Spotlight Safety
If you had to work in the dark but you had a spotlight, where would you shine it? Would you aim it at the darkest places or the places where the light would do the most good? Most safety professionals have a limited amount of time and effort and it is not adequate to do […]
When Your Safety Process Goes Stale
In a recent safety excellence workshop, our firm facilitated a brainstorming exercise with a group of safety professionals interested in solving a particular problem they were experiencing in their safety journey. Their safety process was boring them to tears and they worried it would grow stale and become irrelevant with the workforce. An executive searching […]
Safety and the Ninja Wannabe
I was watching a video on my computer of a series of interviews — several with political figures or professional athletes, and one with a contestant on a show called “American Ninja Warrior.” This wannabe ninja was asked what the hardest part of the contest was, to which he replied, “Letting go.” He explained that […]
Separating Safety
Have you heard organizations assert that safety is their top priority, safety is job one, safety is never compromised for production, etc.? Such slogans and platitudes, however well intentioned, can inflict subtle harm to safety efforts. Unless the details of the organization’s priorities and values are very clearly explained, these assertions about the importance of […]
A Timeline of Safety Progress: Aligning Others and Minimizing Change Resistors
Executives are often asked to summarize highlights of their safety successes and are given mere seconds to do so. Whether they have a captive audience in an elevator, directors in a boardroom, or a large group of shareholders at the annual meeting, time and attention spans are in short supply. Today, audiences are busy, overloaded […]
Translating Safety
I recently consulted with a group of safety professionals who wanted help explaining to their corporate leaders how their function added value to the organization. I helped them explain the financial, legal exposure, and PR benefits of good safety in terms “C-suite” executives would understand. Almost all the terminology I used was foreign to the […]
The Moments of Truth That Make or Break Your Safety Culture
Over the years, I have dined with astronauts, professional athletes, best-selling authors and even a Secretary of State, listening with great interest as they tell stories from their unique perspective of how their professional endeavors and world-renowned contributions impact humanity and even change the world. I find it interesting to break bread with such influential […]
Ten Questions to Mature Executive Safety Thinking
All progress begins by thinking differently. Today’s current views regarding safety excellence should be at least partially obsolete in ten years: how safety excellence is defined and achieved, what the goals should be, who is responsible for what, and how long it will take in time and resources. What are your executive leaders’ perspectives on […]
The Safety Experience
Marketing and sales experts have avowed for years that buying decisions are largely based on three criteria: value, price and experience. Over the past several years, the only notable change in this formula is that the experience has grown significantly while the other two criteria have diminished. This means the service and ambiance of a […]
Being a Better Safety Communicator: A Tool to Assess Your Personal Effectiveness
How effectively do you communicate? Communication is one of the most important methods of influence and critical to success in any organization. It is also one of the most difficult to consistently get right. Great orators over time have moved bodies to conquer armies and moved hearts and minds to bring people together during difficult […]
