EP 634 - Murray Elliott

Safety FM.com with Jay Allen. Changing safety cultures, 1 broadcast and 1 podcast at a time.

So Murray, we just finished. We heard you did Jay. Energy Safety Canada 2024. And this is the last stint as the CEO. How did

you feel it went? I think this went incredible. The team did such a phenomenal job. I told them last year they did an incredible job and they said they're gonna have a heck of a time beating that and I can quite frankly they've done it they've done a tremendous job it was great call well with it being a great conference I've had a

conversation with several of your staff members and in talking to them they have told me several different things when it comes to your leadership. You're a true leader, innovator, visionary. This is what your staff says about you. And it wasn't that they knew I was ever going to use any of this information, but this is the thought process of what they have. They're here to make sure that you're successful in what you're doing. How does that make you feel like

a leader? Well that's a pretty positive response but you can only do those things and be thought of that way if you've got an incredible team that's actually delivering it.

Well your team, I'll say they're first class. I mean and I'm not saying that because we're here I've had the privilege to interact with a whole bunch of different people and When I look back and I look at what you guys do here to energy safety Canada I'm just amazed in regards of interacting with Amy, interacting with Gord, just the information and how things are structured and done and planned out. I'm just amazed. Here's all the sound effects that you wanted. But It's dealing with the leadership that you've established and the team that you've built. And

you've done this over the 7 year timeframe that you've been involved here. How did you do this?

I'm the kind of leader, there's a few things I believe in. There's nothing in this organization I won't do if I'm capable of doing it. So if it means the first thing in the morning before anyone's there, picking up some of the garbage that's in front of our office before the students come in the door right through to whatever needs to get done, I believe in the leadership by small actions. I also believe in heads up and hands off. I don't micromanage, I make sure I've got good people, they know what they're doing, and they engage

me when they need me. And then it's hands off.

So you let your team do what they need to do and you assist when needed, need assistance, but you try to be a behind the scenes guy. Is that a fair assessment?

It's fair, but I'm also out there outside the company a lot, a lot doing things and engaging to people. They know what we do, why we're doing it. So there's always a sort of a balance between inside and outside. So for some for some of the listeners

that might not be familiar with what Energy Safety Canada does, Can you go give them a little bit of an example of what you guys do as an organization?

Happy to, Jay. So Energy Safety Canada is the national health and safety association for the energy business in Canada. Primarily oil and gas, but a lot of the related industries as well. We're a not-for-profit charity and we've been around for over 75 years.

And you've been putting on a versionality of a conference as an organization for 72, based on what you were telling me last night.

This is the second 72nd year. The only years it didn't happen was during COVID.

But just just the forward thinking of even back then when you were approached and said, hey, we're interested in you becoming the CEO of this charity. What are you thinking at the time, especially coming 31 years out of the oil and the oil and gas field.

I had the advantage of having been on the board of 1 of the precursor organizations, the merge to create this organization, so I knew what it was about. I'd also spent a, you know, over 3 decade career with a major company, had a really, really focused on safety, but you're doing it within the realm of sort of your own sphere of influence within the company and your contractors, became very clear to me, because I also was engaged with a lot of industry associations where you're collaborating across industry to improve things. That if we're going to make

the safety the best it can be, that needed to be strong collaboration across industry. So it was just perfect sort of timing. That this opportunity was here, I was kind of finishing what I was doing in Canada. So it just was just the right thing.

And it's been an incredible run, this organization. So you do 31 years, very well known oil and gas industry or company, better saying. You come over here. We'll say that you retired out of there. You come here, you work here.

I retired for 15 hours.

Before you took it over. So then you come here. You've been here for the last 7 things have definitely changed for what was going on. You were, we'll say you're retiring again, but you're really going, going to work for Miss Elliot. So what do you, as you look back at, we'll see the twilight of your career.

What are you thinking? I'm, I'm just so impressed with what we as an organization have done. We've really kind of grown as an organization from, you know, doing training and some industry support to, we do the core training, but we're also delivering so much more. We're delivering lots around collaborations, best practice and guidelines. But what I'm probably most proud of is the work we've done to bring innovative thinking for around the world to help our industry improve and specifically human and organizational performance, high reliability organizations, some of those thinking and really fostering that by putting communities

of practice and having companies come together and individuals who are specialists in this to share and learn from each other. And as I look at it

as what you're doing as an organization when it comes to the HRO stuff and the HOP stuff, in particular, you're really leading Canada in regards to where they need to look, what they need to be focusing on. I was sitting here yesterday doing an interview, and somebody was talking about psychological safety and they said look at this particular room there was about 300 people in the room at the time 295 people raised their hand knowing and hearing the term of psychological safety and I can tell you I've been to conferences where people are go I have

no idea what you're talking about. So this forward thing that has been put into place by your organization Or the how would they know where to look? It's 1 of these things that they really have the heartbeat of what's going on in the industry How does this happen?

Is this planned? It's very very much planned Jay. So we it was actually part of the strategy that I got that had been put together in 2015-16 and I didn't come in until 70. There was a strategy put together by board and a group of executives, really looking where do we need it to go. And 1 of those elements within the strategy was to really create that safety center of excellence. And by that, it's kind of looking for those best practices, helping industry companies find what they need and go out and look for it. And so

we created what we call the Safety Center of Excellence, which means there's only 1 employee and it Gordon Walsh is someone that you know well, But it's also a lens that we look at a lot of our activities on. It's not just the 1 individual. A lot of people are engaged in that. And that's really about finding those best practices and thinking forward and getting some of the thought leaders globally to help us to understand. And also some of the companies, both large and small, that are really leaders in this space.

So as you look at this and you go back to walking in in 2017, why is the thought process not at the time to go with something like behavior-based because it's still relatively possible or not popular at that time better saying in regards of what is going on in the industry so why not go with that approach opposed to human organizational performance.

So I've been a vice president health and safety at a major company and so I'd seen all these practices and things. I'd seen everything but what I actually started my career in was a process engineer looking doing safeguarding has ops and even got into quantitative risk assessment on 1 particular project and you really from that perspective you're looking at you're trying to reduce risk to as minimum as acceptable, but you're never eliminating it. And part of the personal safety journey is all about all this sort of stuff on 0. The organization was it I was with

I was all about 0 and things that it really never sat with me well, because you're only you can only reduce risk to what's reasonably practicable, right? It's never 0. And so when I started my personal journey on a reading cop, probably 15, 16, and a lot of Todd Conklin stuff, because he's the 1 who really made it accessible.

Baby food is decker putzing.

Baby food, but you need that in order to get people interested and so they can then go deeper into it. So that I was really interested in that. And that's where I wanted us to learn more, me to learn more and others to learn more. And as we learn more, we learn more about Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety. It was just obvious that this is where it was. And we were working with some big companies. I said big companies and small companies had also come to that conclusion. And it was working.

As you're able to do this and serve different companies that are out throughout Canada, how does the process go? So if somebody's saying, okay, we have a need inside of our organization, how does that, how does that move forward?

How do they contact you? How do they, how are they able to be part of lots of different ways? So we have an industry development, a support group that has, individuals or they're tied to each different sector of our industries. And they're there to answer anyone's questions and put resources together. We've done a number of, from 1 hour to 1 day workshops, just to give people the basics and get them sort of interested in understanding. A lot of the large organizations we work with have internal capability or bringing in external consultants, but when they're contractors and

subcontractors, kind of hearing bits and pieces of it, that's where it's most fruitful for us to kind of come in and help fill in the gaps and have them understand that this isn't just a flavor of the month safety program but actually a different philosophy.

But when you would also almost when you look back and take a look at this you have to realize the influence that you're having not just in the industry but all over Canada just by the work that you're doing. It's not an ego moment but it's almost a humbling moment on how you're able to have influence within this particular industry and how to have that influence. So How do you sleep with that kind of pressure at night?

I'm just pleased by it. Like, you know, we're getting regulators that are actually really getting interested in this and recognizing that where their role is in accepting that error is normal and looking at things differently. We're you know we're we're working with a lot of companies outside our traditional bounds into manufacturing and things because this is the place they can come to find the community of practice, find the others that are doing it. So we are not experts in any of these fields where we are experts is in bringing people together, leading the collaboration, getting people

to find other like-minded people to turn and grow with.

Well, And I've been amazed because I've been looking at the different sessions when you had the concurred sessions going on at the same time. Fine. There's a little bit of everything here. There was 2 young gentlemen that were down the hallway and they were talking about leadership from their particular aspect of being out in the field. There was a gentleman here that was talking about that he's a behavior, he's a behaviorless, this is what he said that he was, but he was trying to how to operationalize hop. So even though you're going with subject matters related

to hop, it's not limited to 1 thing. So how does this mindset come about of this is how we're going to do it and you're opening the door to so many things and there's not the limitation because I've been to conferences where it's this is the only subject matter we're not touching anything else. Why be so open and be so willing and to some extent vulnerable and being able to do it.

It's really about there's so many facets of where we need to improve or how we can improve. This is about expanding people's thought processes, mindsets, and we carefully curate, well, we, meaning Amy Krueger, as you know, along with Gordon Walls, very carefully curate the... Great bat networks. I carry the third word. Very carefully curate the speakers and the content to really speak to a really broad audience that we have and really be, I think, quite impactful. In this particular conference,

there was a lot of reference into some big plane accidents that occurred. I'll word it that way, just to be on the safe side. Was there an intentional focus on this? Or just kind of just work out in that format? Because there was 2 pretty big presenters that talked about this in very good detail, in very great detail.

Yeah, it wasn't so much intentional as it's certainly been recent topical and it's a way to look at sort of systemic and detailed failures from a different lens. So you're not looking at your own industry, you're looking outside, but you're looking at something that, you know, when you reflect on the same systemic drivers of, you know, what leaders want and kind of how that changes all the way down through the organization, right through to the ongoing operating pressures at the bottom line. So it was a good way to kind of get people thinking about, and once

they reflect on just how does this apply to their organizations.

So there was a particular plane that there was a reference during this during the last session. Are you reconsidering any flying any time in the near future? I don't have any

flights booked, but they will certainly come into my planning. So give

me the thought process here. We'll say you're a few months out in regards of retiring. What happens the first day of retirement? What's the plan? Are you gonna be okay retiring? I mean you said last time it only lasted about 15 hours so... Well that was a

plan, 15 hours. I've been planning to do this, this is well thought out. I don't have sort of a day 1, day 2 plan, but I just have enough that I have to do that I am quite confident I will not be bored. Will you miss it? Well, of course I'll miss it. You'll miss any change, you'll miss things. And this, as you've seen, is a phenomenal team, so they're great to work with. So I'll miss that. So you know, the phone calls will continue, I imagine, for a period of time. And they're welcome too. More

than happy to share anything I know.

So if people want to find out more information about you before, before time is set and done, what can they do?

Reach out to me. I'm, I'm on LinkedIn and I'm only a phone call away email away. Murray. I really do appreciate you coming on today. Thank you very much. Thank you.

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the host and its guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within this podcast are only examples. They should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available as they are based only on very limited and dated open source information. Assumptions made within this analysis are not reflective of the position of the company. No part of this podcast may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any

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