Safety Culture Excellence®

The most ineffective safety coaching I have ever seen had some great ideas and techniques, but it was based on a bad premise.  That premise was that supervisors and leaders should coach the day-to-day performance of their workers in an evaluative manner.  They used some powerful interaction models and evaluative techniques, but in the end, it just seemed like the boss’s opinion vs. the worker’s opinion of performance.

The best safety coaching is based on targeted improvements rather than evaluation.  Targeting specific improvements (precautions to take or behaviors that contribute to culture) helps coaching in several ways: 

• It creates talking points that are friendly and logical (what we agreed to work on) and not subjective (what the boss does or doesn’t like)
• It creates a clear dichotomy of performance (you either took the targeted precaution or you did not) vs. the boss thinks you did well or poorly
• When targeted precautions are not taken, it fosters a discussion of why and why not rather than a judgment of performance
• It creates a communication atmosphere of adult talking to adult vs. adult overseeing child
• It creates the expectation that safety is about getting better not just staying the same

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Cotulla, TX. I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published December 2013 in BIC Magazine. The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com.

I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence

Have a great week!


Shawn M. Galloway
ProAct Safety

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Roosevelt, UT. I’d like to share an article I wrote, published November 2013 in BIC Magazine. The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com.

I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway
ProAct Safety

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Mineral Wells, WV. I’d like to share an article I wrote, published October 2013 in BIC Magazine. The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com.

I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway
ProAct Safety

Ralph Waldo Emerson commented that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…”  To an extent, every manager and leader has some of this “littleness” of mind.  Almost all long for people and process to be more consistent and predictable.  If they were more consistent, changes and improvements could be accomplished uniformly across the organization.  Sameness smacks of control and what leader doesn’t want to be in control?  But the extreme side of consistency is robotic sameness.  It contains no original thought, nor creativity.  It has no motivation to go above and beyond.  It does not question the status quo, nor long for excellence.  

Continuity, in its best form, is enough consistency to allow for aligned effort but not stifle it.  Continuity of strategy, programs, and terminology allow for individuals to work together toward a common cause with likeness of mind but room for individuality.  People can seek the same goals, use the same tools and speak the same language, but do so in their own completely unique way.  Each contribution can add up to a much greater sum with such synergy of effort.

So leaders, here is the challenge:  Can you lead without micromanaging, align without stifling, create focus without destroying individuality.  In short, can you build continuity without going too far and creating little-minded consistency?

-Terry L. Mathis

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Chicago, IL. I’d like to share an article I wrote, published October 2013 in OHS Magazine. The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com.

I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway
ProAct Safety

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Bend, OR. I’d like to share an article Terry Mathis wrote, published September 2013 in EHS Today Magazine. The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com.

I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway
ProAct Safety

When you think about the title of this piece, the first thing that comes to most people’s minds is an accident that produced property damage but no injuries.  While that is a common example of this principle, it is not the only one.  Virtually any undesired, unplanned, unexpected result of a work process is accidental.  It could be argued that anything that did not turn out as planned is an accident.  

When you think about it this way, people invest in the wrong stocks, elect the wrong people to office, and marry the wrong spouses from time to time.  We don’t blame such accidents exclusively on the stock market, the government, or dating services.  Likewise when an organization has a rash of injuries, it might not be exclusively the fault of the safety programs and specialists.

The real key to understanding and applying this principle is simply that good management must anticipate the multiple ways that processes can produce unwanted results and prevent them from doing so.  When you think this way, safety is not a touchy, feely specialty to be delegated.  It is a principle of good management.  

Managers must constantly be on guard against the ways in which their processes can fail or go awry.  Such events can be caused by people, machines, conditions, process flaws or combinations of these.  Designing and constantly improving all the aspects of business processes is the job of leaders, managers and supervisors.  Blaming workers or delegating problem areas seldom creates organizational excellence.  It is crucial to remember that when the goose quits laying golden eggs, you need better goose management: not an egg specialists.  

-Terry L. Mathis

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

As more and more leaders and safety professionals realize the limitations of reactive safety, they search for leading indicators to help them manage safety more proactively.  This thinking fueled the concept that lagging indicators alone, are not truly representative of safety performance, nor are they predictive or prescriptive.

 The first round of so-called “leading indicators” was little more than a measurement of safety-related activities: hours of safety training, attendance at safety meetings, participation in safety programs, etc.  OSHA’s crackdown on incentives that could potentially suppress reporting of accidents drove many organizations to base their incentives on these activity metrics rather than simply not having an accident.  

When behavior-based safety became the rage, the measurement of behaviors from observations came to be thought of as a leading indicator. As safety culture became a buzz phrase, perception surveys gained in popularity and came to be considered another potential leading indicator.  The search for meaningful leading indicators goes on because no one of these has proven adequate in predicting and preventing injuries.

Where none of these alone succeed, all of them together potentially can.  A balanced-scorecard approach in which the metrics not only complement, but predict each other has proven quite effective in proactively predicting how to prevent accidents.  When you measure how much activity it takes to change perceptions, how much of a change in perceptions it takes to change behaviors, and how much behavior change it takes to change the lagging indicators, you begin to truly measure the effectiveness of safety efforts.  Just as balanced scorecards have revolutionized strategic management, with our most successful clients, balanced scorecards for safety have proven to have a transformational impact on safety management. How balanced are your measurements? 

-Terry L. Mathis

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Craig, CO. I’d like to share an article I wrote, published September 2013 in BIC Magazine. The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com.

I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway
ProAct Safety