A few months ago, you accepted a new job as the electrical maintenance manager at a large manufacturing facility that is several decades old. Your boss, the plant engineer, has been with the company for a couple of years. She and your predecessor disagreed on several important issues related to industry standards, which is why your predecessor was asked to leave.
Your boss wants to bring the entire maintenance department up to modern standards, including total compliance with NFPA 70 for the electrical equipment and total compliance with NFPA 70E for electrical work practices.
As with many plants that are this old, there are a few old-timers who are the “go to” guys. Your boss refers to them as “walking information silos.” They have resisted making their knowledge readily available, and this has given them some ability to resist the wishes of management.
Lenny, who seems to know everything about anything electrical in the plant, is one of those people. So when there's a sticky problem, he arrives on the scene and takes command. He's a big fan of “working hot,” and he's often said that there's no need to interrupt production and make people wait while someone opens a bunch of breakers and hangs a bunch of tags. “You just have to be careful,” he says. So far, his luck has held out — not a single fatal injury, though a couple of operators have lost a finger “through their own carelessness,” according to Lenny.
You've held a couple of introductory training sessions on NFPA 70E and issued every electrician a copy of the standard, but Lenny is still talking and acting this way. You spoke to his supervisor and to his crew leader, and both told you that if Lenny left the company the plant would fall apart.
You took Lenny to lunch and tried talking with him about NFPA 70E compliance. He lectured you about wasting time with needless bureaucracy. He made it clear which of you he thinks is the real boss. And he's not interested in “being bogged down” with NFPA 70E. How do you handle this?
You could begin by asking Lenny to stick his finger into that glass of water on the table. Now, pull it out and look at the hole left by your finger. Don't see it? That's exactly what happens when someone leaves the company. Nobody is irreplaceable at work. So the industry's consensus safety standard will be followed for that reason among others. It's not up for debate — it's how things are going to be, and you hope that's not going to be a problem between the two of you.
If Lenny's experience has taught him anything, it's taught him to hear the voice of authority. That's the voice he's been using for years to cover up his bad attitude toward safety. In his case, it's been a form of “expertise extortion.” In your case, you have the positional authority, and you need to use it to keep people safe.
Your boss has already stressed compliance as a goal, and fired your predecessor for not being onboard. Lenny's “expertise extortion” is based on fiction, and the risk expressed by his supervisor and crew leader is overstated. In any case, you cannot put people at risk out of fear some production time will be lost. In any ethical company, three things come before production: legal compliance, environmental compliance, and safety compliance. If your employer is worth working for, they will back your play if it comes down to firing Lenny.
Lenny feels that he'd be bogged down. So admit that compliance means things will take more time and some additional expense will be incurred. And for that reason, you need an experienced person to help implement the program. That's why you're asking him to teach a series of short classes on NFPA 70E and then oversee implementation in the field to make sure people are doing it right. Give him his first assignment, and tell him he's the best guy for the job.
Instead of fighting with Lenny, recruit him to the cause. He still gets to be a defacto boss, and you get the compliance you need. Of course, if Lenny rejects this, then you can't keep him in your organization. Whatever some people think he knows, it's not valuable enough to put the plant or its people at risk.
