Mary Jo Rogers – Founder, Rogers Leadership Group

There's a way and a way such a better way today, today. It makes your boys tell the world there's a better way, today there's a better way. This is Rod Adams and it's time for another Atomic Show. My guest today is Mary Jo Rogers, an authority on leadership and nuclear energy. I say she's an authority because she's an author. She authored a book called Leadership and Nuclear Energy and she runs a consulting group. Rogers Leadership. Welcome Mary Jo. Hey Rod, great to be here. Well, that's a rather short response, but it's not just tell me a little bit more about yourself and how you became interested. In leadership, I believe your background is as a clinical psychologist. My first career was in clinical psychology and I transitioned in a consulting and business consulting. I was working with the consulting firm early in that transition who at the time was heavily involved in the nuclear power industry. I learned a great deal from the folks that trained me and made that transition possible. And by chance, I ended up on the nuclear team and loved it. I just couldn't get enough of nuclear power. And I worked with just incredible leaders in the field at different companies. And in particular, I worked very closely with Oliver Kingsley and Chris Crane when they were running nuclear power at excellent. What was it about Oliver Kingsley that attracted you to nuclear energy leadership? What was he doing that made him such an interesting subject for study? He just epitomized the leadership that was necessary at the time to make a big turnaround in nuclear power performance. And some of his methods wouldn't be as acceptable now because, as you probably know, he's kind of a tough nut made in the Admiral Rick over category. So, but he had a vision and he had passion and he had a clear system that he was putting in place to make combat and then after the merger Philadelphia Electric combined to become the best nuclear operator in the country. And he was very systematic and he and Chris Crane included every important piece of the puzzle in order to sustain that performance. And that a big piece of their puzzle was leadership development and leadership assessments and team development. So that's where I came in and got involved in assessment as a contractor and then when I went inside excellent, I ran the management development team and that was an expanding team at the time. And so we were heavily involved in putting in place these processes for leadership and organizational development. And so you intrigued me so much when you said that Oliver, Oliver's tactics would no longer be acceptable. I had to pull the strand on that. What was it that he did and you said he's a tough nut in the leadership, I mean in the Rick over tradition? What was it that he did that would not be acceptable today? I would say not acceptable for the most part in US nuclear power plants and it probably would still work at other settings. And that's just being very publicly harsh on people and calling individuals out in order to make a point for the rest of the group to learn. He would do it in a way that was very hard on the individual. And I was the recipient of that not from Oliver but from Chris Crane. So everyone on the team had a seat at the table, procurement, HR as well as all the operators and other important support functions like business operations. But in any case we all were called to task when things weren't working or when we let the team down in some way and it wasn't pleasant. It could be kind of embarrassing and you never forget it when it happens. Well that's true. You never forget it which is sometimes what makes it effective. Yeah, well it's a significant emotional experience that is for sure and that's a big part of adult development is an experience if not the main part is experience. But I think there are ways to do that aren't quite as humiliating perhaps. But because of the culture and safety culture importance you don't want people to be afraid to bring things up and to question authority and have a questioning attitude and so it just can be a little bit stifling. So you think that calling people out was the real part that would be a little bit challenging today. A calling people out in the way that it was done back in I'd say 2001 to 2005 maybe during the peak of the turnaround of the excellent plants. It refers to my memory when did Mr. King's Lee move to excellent or to comment I guess at the time. I believe it was 1998 when Oliver came to excellent and there's probably somebody out there that has better dates than I have. And it was 1997 when John Rowe came to comment at the time. And they both were using this consulting firm that I was part of to help with their turnaround of the company and especially after the merger. So Oliver had a big part in turning around the industry and saying we need to be more rigorous expect more demand more and better performance out of our plants and out of our people be more systematic and accountable and followed up and put in place a model which you may have heard that Oliver and Chris put in a place of management model that was very effective in creating the turnaround in performance and in sustaining it and it included developing leaders throughout the organization and being very deliberate about it and not just leaving it as an afterthought. And if we get around to it we'll have these reviews and discussions. It was a part of their plan. One of the things that many organizations seem to do is that they elevate people into management who are good at what they do in the lower levels. But they never really spend much time helping them learn how to be both a good manager, taking care of time and budgets and all that stuff. But also they don't have them learn how to be a good leader of people. What have you done to help people recognize the importance of training people to be leaders, teaching them, giving them the tools. I've consulted as you know across the nuclear power industry across the US and in Japan for TEPCO and also with IAEA. In any case the industry recognizes the importance of it and there's discussion at a lot of my clients, not if not all my clients over the years, including nuclear but also utilities and Department of Energy contractors. There's a lot of lip service to leadership development but the rigor isn't there. And so my efforts have been around pointing out the gaps and showing folks how to put in the system and how to have rigor around it. But not everyone is ready to do that or has the staffing to do that. And so they just want managers to jump in the job and just get going because they don't want to take the time away from the work and they don't feel like they have the time to do that. But it has to be systematic throughout the organization, top leadership has to own it and drive it and hold people accountable to it. If it's just HR, chasing people down to work on their development plans or follow through on some coaching that won't be very sustainable. Your clients are people that have gone out and found a consultant named Rogers Leadership Group. So they obviously have at least some awareness that they need help in that area. What about the people that don't look for consultants to help their leadership? What kinds of problems have you maybe heard of or seen in companies that aren't recognizing their weakness or weak areas? I published the book as you mentioned and it was in 2013, so 10 years ago. And I illustrated the history of leadership development and safety culture, operational focus, self regulation. Just these critical parts of the nuclear power industry success over the years to help people train their new to nuclear people or their new nukes that they're recruiting or new managers. What are the expectations and how did we get here? What is the why behind safety culture and what is operational focus and things like that? But more recently, I published a number of articles in HazardX Magazine on safety culture and safety culture leadership to help reach folks that I'm not working with, to explain how safety culture affects performance and illustrate the gaps that I'm seeing out there and how to close them. I've been known to tell people that the nuclear industry has a great safety culture, but sometimes has been lacking in what I call a cost culture. Is there a trade-off between a safety culture and an awareness of the effects on cost? One of you is that there does not have to be a trade-off, but in a number of organizations there is, most likely. But safety culture and operational excellence and operational focus are really part of the same process, basically two sides of the same coin. And I talk about this in my book in the operational focus section. It's two sides of the same coin. The operational focus and let's say cost management and asset management. That is critical, or you're going to lose integrity. of the plant over time. You know, if you're not managing that and focused on the operation and what are the threats to reliable production? So safety culture is a threat to reliable production. You know, what takes a unit offline faster than somebody with a serious incident or in case of the utilities that I work with, the fatality, life altering injury or burn. That'll take your production offline for a while. So that's kind of the obvious extreme. But even at the minor injury level or just at the day to day level, the folks that are out in the plant are the eyes on the equipment. You know, hear this phrase. You want the supervisors to have the eyes, their eyes on the work and their people. Well, the frontline workers have their eyes on the equipment. And if they aren't telling you everything that's going on because the safety culture has problems, then you're not going to be able to manage your risk like you think you are. And so I think it's a false dichotomy. You really, and I saw that with excellent. They were able to manage cost and performance and culture. And I've seen it in other organizations, but I've also seen it where organizations feel that the safety culture work is going to be too expensive and they don't want to take time away from operations or take time to do leadership development like we just talked about. How do you find your clients? Does it come over the trancent? Do you have a marketing plan? Do they reach your book and say, we need this this person and her team to come talk to us? What does that work out? Almost all of my clients come from word of mouth of people that I've worked with before that talk with them, know them, or they have a colleague that has a similar issue in their organization. And so they reach out to me because someone referred them to me. Or I worked with them in the past and they're coming back and saying, you know, we really didn't put in place the feedback and the suggestions that you made last time. And we want to get more serious about that. But also, we want to broaden the safety culture assessment to the rest of the operation, not just, let's say, one business. So it's word of mouth because I've been so involved in the nuclear power industry and then the utilities. And then I started working with Department of Energy and DOE contractors. I get referrals that way. And right now, I'm busy with Los Alamos. There's a legacy cleanup mission, which is Department of Energy, Environmental Management. It used to be N and S a run. And ever since it was turned over, they've really struggled. And so it's interesting also, so I know a number of people at DOE and then they'll talk to someone else. And now I'm also working with NCNR, which is the reactor at NIST in Baltimore. And that's a Department of Commerce site. And that's all on safety culture and leadership. That's how I get connected with people. It's through other people that I've worked with. I've recently heard Maria Korsnick of the Nuclear Energy Institute testify to Congress. And one of the things that she asked Congress to do was to help the nuclear regulatory commission recognize the importance of leadership as they try to improve their ability to license new power reactors and renew the license of the existing power reactors. Has the NRC talked to you guys at all or have you talked to them? I never worked directly with the NRC. I know folks that have and who do. But I know they've done a lot of work in that area and they've worked on their safety culture. But there is a need, I think across the related government agencies for leadership development and recruiting, you know, not just at the NRC. It's pretty pervasive in other departments as well. Yeah, one of the challenges the whole industry, the whole infrastructure is undergoing is this challenge of recruiting. And I was just reading another article where parts of the nuclear establishment are kind of cheating. Instead of training their own people, they're going off and poaching others. Have you seen organizations where they get real good at training people and all of a sudden their people start being hired away? Oh, yes. I've seen that excellent comes to mind again because they became very successful at training and developing their leaders, starting at the first-time supervisor level. And also that helped me expand my business because a number of excellent people would leave excellent, go to another company, another utility, and I would work with them there. And so I know excellent in the past had complained about that at with their info, peers and NEI folks. And so that supposedly people are trying to come back on that because, but it's inevitable. And I don't blame people for moving on to different environments and different opportunities. But the answer isn't stealing people from your peer organizations. It's getting systematic about development and getting serious about it and recognizing the value in it. And so it's not just lip service or kind of an afterthought. How does good leadership help the organization get the best out of its people? There are a number of leadership books in the world and an addition to mine. And so it's really not much different from other industries, nuclear power and a lot of my clients, as you know, are safety critical organizations or utilities or energy companies that do high hazard work. It's not much different. But in my experience, their commitment to their own development and to their people's development is critical. And understanding and role modeling safety culture are critical. And so there's a good model of leadership that the Department of Energy has that that breaks down the behaviors of strong leaders into very specific actions. And there's another section on employee engagement and another section on organizational learning. And it's very specific. And I tend to use that everywhere I go because applies in all different environments. It's generic enough, but then it's specific enough. And so the key qualities and behaviors of leaders center around being a role model and having integrity, you know, to saying what they're doing, what they say. And Rad, I don't have that model in front of me right now. So I'm like, should have gone there because I'm like, I got all this other stuff in front of me, but I don't have that. Well, you know, sometimes we're doing audio interviews. We don't have time to have everything in front of us. Kind of like have to go from what we can remember. Yeah, I do remember that you wrote some works and articles about what you call energy based hazard recognition. How does that play into keeping people safe? Well, I'm glad you brought this up because there's a lot of interest in it. Now, and EEI has gotten behind it and done some research on it itself and is promoting the use of this energy wheel that looks at energy sources and energy based hazard recognition. But I'll back up a bit to put it in context. So I summarized this in my hazard X article that was published in January of this year. And that the background is that OSHA rates have gone down, as you know, in nuclear power, they've been low for a long time. But in the utilities and other high hazard companies, their OSHA rates for the most part have gone down and down and down. Now, when you say OSHA rates, you mean, and I guess OSHA rate being down is a good thing, right? That means your minor incidence or whatever is low or how does that mean? Well, it's the total accident and incident rate is really the OSHA metric that I'm talking about, which looks at slips, trips, and falls. Someone not holding onto the hand roll when they're walking down a couple of stairs and they slip. It includes everything, all the way up to serious life altering incidents. But if you remove the fatalities from that and the life, the serious life altering incidents, the total accident rate is very low or it's just gone down over the past 10 years, while the the sift rates or serious incidents and fatality rate has either stayed the same or gone up. So, yeah, can I have a counterintuitive? Right, right. That for so many years, the model has been that if you address all the low level incidents and have high standards around safety compliance and safe behavior, that that will prevent your serious incidents and fatalities. And what companies and E.E.I. discusses this, what we're finding is that they don't predict serious incidents and fatalities that in most cases, there's something else going on when the fatality occurs. And that's where safety culture comes in and has a recognition that's energy based, which I can explain. They're like the mediating factors for serious incidents and fatalities. So, on the safety culture side, that's probably more obvious that if there can be big safety culture gaps that make you more at risk for serious incidents, even though you have low safety rates and that is if reporting isn't reliable. You think your people are reporting everything, but they're not. And I assume having been in various organizations, there are certain organizations that really emphasize the importance of keeping the rate down and sometimes that happens by people not reporting. Yes. And we just don't see that in commercial nuclear power very much, but outside of the new generation, it's much more prevalent. And I've spent a lot of time with frontline workers. And you know, that some have told me if their arm isn't bleeding and you know, about to fall off, they're not going to report it. And they give me specific examples or just they kind of sneak off the property, hiding their, you know, if they hurt their arm, but not seriously. So it's so the culture has to support reporting. So you can manage your risk and know what's going on with your equipment. And so if, and if the frontline workers aren't viewing the leadership safety efforts as really genuinely in their best interest, that's safety culture issue. They well buy into some of the changes and procedures put in place to prevent serious injuries and fatalities. I've seen that quite a bit. So let's go back to your energy based hazard. And how does understanding the energy involved, help you recognize a hazard and help you address whatever protections you need to prevent you from being harmed by the hazard. In the energy based hazard recognition training, it's targeted around these energy sources and potential sources. And so there's energy wheel that EEI has adopted and it includes gravity, chemical energy, radiation, sound, pressure, electrical energy, mechanical, motion, etc. And so I'm not a trainer in this hazard, or energy based hazard recognition. But as I've studied it, the training shows people how to identify potential risk that of injury due to a potential, you know, underestimated or unseen force coming from a high-energy source and take steps to avoid it and mitigate it, etc. So the folks at EEI have joined up with some companies and they've done some of this training and people get so much better at recognizing the potential hazard. I'm going to go back and do something. I should have done the first time to use the acronym EEI is Edison Electric Institute, is that right? That's right. That's right. We get so used to using these acronyms that we forget that not everybody has learned them. That's right. That's right. They can mean many different things. We've been talking for a little over half an hour. I'd like to give you the opportunity to summarize or cover something that we haven't talked about. You and I would agree that nuclear power is an absolutely essential part of the sustainable energy solution for the world. We have to continue to do license renewal and then there's new build. There's small modular reactors. There's technology. There's so much work to be done and nuclear has to be a big part of it. What the general public doesn't realize is that over the years, the nuclear operating companies have learned how to run these reactors so safely and so reliably to have 99% capacity factors and just minimal or non-existent serious injuries and fatalities as well as low OSHA rates, which are total accident and injury rates. In my view, the nuclear energy leadership development and recruitment is even more important now than it ever was and that we've got to develop nuclear leaders that understand the house and the wise of safe and reliable and cost efficient operations but also be prepared to learn how to run new technology. If someone asks me what is the key to leadership, I would say the key to nuclear leadership is development and the key to safety culture is leadership. If your leadership isn't creating positive, effective safety culture, that will hurt your production and your safety, obviously. If your leadership doesn't develop themselves, their own team and their organization, whatever good they're doing won't be sustainable. I put a lot of this information on my website, rogersleadership.com. That's r-o-g-e-r-s leadership.com. If anyone's interested in this energy-based hazard recognition, the book, other articles on safety culture and supervisor, coaching and things like that, I've got links on all these topics on the website and also within each link, I have listed all my references and any sort of background articles that went into it so people can go that route if they want to get it more into a topic. Well, I'm going to have to gently correct my guest here just so people can actually find your website because it's rogersleadershipgroup.com. I think you forgot to say group on you. No, both. You can get there both ways. Yeah. I didn't. I just know that's intentional. Some people leave off the group and rogers leadership is a lot easier to remember. But if you typed in either one, both will take you there. Perfect. I didn't realize that. So I just know that what I had typed in and I checked it before I corrected you. But anyway, that's perfect. Your website URL works in more than one way. Yes. Appreciate that. And I really enjoyed our conversation. I hope that, first of all, there's no doubt that I agree with it. Nuclear energy is a vital component of our abundant energy future. We need clean energy and we need it when we need it not at the whim of the weather. So although there are other sources that can do a little bit, they can't do what we really need. And so there is important. And I also agree that it's an under told story, how effective the nuclear energy operators have been at creating an amazing capability of producing 19% of our electricity from just 7% of our electricity generation capacity. That story needs to be told and we need to help people recognize that the nuclear industry is one that really does value its people. Yes. And pay attention pretty well too. That helps. We'll take care, Mary. Mary Jo and I hope that we run to each other again sometime. Absolutely. Thanks, Rod. Really enjoyed it. There's a way, a way such a better way today. Today, we may should pause till the world, there's a better way. Today, there's a better way. Ooh, there's a way such a better way today. Today, our region, boys, till the world, there's a better way. Today, there's a better way.