The Secrets to a $1,000 an Hour Work: What Leaders Know About Spending Time and the Value It Brings

Safety Tactics

So, why do some people earn ten bucks an hour while others charge hundreds of dollars per hour? It is simply about the value he or she brings to an organization and skill set that the professional has developed over time. But here is the key for all of us; we can learn at least some of the secrets of $1,000 per hour work and apply them to what we do day in and day out. And, in so doing, change the true value we bring to our teams and the companies in which we work.

About Safety

I’d say the concept of ‘ten dollar an hour work versus five hundred dollar an hour work’  is very applicable to safety professionals and to those who manage safety sensitive work (first line supervisors, managers and directors). In safety, the ‘hard’ stuff is easy. The hard stuff are things we can feel, touch and put our hands on like the safety rules, procedure book or OSHA regulations. But, the ‘soft’ stuff is hard. The ‘soft’ stuff is coaching and feedback, work observations, effective communication. Working on the soft stuff is five hundred dollar an hour work. Safety sensitive environments are rich with these opportunities. Here, five hundred dollar an hour work can drastically change the results.

Why transition to five hundred dollar per hour work?

Decades ago in Paris, legend holds that a lady was walking through the streets shopping when she noticed a painter who was set up and painting on a street corner. The lady walked over and interrupted the man’s work to ask if he would paint her. Without much discussion he stopped his work, pulled out a new canvass and went immediately to work. Within a few minutes he handed her the painting. It was beautiful, exquisite. Pleased with the work, she asked what she needed to pay for the painting. He replied five hundred dollars. Shocked, the lady said, "Well, sir, it only took you a few minutes."  To which the painter replied, "No, that has taken an entire lifetime." The painter was Pablo Picasso.

Think in terms of Blue Chips!

Often, if I am conducting a full day or multi day seminar, I will end the session with the blue chip activity. Two participants will stand with their backs to a table as the rest of the participants gather around to cheer on these two volunteers. When I say the word, they will turn and begin to pick up discs. After about ten seconds I will yell stop. What generally happens is that the participants will turn around and immediate start picking up chips, the ones that are closest to them. What they fail to realize is that there are three different color chips, white, red and blue. When they turn around, the white chips are right in front of them and there are lots of white chips, so they focus their entire time picking out these chips. What they don’t realize is that white chips have a value of one, red chips have a value of ten while blue chips have a value of 500! In a recent session, I asked a participant why he didn’t pick up blue chips, he said, "I didn’t even see blue chips!" He was totally focused just on those chips immediately in front of him.

Each day supervisors and middle managers are pulled in a dozen different directions. An entire day can be largely spent putting out ‘the fire of the hour’ only to move to the next fire, then the next (picking up the chips that is closest to them). Or, if one is not putting out fires you are likely trying to get caught up on the scores of paper work, phone calls or emails. In both cases, this is the work that is closest to them, white and red chips.  All of your work is important, or you wouldn’t do it, but some work brings more results than other tasks. The first objective is to understand what is ten dollar an hour and what is five hundred dollar an hour, or a blue chip.  Once we have that understanding and can see blue chips in our work day, we simply do more of the five hundred dollar per hour work. Doing this over the next few years will bring you added skills…and value to your organization.

Beyond Coaching Rules

A recent study entitled The Peer Principle by Bloomberg Businessweek published in May 2010 stated, "In the area of safety, our study found that 93% of employees say they see urgent risks to life and limb, and yet less than one-fourth of those who see concerns speak up about them. Rather, they wait for bosses or others to take action." Researchers compared organizations with average safety performance to organizations with exceptional safety performance. At first, they could not find a difference. But after thousands of interviews with managers and first line supervisors, they found some eye opening information.

In the end, researchers found that accountability was the key element to outstanding safety performance. But, it wasn’t supervisors holding workers accountable that propelled organizations to the next level. Instead, it was workers holding each other accountable. "Remarkably, cultures of accountability had little to do with bosses. Rather, it was all about peers." Organizations with cultures of peers coaching peers found remarkable success – – and not just in safety. "Those supervisors and managers with the strongest safety records were five times more likely to be ranked in the top 20% of their peers in every other area of performance. They were 500% more likely to be stars in productivity and efficiency and employee satisfaction and quality, etc."

Today, most organizations have observation programs where supervisors watch employee work and offer coaching. Yet, these are too often limited to easy stuff…the rules. While the safety rules need to be observed and discussed, so do more important elements like peer to peer accountability, job planning, job leadership, job communication. These are harder to grade but if you want to move your organization to the next level, and work toward five hundred dollar an hour work, take this step.

Train — Do Not Educate

To educate simply means that you give a person information. Training means that you give information with the expectation that a new behavior results.  Five hundred dollar an hour work means that one sets up training programs (change behavior) instead of education programs.

Years ago, when I was a safety professional supporting nearly 400 linemen, substation technicians and natural gas pipefitters/equipment operators in out-state Missouri, we determined that one of the contributing factors to a number of injuries was poor job planning.  In the electric utility industry, OSHA demands a plan before any work begins and mandates a five step process to job planning. In coordination with others, we put together a top notch interactive program, and then delivered it. About three months later I was back in front of a group I had trained just 90 days earlier but they didn’t know the information. They were not using it day in and day out for job planning. I had educated…not trained.

Virginia Tech Professor and noted safety professional Dr. E. Scott Geller says it this way, "Training requires coaching which means C for Care, O for Observe, A for Analyze, C for Communicate, and H for Help.  This requires observation of behavior and appropriate delivery of corrective and supportive feedback." Five hundred dollar an hour work means that processes are set up to ensure a change in behavior after training…or as Dr. Geller says, COACH.

Elevate Organizational Energy

The sad truth is that I have been to some funerals that had more positive energy than safety meetings. Safety meetings are just one example of a task that all too often is simply a ‘check the box’ activity. Energy is a key to results, positive or negative. Think about your own life. When your energy is low, the quality of your decisions is lower than if you are feeling good and energy is high. When energy is low, you are less tolerant, coach less and offer less feedback compared to when your energy is high. Five hundred dollar an hour work includes evaluating your team’s or the organization’s energy and finding ways to move that energy to higher levels.

Communication/Aligning Arrows

I think communication can best be discussed through a picture. Think of your organization (or team) as a big arrow. Your job is to move that big arrow (team) toward a goal. Whether it is a seemingly simple goal like, complete this one task without injury or incident, or a larger goal like eliminating soft tissue injuries, your job is to move them there. But, a team is not comprised of a big arrow, it is made up of people. In our illustration, people are represented by smaller arrows. You will notice not all people are aligned around the goal. People do not align for a host of reasons including competing goals, lack of communication and lack of understanding about the goal. In short, this is ineffective communication and you likely will not reach the goal. Five hundred dollar an hour work is aligning goals through effective communication so that you will reach your goal.