IOSH podcast
IOSH's podcast series features exclusive interviews with industry experts, behind the scenes discussions with IOSH members, and conversations with future leaders of the health and safety profession.
IOSH podcast
CEO Series | Carl Ennis, CEO, Siemens
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
CEO series hosted by Stuart Hughes with special guest Carl Ennis, Siemens
Siemens' chief executive, Carl Ennis, gives us an insight into how the technology giant looks after the health and safety of its 320,000 employees globally.
Carl, hello and welcome to the IOSH podcast. In this episode, Carl Ennis, chief executive of Siemens, gives us an insight into how the technology giant looks after the health and safety of its 320,000 employees globally.
Stuart Hughes:Welcome to our CEO podcast series. Hopefully, you've enjoyed the ones that you've heard so far, and today, I'm joined by Carl Ennis, who is the CEO at Siemens for their UK and Ireland division. Carl, thank you very much for joining me today. It's a pleasure to speak to you, and I think people probably have an understanding or know the name Siemens, but perhaps don't understand the breadth of what it is that you do. So maybe you could just give us a bit of a introduction into Siemens and the activities that you look after as their CEO?
Carl Ennis:Well, I promise not to make it too much of a sales pitch, but we are quite a large organisation. In the UK, we're 12,000 employee; globally, 320,000 employees. And we're a technology company, bringing together a cutting edge technology to solve customers' challenges in a number of areas- in the energy space, in industry, in the infrastructure business, the built environment, across transport and in healthcare, so quite a broad portfolio delivering hardware and software to our customers. One thing I'm quite proud of is just how long we've been in the UK. We celebrated our 170th birthday a couple of years back. So we've been around for a
Stuart Hughes:Cool. I just read a really great book by a chap while. called Alex Hill, called Centennials, and that's all about organisations that are a hundred years plus, and how they've navigated the social and cultural changes across that period of time. Before we dig into the questions, maybe you could just give us a bit of your journey to CEO and whether this has always been life's long ambition for you?
Carl Ennis:I worry about people who who aspire to be a CEO because they don't understand what they're getting into! I left school at 16. I remember having the conversation with my dad. I'd done O-levels. Yes, I am that old! I did O-levels, and had got enough to do A-levels, but I didn't enjoy school. I had always enjoyed the mechanical, trying to get my dad's car to wherever it was supposed to be going. And I remember telling my dad that I didn't want to do A-levels, and I wanted to become a mechanic, an apprentice mechanic. He flipped his lid, but I did it anyway. And then I didn't quite make it to be an apprentice mechanic. I got identified to be a technical apprentice and, through that, followed a route into engineering. So I'd never left knowing what I really wanted to do, other than I was interested in how things worked. And then I got offered opportunities throughout my career to try different things. I joined Siemens 30 years ago, so almost 10 years into my career, and never looked back, accepted every opportunity that got given to me and got my head down, worked hard. I was really lucky on timings, and then the next thing you know, you're in charge. It was never an aspiration. But by heck, it's good fun! It's a it's real challenge, a real honor to have that responsibility for a brand that is so well known and the heritage that comes with that. I didn't aspire to it, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
Stuart Hughes:And do you think that's just in your nature to go, 'yeah, right. I'll have a go'?
Carl Ennis:I'll go into a meeting, and I'll consciously say to myself, 'Right Carl, shut up and listen,' and the next thing you know, I've rolled my sleeves up and I've got involved. As CEO, you do have to be careful of that because you can dominate the conversation, and that's really very dangerous, because then it becomes about the CEO's ideas. And trust me, they're rarely, if ever, the smartest person in the room! So one of the jobs is to make space to listen to ideas. I have always enjoyed getting stuck in and, yeah, I have to temper that a little bit. I have to know when that's acceptable. And sometimes it IS acceptable, if you see something not happening fast enough, or watching people struggling, it's good to let them struggle a little bit and let them find their feet and find their style and how to problem solve. But there is a point where you actually say, 'Okay, that was enough. Now I think this is the right way to go. 'So balancing that natural urge to say 'stand back - I know how to fix this', versus leaving people with far more experience and far better ideas, giving them space and encouragement to bring that to the table. That's probably a tough balance, but still a work in progress. My team would say, sometimes I get it right and sometimes I don't.
Stuart Hughes:And I think that it's really interesting there. Because a lot of people think once you're at the top of the organisation, you've probably got all of the answers. And that really interesting balance of knowing when to step in because action is required and things need to move along, and when to hang back and be the safety net so people can learn through the failure and grow is a remarkable challenge. What was your favorite thing that you did on your way to CEO? I think you probably can't get too much
Carl Ennis:Probably that I lived in Shanghai for four Every day was completely different, and you years. I'd gone and run some of the bigger businesses in the UK. In Siemens, we are an international company - it's good to have had some international exposure. Most people go and spend a bit of a spell in Germany, our headquarters. I didn't fancy that. I fancied something different, and so I went and spent four years living in Shanghai, being responsible for all Asia Pacific. That was my first foray into real different cultures, and it was such a different, can you, from UK culture? learning experience. Every day was a learning day. I never want to do it again, right? I'm not rushing to go back and do it, but it was such a learning experience. And I am really glad I did it. I think it probably made me able to do the role I do now. I think before then, I was perhaps a little bit one style, and one style is not always the right answer. were having to flip between remembering what was the driver in that particular culture, how best to be and changing your managerial style to address the challenge ahead and the individuals in the room. And of course, it's not one size fits all, not all of a nation state is the same. Within that, they have a background, a culture, but then individual behaviours, styles, preferences. Managing all of that was just hugely interesting, challenging and a learning experience. But I really enjoyed that.
Stuart Hughes:You mentioned earlier the privilege and the honor of leading such a sizeable organisation that's established as it is within the UK. We often hear that people at the very top of an organisation don't care about people at the ground floor doing the work. I feel it's quite a lazy trope that's kind of pushed around on socials. I just wonder why you think like that might be such a pervasive view amongst the global workforce?
Carl Ennis:It is interesting. And as somebody who started their career on the shop floor, left to be an apprentice, and I worked on the shop floor for the first 10 years of my career, so it wasn't ' I did it for a day.' I've experienced it, I know everything. I actually lived it and it was my way into the world of work. And I think it is lazy. It's the 'us' and 'them'. I get frustrated with that. I try and meet most new starters to our organisation and spend half an hour with them. Often, at the end of it, the intern will say,'Blimey, you're normal.' And you go, 'What were you expecting? I didn't get to management and suddenly grew another head!' That's not how it works. I am only one of 12,000 people in our organisation. Yes, I'm a visible one, but I am no different. I have perhaps a little more experience than many, but I do as many wrong things as everybody else, and I'm not different. I find it frustrating that there is the 'us' and 'them'. It does exist. Why is it? I don't know. It's a history thing. It is a bit lazy. It's easy to blame somebody else and and create this 'we're right, you're wrong'. In life, it's never that straightforward. I think it's really important to try to address it as an organisation. I started by introducing Siemens as a tech company - we are. But guess how we deliver the tech? Through people! So, 300,000 people globally - each one of them, we need them to be firing on all cylinders to add value. And we don't do it altruistically. We do it because it makes good business sense. If all of my 12,000 people in the UK are firing on all cylinders, I get a better outcome. I get better shareholder return, I get better customer feedback. These are all positive things. I think it's how you break down the barrier, trying to create communications between all levels of our organisation for them to realise we are no different. We've got different roles and responsibilities, but as individuals, as people, we're no different. Trying to break that old trope, as you call it, because I don't think it's helpful.
Stuart Hughes:There's this thing isn't there, where you're
Carl Ennis:It really is two sides of the same coin. The all part of the same ecosystem. And like you say, some of the business gets benefit, the individuals get benefit, society things that you were doing that demonstrate care may well be driven from the business side of things, i.e., we get better at large gets benefit. I'm quite passionate about the role of big performance from people, we deliver better returns for those business. It's easy to say it's just about making money. It's that invest in the organisation, we serve our customers better. The flip side of that is, people enjoy being in their work clearly about making money, and I'm not shy about that. The environment more. They're probably more helpful, as members of society, because they're fulfilled and all of minute we stop making money, then we're all out of work. that stuff. So there's a symbiotic relationship between That's 12,000 people, and we've got about 60,000 people in our the two. What are the things that you within your organisation specifically do to demonstrate that care for people? supply chains. So I feel a responsibility to make sure we do make money, because that's the entry fee to the game. But the game is much bigger than that, and so we spend a lot of time on (not just from a safety perspective, not just talking about occupational safety) how do we keep people safe, physically safe, but also psychological safety, cultural safety. We spend a lot of time not just talking about but actually acting on diversity, equity and inclusion, employee networks, people having a voice, accepting that. We do employee surveys. We're honest about the fact that we can't fix everything. So prioritising on what's right for our employees, and giving time for people to learn. A growth mindset is really, really important to us as an organisation. And again, it's about having the most enriched employees we can have, because it makes good business sense. We do a lot on our social side too, so we spend a lot of time allowing our employees to volunteer in all sorts of different walks of life, from painting the local social club through to sitting on boards for industry bodies and working with schools, universities. Trying to convince people into the world of engineering as well, is another important one. Engineers have another old trope of dirty fingernails. You'd be pleased to hear that I haven't got dirty fingernails this morning, but it's much broader than that, and a much more exciting role. How do we get the next generation of people into that, so all of the 12,000 employees we have, we give them opportunities to get involved in that. We don't force anybody to get involved. If there are some people who are happy coming at nine o'clock and going home at five in the evening and feeling that that was a day well done, we're appreciative of that. But if somebody wants to do more, if they want to get more widely involved, our job is to create an environment where they can do that and are supported in doing that.
Stuart Hughes:In essence, creating that culture that enables people to do those things, that they might not have another avenue to do it, and you can facilitate that through the organisation.
Carl Ennis:It's my least favorite word, 'culture', because it's this amorphous thing. It's another one that gets used very vaguely. And it's behaviours, for me. How we create space for people to be and how we behave as an organisation. But it is important that people feel safe, feel trusted, feel empowered, and that sounds a bit all happy-clappy. And there are still hard work things to be done. There are still actions that people have to deliver, on contracts that have to be delivered, but in the space of that, you can do it in a manner that adds value, as opposed to
Stuart Hughes:I think it's really refreshing to hear. I'm destroys value. equally a big champion of big businesses being able to utilise their footprint, to have that ability to make improvements in people's lives and show people what's in the art of the possible. Some people come from a background where you've never heard of a non-executive director, right? So you've got no idea it exists, and then all of a sudden, you're in an organisation and it's promoted, and you're thinking, 'Oh, actually, here's a way for me to make a difference that I've never, ever thought about.' And I think that broadening people's horizons is really important, so super-cool to hear. You spoke a little bit there about a few facets of occupational safety and health in terms of keeping people safe and psychological safety - again, really important, and I suppose that kind of organisational safety, as in, 'I feel comfortable to be in my environment.' We get a lot in the profession now of IOSH professionals who are clamouring for a seat on the board, or to be heard at the C-suite and to
Carl Ennis:Well, we have one. Our director of environment, health and safety sits on our UK board and he's present in the meetings. I think it's absolutely critical if you're serious about the broadest sense of health and safety. From two points. There is a governance side to this. I am legally responsible for the health and safety of the people who are employed by our organisation, so I want to have confidence that be present, not just heard. What do you think? What are your there is a governance structure in place to know that if there thoughts on having a an IOSH person at the board? was a problem, that I would know about it, and that's only done by having a strong link between the board and the health and safety team. But I think it's also much broader than that. It's two-sided, it's about the broader risks that are in there, beyond the governance topics around the psychological risk and psychological safety of our employees. I think that that's an important thing that the board needs to hear. The other thing that's not often enough talked about is the The other important thing is for them to understand what's opportunity that they bring. Where we can differentiate happening in the business. We don't just wheel them in for 10 ourselves from our competitors. It's a competitive landscape. We, like every other company, have competitors. How do we minutes, 'Give us a health and safety moment. Now, get out and differentiate ourselves? Make sure that we use all levers to win the next order. We use all levers to recruit the best staff carry on'! That's not what we do. They're part of the meeting. that we can. I think that that's another reason. And I think the other thing is the added value in having somebody who is a They are a standing item on the agenda but they sit through professional in occupational health and safety around the table, making sure that when we're making decisions that are everything else that's going on there. We had our board meeting not necessarily directly related to health and safety, but that last week, and nobody gets a free lunch. I expect everybody they're being given a lens of health and safety at the table. I think that's really important.
Stuart Hughes:I think it's great to hear. One of the to be vocal. If I think anybody's going to nod off that, not that they ever do, because they're far too entertaining for that. But I expect people to have a voice, and that can make the meetings quite entertaining, because we don't always agree, but we always ultimately decide on a way forward, and having somebody with who is a professional in health and safety as part of that team, I think it's invaluable. biggest challenges is safety as a whole is seen as a bolt-on, and sometimes very much feels like that in organisations. And I think that that key piece of alignment - having somebody that's not just wheeled out for the safety moment and off they go again for their five minutes of fame - but that true understanding of the business direction, what's happening, where the challenges are and where they may be able to help, or also actually where there might be conflict with other things they're trying to do in their programmess. I think it really helps navigate that landscape. Is it something you inherited? Were they already on the board when you became CEO? Is it something that you've driven?
Carl Ennis:They've been on the board since I started to be aware of the board-level composition, so sort of from 2010, they've definitely been around there. I think that perhaps, as an organisation, we've been on a journey of change. There have been periods in our history where we have had incidents that have made us think, actually, we need to take this a little bit more seriously, and if there were any wood around here, I would touch it. You know, hope is a poor strategy. But we don't have major incidents like that any more. Tend not to have them, but that's not by accident. It is by focus. It's by effort, but I think we have had that role for quite a while. It has developed. So when we started having health and safety present at the management board, it was a little bit of 'bring them in, talk about it for a while. I'll now go off,' but today, it isn't that. It is about the added value, and also they're part of the team. It's much more than just the board meeting. You create relationships that exist outside of the board meeting, that are challenging and add value as well. I think it's really, really healthy.
Stuart Hughes:As the leader of an organisation, what is it that you need from your IOSH professionals?
Carl Ennis:I think it's twofold. I want to know if somebody's worried about something. I want to know that they've got a direct route and our current director of health and safety has no question about having a direct route to me. She will come to me and she'll tell me what she honestly thinks. And I don't need it in a politically careful manner. I need it warts and all. I need that honesty, that trust and, as I said, that's almost a given now in our organisation, perhaps not in every organisation, but it's a given that we would get that. What I also need on top is that added challenge, to allow us to differentiate ourselves, to use health and safety not as just a threat, but as an opportunity, not just a risk, but a valuable addition to everything else that we bring. They've got to be comfortable in talking about things way outside of perhaps their specialism and what might happen, and they've got to build their confidence in that role. We're lucky in Siemens that we have a relatively stable team. We've built that confidence to be honest with ourselves in the board and beyond, and allow ourselves to be challenged. I really enjoy it when we have town halls and people throw questions at you. You don't always know the answer, and they might not always like the answer, but you know that those are really important interactions to have. To be able to do that in the board and outside of the board, and the role that the health and safety professional and the health and safety team at large can bring to it is really valuable.
Stuart Hughes:And it sounds like to me that you get what you need. You've just very eloquently described what it is that brings value from from your safety people within your organisation. Is there anything else you think they could do that they're not doing? Or is there a direction that you think that the safety profession should be travelling in to increase that value add to the organisation?
Carl Ennis:I think it's this move away from the governance side. I'm not a health safety expert, right? So, I get a little bit uncomfortable when we start talking about psychological safety, and what does that really mean for an engineer. Helping an organisation on its journey through that - our team do that through the expertise that they have, but also being open to look into the marketplace, what other people are doing, what's the current direction, and bringing those in so they act as a link between the broader changing landscape of health and safety and the board. I think that's an extremely important link to have. As the CEO, you'd like to think you could cover everything. You just can't be across everything, and you rely on your board members to bring to your attention things that happening, that they think we should be considering because we want to get even better. The whole change into hybrid working, which is an opportunity and a risk from a health and safety perspective. Then we start to talk about mental health and well-being, and how does that fit into the whole piece. The health and safety director on our board is the person who helps guide the team in what can often be an uncomfortable conversation, because we don't know where it's going, but we've got to start that conversation and go together as a team down there. It's just the same conversation we'll have on from a diversity and inclusion perspective; we talk about things that I am not an expert at, and they are uncomfortable conversations, but we have to have them, because that's how you learn. I think that the experts around the board table are there to act as that link to what's going on and hold the board's hand through those initial conversations.
Stuart Hughes:I often describe it as being a Sherpa. You're on the journey with everybody, helping with the guidance and direction. Periodically, you're doing some heavy lifting, but ultimately, you're steering them to that end destination of the journey. So I think it's really interesting to hear that. I think if you were genuinely across absolutely everything, you'd be wafer thin, wouldn't you? It's impossible.
Carl Ennis:to think I had an impact, but sometimes I think to myself, 'Blimey, that was a busy day, and I'm not sure I did'. And then you come to realise, my job is not to DO anything, in inverted commas. My job is to create an environment where things get done. Now that can be flipping hard work. But because of my background, I like rolling my sleeves up and doing stuff. It's quite fulfilling. I put an effort in - I saw the outcome of that effort. I don't do that anymore but I have learned to get as much satisfaction from watching other people grow. I look at my team four years ago, when I took over the reins, and look at them now and I hope they would say they've changed - I'm sure they would, becuase we talk openly. They've grown, and I've grown in that as well. And so it's a different lever I have to pull now to get the source of gratification, but we all want to feel as though we're doing the decent jobs.
Stuart Hughes:person that was doing everything, because I was a one-man band, and then you get a team and, all of a sudden, your job is not in the nuts and bolts of doing stuff. You're watching them do things, helping them, giving them the kind of room to take the tumbles, but lessen their frequency, and all of that kind of stuff. How did you find that transition? And what was the thing that helped you the most?
Carl Ennis:I think I was forced into it. In my earlier career in Siemens, I used to run some of the big facilities, big factories, and I would manage it, because I could put my arms around everybody. I used to run a factory in Newcastle, and there were a thousand people on-site. Now, I couldn't remember all their names, but I could go and touch almost every one of them. So you can have a direct influence on them. And then I ended up living in Shanghai, being responsible for all of Asia Pacific. I realised quickly that I'd got 2000 people there responsible for me, but none of them, or only 10 of them were in Shanghai. You couldn't have that direct influence. You learn management by cooperation and by collaboration, as opposed to by direction and control, so I'd sort of done it a little bit. And coming into this role, I'd got the bones of how I thought I could make it work, but practicing it is a different gig altogether. I think the other thing I do is, in my private life, I still like to do things where I can see a physical outcome, right? So I play around with motorbikes and build things, and I still allow myself to get my hands dirty. And I think my team appreciates it because that desire to see the outcome is done in a private space. So I tend not to do it so much in my day job.
Stuart Hughes:Yeah, I'm fascinated by motorbikes.
Carl Ennis:You are very aware of how exposed you are, and it's not how good a driver you are, it's what's going on around you. That's another good analogy for my job. I will have to watch what's going on around me. I could be the best rider in the world, and if some numpty in front of me pulls out inappropriately, they might have a dint in their car, and I might be dead. So that awareness of what's going on around you is incredibly important. I think that's really important as a CEO, that awareness of what's going on - not in the detail, but having a sense and a feeling for when somebody's going to do something. So I can guess when somebody's going to pull out because of the road conditions, even probably before they know they're going to do it, and anticipate it. It's a really useful skill,
Stuart Hughes:That peripheral vision. Yeah, I can see how that would translate into the leadership role. Nice segue, I suppose, because you speak about things there that might concern you whilst you're on the road and paying attention to a plethora of different things. What are the things, from a health and safety perspective, that cause you concern as a leader?
Carl Ennis:One of the journeys we're on as organisation is this role of working with partners. It seem there's a real depth of engineering and for many years, it was quite confident that it could solve any problem it needed on its own. In the last 10 years, it's realised that, actually, that's not true. We're really good at a lot of things, but there are other companies that are better in our white spots. And so working together with partners has become a more important element, and that's a worry from a health and safety perspective, because do your partners have the same cultural approach to health and safety in its broadest term? And so making sure that we're on the same page, that is work in progress. I think we're starting to really hone our skills at that, but that is something we're going to have to get good at, because the answer going forward is about collaboration in all these forms. If you start from there, how do you collaborate and not drop a standard? We don't want standards to be the lowest common denominator. It has to be the highest common denominator. So that's important to us. I've touched on a little bit on this movement of health and safety, to the soft side, to psychological safety, to mental well-being. Those are areas that I'm not an expert on, and I'm learning as we go along that journey. I think it's healthy that I'm a little bit nervous about those things, and we're learning, and we'll get better as we go on. I guess the other one is just the whole topic of of environmental and the broader societal impact we're having from an environmental health and safety perspective, and the opportunities it brings. But also, not just our operations. We have a big operation in the UK, so it has a big impact. How do we look at the reuse of our products and reducing that. It's not by accident that the old adage of environmentalists was reduce, reuse, recycle. We're not very good at the first and, as a nation, we need to get better at that. I sleep well as an individual, but there are a few things that I'm aware we still need to have on our radar and need to get better at.
Stuart Hughes:Yeah, I often describe it as 'the infinite game'. Safety is not something you can complete. It's that continual journey of development and growth.
Carl Ennis:It's that spinning plate, and the spinning plate always reverses so, even now, we will go back and do some basics. We will go back and talk about the basics of contractor management, or the basics of Lean and 5S and the impact of reducing slips, trips and falls. These have not gone away, because actually, they still happen. So you're going back every now and again and just giving that plate another nudge whilst trying to get another one going. And that's interesting,
Stuart Hughes:We've got a bit of a reputation, I think, particularly in the UK, we've been unfairly tarnished by press and didn't defend ourselves well enough, in my opinion, but the safety professions got a bit of a badge of stopping work from happening and being a bit of an inconvenience. Now, I don't think that's a fair label. I see it very much as an enabling profession. If you align with the organisation, you should be helping them to achieve their end goals in a way that provides a nice frame around to keep people away from harm. What are your thoughts on that reputation and how do you view the IOSH profession?
Carl Ennis:It is unfair. I've worked in the engineering industry for 40 years, so I've seen it when it was a police and it was used as a red card. In fact, in previous incarnations, the health and safety guy would have a yellow card and a red card. How unempowering is that? He felt his job was to stop you from hurting yourself. I think it's history, but how do you change the perception of it? And it's the responsibility of the profession to change the reset. Going back to some of my early points, how do you identify the value of having you around the table? You shouldn't be, 'Oh, I expect to be around the table because of my title.' Well, as I'm concerned, that's a quick direction to the exit door! It's what value are you going to add? And how are you selling that to your leadership team? How are you convincing them that actually there is value to be had, there's an opportunity to be had, as much as risk management. So I think the way you change perception is by what you do, not by what you say. I think there's a little bit of a responsibility. And, by the way, I see brilliant health and safety professionals, and I see average health and safety professionals. That's true across professionals of every kind. There are great people, and there are some averages, and we need to up our average to be able to differentiate ourselves and say why we should be at the table. I think that that will build trust and build confidence, and that will change the perception.
Stuart Hughes:I changed my language around this, probably in 2020. We all got quite excited about the R number in 2020 because of COVID and the influence that has on contagion, if you like. So, I've often thought, as a safety professional, what's your R number? How many people are you influencing? What's your reach? And every interaction you have with somebody is a representation of your profession. So, I think all of us being conscious of that, and how we all elevate the profession is really important. How do you balance the very prominent need for governance, because an organisation wants to know that it's got the things that are in place that will keep it protected from the stronger arm of the law, but at the same time, have that same piece of we're adding value, we're driving performance, and we're enabling our employees to thrive and flourish in the environment?
Carl Ennis:It can be done because I've seen it done, and I won't embarrass my director of health and safety by naming her, but she's able to to act as that governance owner, but also to add the value beyond that. And it's an interesting thing to watch, and it's not easy to see. Not everybody can do it, but I think when people do it, you really see the value of having that role, and that individual playing that role around the table, and the value it can bring.
Stuart Hughes:It's also a willingness to change, right? It's quite easy to look back, isn't it, and lambast somebody that was rolling around with a red and yellow card and think'that was pretty yucky', and it is, but they were probably just doing what they thought was right at that point in time. And I think as a profession, we've got to acknowledge some of the mistakes that we've made in the past to be better in the future.
Carl Ennis:I wouldn't even go as strong as to say it was a
Stuart Hughes:I think that's a really valuable piece of advice. mistake. It was just what was perhaps needed then, but what was needed then is not what's needed now, right? And it's this And not everybody in the safety profession is fortunate enough holding on. Accepting change and embracing change - it's in all humans that we don't like change. We like stability. We to have either a direct line to leadership or what sounds like a like knowing what tomorrow is going to look like, and hopefully it's not going to look too different from today. But the reality is that sometimes you need to change. Change can very healthy relationship between yourself and your safety be a positive experience, but it's recognising that, if we hark back to history, there are lessons in there, but not director. Have you got any advice that you'd give for lessons, perhaps, of what we should be doing today. listeners that want to enhance their relationship with with senior leaders in an organisation, or to build that relationship, if it's non-existent today?
Carl Ennis:Yeah, go back to some of the stuff I said about showing that added value. Arguing, 'I should be around the table because I'm the director of health and safety'; that's never going to win in most organisations today. Perhaps a non-enlightened CEO can get that by asking you to rock in for five minutes, 'Tell me the governance, what do my stats look like, and can you leave the room now?' You've got to push to say the value that you add and it's not for shrinking violets. If you're really passionate about this, you have to draw our attention to it. Most CEOs have a plethora of tasks on their desk, of which health and safety is an important one. And, in this environment, we will probably say the most, but it is one of many. How do you make it stand out? And CEOs, we're fickle individuals! If somebody wants to add value, we will take you in every day of the week. So, how can you articulate to the CEO, and to the broader board of a company, the value that this can add, as opposed to it being just the policing? And I think sometimes that's difficult if you're not already at the board. How do you do that? That's a tough gig, right? But it's actually showing you can do it - taking those steps to show added value lower down the organisation, and then communicate it and shout about it, and get the leaders lower down the organisation to shout about the benefits there. And then somebody will say, 'Hold on a minute'. The senior managers will start saying, 'That's working. Well, there's a lot of positive noise going on in there. Let me go and have a mooch around there to see if I can't steal and replicate that somewhere else'. All of a sudden, you've highlighted it and it's got visibility. I'm a great believer in the best way to show value is by doing, as opposed by saying what you could do. Don't tell me what you could do. Get on and do it, and then I'll have a look. And I think that's possibly the best way in.
Stuart Hughes:Can you recall a specific conversation or something that somebody's brought to you that maybe changed your mind on where safety really added value?
Carl Ennis:I think it's all around at the moment - this move from the physical safety to the psychological safety, and just how little we understood about that. We had some external speakers, again, led by our health and safety director, come in to talk to us about psychological safety. And you're thinking, 'Oh, this is a really different approach. We're gonna have to take my brain out and turn it 180 degrees and think about this slightly differently.' That only happened a few years ago and it's still something we're learning from. That was a real value-add that, had it not been for the health and safety professional in our organisation, we wouldn't necessarily be talking about it, because it wasn't on our radar. Maybe because of post-COVID, and the challenges that brought, it would have been but actually we were probably slightly ahead of the curve, and it allowed us to act during COVID perhaps in a manner that was more considerate of the mental challenges than it would have done had we not been already on our journey before that.
Stuart Hughes:Great. I think things like that are really interesting to hear. And I really like the example of don't tell me, show me, because actually, that's the piece that you can really get hold of and extrapolate that, put it into other parts of the organisation and replicate. And then all of a sudden, what was done in the micro level is spread.
Carl Ennis:Managers, we want an easy life. So if I see something good over in business A, I will want to put it in all my other businesses. Because why would you not? And so it's about showing it. Don't convince me by telling me - you'll never do that. Actually get on and do it, and if it doesn't work, you'll have learned something from it anyway. So, rather than spouting, do it and you will learn as well as me learning from it.
Stuart Hughes:Great, thank you very much. I've got some quick-fire closers, if we can hit those. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?
Carl Ennis:That's easy, because I tell it to most of my interns, whether they want to hear it or not, and that is, grab every challenge that's given to you. Now, often people are reluctant to grab the challenge because they're not sure if they're capable of it. And my advice is, the person who's giving it to you thinks you're capable of it, they're probably better positioned to evaluate that. So just embrace it and get on with it.
Stuart Hughes:I think that's quality advice. I really like that. And the flip side to that, then, what's the worst bit of advice you've ever been given?
Carl Ennis:I'm not sure I've ever had a worst piece of advice but, speaking of old tropes, we used to talk about seeing things through to the bitter end, and a measure of somebody's calibre was to see it through to the bitter end. I think that's a misnomer. I've done that on a couple of occasions, flogged a horse way beyond its sell-by date, and things have not worked. My view now is hold things lightly and be prepared to change everything. Because you might not want to but you might have to, so hold your ideas lightly, and I think that's a healthy way to go about it.
Stuart Hughes:Yeah, the flip to that is the 'fail fast.' What's one book that you constantly return to or gift most often?
Carl Ennis:This is an easy one for me, because I was reading it on holiday again recently, and it's Bill Bryson. I'm not a great reader and when I do read, I want to learn something. It's a skill I wish I'd have listened to a little bit more closely at school, but I never got the bug of reading. So when I read, I want to read something that learns, and the book 'A Short History Of Nearly Everything' is flipping brilliant, because he's a great orator. I've also read many of his other books as well. He's a great storyteller, whilst in imparting facts on you to make you smile, I think that's great. The other thing is, it makes you realise how insignificant we are as a being on this planet and how transient our impact is. And it puts it into perspective.
Stuart Hughes:Yeah, things that put things into perspective, I'm all for. I read a book called'4000 Weeks', which, in essence, is how long you averagely get on the planet. When you start to think about that and where you are in your kind of countdown clock, it's very sobering. And I think the other thing there that I think is probably really good advice for the profession as a whole is like, how can you impart factual information with a smile? If somebody will then repeat your story in a way that other people will appreciate. There's a fine art to it. But I think if we can get better at that as a profession, our message will travel a bit better.
Carl Ennis:Storytelling is really, really important. It's not by accident that that's the way that we have delivered our culture over thousands of years. It's on the back of stories. And I'm reminded of fairy tales and the impact they have. There's a real deep meaning to them. It was how that knowledge got transferred and, as a society, we've lost the art of storytelling. Getting it back, I think, will be really useful.
Stuart Hughes:And then just one final thing: what's your biggest failure that's provided you with the most learning?
Carl Ennis:I have crashed and burned on several occasions. It's not been a linear route through my career. I won't embarrass myself by detailing them, but I still fail on a regular basis. Thankfully, they tend not to be quite as spectacular as perhaps they were in my earlier career. If I reflect, when I "fail", what is the common factor? And it's about me not watching what's going on around - back to this peripheral vision. You will be doing something, the game has changed, and you've not realised the game has changed. And then you come a cropper. And that's the common reason behind it. If I look at the big failures of my earlier career and the smaller failures of my everyday career - today's career - it's the same thing. It's that situational awareness, watching what's going on around you and don't get so taken in what you're doing that you're not impacted by the broader sense of what's going on in the business. Be aware of that, and be prepared to pivot and try something different. It might not be wholesale change, but tweak it, and you might still get an outcome, and you can still get to success from the jaws of defeat. I am a quite an ardent believer of the 'fail fast' - although I think it's sort of suggesting that failure is a good thing and it's not - but when you do fail, fail fast and learn from it. I think that's really important. I don't think I would still be here if I'd have done some of my early career failures twice; I'm sure I wouldn't be sat here with you now.
Stuart Hughes:I think there's one bit there that stands out to me, which is this idea of not focusing on how things should be, because you miss out on how things really are. And I think that piece of advice at the end there, which is broaden your horizons, pay attention to what's going on around you, as well as delivering the thing it is that you're there to do - that's really sage advice for the profession. Really grateful for your time today. Really enjoyed the conversation. It's been fascinating to hear from you. And also, I think that piece of long tacit knowledge with an organisation, and then working your way up to lead it. And then the change from the enjoyment of getting your hands dirty to getting your enjoyment of seeing people grow is a really fascinating thing for people to hear. So thank you very much for that. I wish you every success in the future.
Carl Ennis:Thank you very much.
Host:Thanks for listening. Tune in again soon for more conversations on all things health and safety.