Safety Culture Excellence

Greetings everyone! Recording this week in Belle Fourche, South Dakota just outside of Sturgis. When asked how long it takes to change a culture, the predominant answer most of our fellow experts provide, is anywhere from five to seven years. Moreover it is often said that it takes time because you have to implement resource intensive methodical change process and lots and lots of patience. From this you will be able to improve and change the safety aspects of a culture. Well, perhaps if you want to completely change every element of your culture, it could take quite a while, that is true. In this podcast we would like to offer some suggestions of how to go out and have a fast positive impact on and within your safety culture. 

Now consider we are not talking about bad to perfect overnight. We are also not talking about band aid fixes or Hawthorne flashes in the pan. We are talking about getting turned around and facing the right direction and making progress in the direction in a relatively short amount of time. The business realities of today’s world dictate a results oriented approach to change. Respectfully, most business leaders do not have the luxury to recognize a return on investment after patiently waiting for multiple years. I have personally seen multiple sites experience dramatic improvements in both performance and culture within 6 months. Then sustain that improvement and success-seeking mentality, by developing cultural systems to do just that, sustain! If you think about it, early successes themselves creates the drive for continuous improvement, not programs. Programs after programs have effectively created the program of the month perception. Success after success creates what we are after, what we call a Results Driven Change Philosophy. 

There is nothing wrong with the models of positive change over multiple years to create new cultural norms. We just think they need to be tweaked to fit the business realities. So today we would like to share with you what we have been using in practice in over a thousand projects to experience FAST culture and safety improvement.  FAST is an acronym that stands for: Focus, Architectural Structure, Skills of Interpersonal Communication and Transformational Results Orientation. When we look at cultures we often find these four elements are lacking. This is the topic of the podcast this week.  I hope you enjoy!

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway

ProAct Safety, Inc.

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