levels , and a lack of alignment around their Key Results were all impacting their Culture . This Fortune 1000 company serving 750,000 customers was filled with 3,000 plus employees that didn ’ t feel that they could make a difference . This , along with ever-changing market conditions in the Utility and Energy industry , caused the leadership team to step back and realize that they needed to do things differently .
More starkly , senior executives at OGE faced : Increasing safety incidents , stagnant customer satisfaction , and a tolerable , but poorly trending stock price of $ 13.58 per share .
Any course correction , they believed , would be powered by packing down dozens of measurables into just a few — something they would learn to call “ Key Results .” These “ Key Results ” would need to be results that every one in every role could contribute to — an even bigger challenge . The management team decided on shareholder value and customer satisfaction but then put at the top of their list Safety .
Reflecting recently on the effort involved , OGE ’ s director of health and safety , Jerrod Moser , said they set out to create a culture that was “ more than something that comes from the safety group . It needed to involve every member , every moment of every day , at work and at home ”— a more personal culture .
Why ? In an industry with just under eight times the fatality rate of others , OGE executives knew that a reduction in Reportable Safety Incidents ( RSI ) would not only boost employee morale and organizational culture but also add millions of dollars to their bottom line . Since they saw safety as a root issue , one that touched everything they did , reducing RSI was a true Key Result where failure was not an option .
Equally historic was the number of initiatives and programs aimed at reducing safety issues that had either stalled or failed altogether — not for the lack of trying but possibly because marshalling 3,000 people to care equally about one Key Result is just hard .
Powering Up So how did they get there ? Again ,
10 September 2014