Safety Culture Excellence®

Many sports teams who have a good season develop high hopes for a good play-off performance only to be badly disappointed.  It seems that play intensifies in the post-season when only the best teams are left and winning is contingent on more than the basics.  Safety has some similarities:  going from poor performance to better performance comes with the basics and reasonable effort.  But when only a few accidents remain per year, preventing them takes a whole new level of effort.

The biggest mistake in both these scenarios is assuming that the strategy that got you to this point will get you the rest of the way to top.  The problem is that the tools of “bad-to-good” don’t work on “good-to-excellent.”  That game plan and those tools must form the basis of your effort, but winning will take a dose of “above and beyond.”  The last remaining risks aren’t always visible to the naked eye and a whole new level of analysis is needed.  When you get rid of the obvious risks, the next level is less obvious.  When you eliminate the high-probability risks, the remaining ones are lower probability and harder to detect.  Excellence is a whole new game overlaid on the old game.  When you get to the playoffs, develop a new game plan. 

-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit 

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 three consecutive times. 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).

Rule of thumb:  Any quantity goal without a quality requirement will encourage “pencil whipping”.  This is especially true of safety audits and observations.  Organizations that require everyone to do two observations per month or two audits per week are misstating what they truly want.  Quantity is ineffective without quality.  There are thousands of studies that support the idea that a certain quantity of contact or assessment is necessary for improvements.  But they all go out the window if the numbers are filled with fake, or otherwise poor-quality, components.

What drives change is the right number of quality contacts.  Going through the motions and getting the numbers just to check off a box is not what organizations really want.  So why do they set these goals, omitting the quality requirements?  Largely because the quantity is easily and discretely measured while the quality is more complicated and subjective.  It is easier to create accountability around numbers than quality, but doing so can completely compromise the effort.  State both quantity and quality requirements in all goals and do your best to hold workers accountable for both.

-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit 

www.ProActSafety.com

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 three consecutive times. 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 all, here is a short video for this week's podcast. I hope it gets you thinking!

Shawn M. Galloway
President, ProAct Safety

What gets an organization the most excellent performance:  good people or good processes?  Obviously, these two are not mutually exclusive, but most organizations that utilize both favor one or the other.  If you view excellent performance as something delivered by all stars, then you favor recruiting and developing people.  If you view excellent performance as something delivered by a highly-functioning team, you tend to select adequate workers and give them specific processes to define their contributions to performance.  

The most excellent organizations we work with have an interesting blend of these two approaches.  They lean heavily toward the people aspect without neglecting the definition that comes from process.  In the extreme this is a choice between “hang your brain at the door and follow the procedure” and “ let’s all hold hands and sing Kum ba yah.”  Even great people need direction and no amount of direction can compensate for too much lack of ability.  

Neither of these approaches alone has ever proven to produce the highest levels of performance, but the right combination and blending of the two can and has led organizations to levels of performance they didn’t think was possible.

-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit www.ProActSafety.com

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.

A business unit manager who was frustrated with a bottleneck in his operations took over a job for several hours from an operator to speed up production.  His regional manager walked in and found him there and asked what he was doing.  When he explained that he was doing the job of an operator, his boss asked him, “While you are doing that, who is running the unit?”  He was working “IN” his unit and not “ON” it.

Many safety professionals are entirely too bogged down with day-to-day busywork to work “on” safety.  Others choose to roll up their sleeves and jump in rather than to stand back and strategically evaluate what really needs to be done.  Even corporate safety leaders often choose to do work rather than to manage safety strategically.  The net result is that many safety efforts are strategy-less, leaderless balls of energy being hurled at the big problem of accidents.  The underlying premise is that somehow more effort will win the day.

Often what is needed is not more but better effort.  Better effort is accomplished strategically.  When everyone is putting forth effort for the sake of effort and no one is working on strategy, that just doesn’t happen.

-Terry L. Mathis

For more insights, visit www.ProActSafety.com

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.

Hello everyone, here is a quick video to help you shape performance in those you are coaching, leading and/or managing.

Have a great week!

Shawn M. Galloway
www.ShawnGalloway.com