Safety Culture Excellence®

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Shreveport, LA. I’d like to share an article Terry Mathis wrote, published March 2013 in EHS Today Magazine.  It was titled, Who Says "Go"? Is Safety Led or Abdicated? 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, Inc

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Bastrop, Texas. I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published March 2013 in QHSE Focus Magazine.  It was titled, Challenging the Goal of Safety. 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, Inc

W. Edwards Deming explained a basic concept of manufacturing quality by elaborating on the cause of defects.  He explained that some defects had special cause (i.e., some unusual event caused the defect to happen).  Other defects happened due to causes that are built into the manufacturing processes itself.  He called these common causes. There is a debate among safety professionals these days about whether accidents are caused more by system issues or simply by human error.  The simple fact is that it could be either and that neither is mutually exclusive.  Your organization could be having accidents caused by either or both.  Finding out the cause is critical during accident investigations and making the distinction between common and special causes can be very useful. This dichotomy is less useful for fixing blame than it is for fixing problems.  Special causes alert us to outside forces to guard against in the future.  We can often extend our caution beyond the specific issue to other similar risks or situations.  When a foreign object gets into a product, we can protect against that object but also explore what other objects could find their way into our processes and how they could do so.  When a special outside issue impacts safety, we can use similar reasoning to increase our awareness and precautions against such risks. Common causes can be more difficult to recognize because they hide within our systems and influence other actions and decisions that can directly lead to defects and/or accidents.  However, it is critical to identify them because they will continue to influence risks until we see and address them.  Even what looks like simple human error can be influenced by systems issues.  This is one reason for always asking “why?” to find what may lie beyond worker decisions and actions. Deming left us with a warning about finding out and classifying causes.  He said that blame causes fear and that fear causes the hiding and skewing of information critical to understanding causation.  We should seek first to understand and then take intelligent action based on that understanding. -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.

In safety there are issues that require a lot of thought and decision making.  There are others that only require simple action.  These simple actions should be trained as habits and programmed into the auto pilot of workers.  It is a total waste of time to muse over whether or not to buckle a seatbelt.  Just make buckling an automatic response that is done every time without though or debate. However, don’t allow the engineering crew to refuel the nuclear reactor by habit.  Even if the process has steps that are repeated regularly, plan and carry them out very consciously.  Analyze the issues and keep everyone on their guard mentally as the process is completed.  Check and recheck each step and make sure everyone involved feels free to offer suggestions and voice concerns.  Hold a wrap-up meeting to review and ensure that everything is complete and secure before ending the project. Organizations with excellent safety performance recognize this dichotomy.  It is critical to differentiate the precautions that require mindless action and those that require careful planning and execution.  Confusing one for the other can spell disaster. -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.

Maslow pointed out that we focus on immediate needs until they are met and then move on to higher goals.  Is your safety program still focused on where the next meal is coming from or looking for enlightenment?  There is no ideal answer to this question; only an honest one.  If you are still struggling to get your workers into basic compliance (i.e.  Knowing and following the rules and procedures), you are trying to survive.  If you are well past that stage and looking for the next step change beyond your already good results, you are trying to thrive.  There is no fault in either case.  You probably inherited the current state and are challenged to take it to the next level.  What is important is that you recognize your current state and respond accordingly. If you are in survival mode, it is imperative that your supervisors are respected and viewed by workers as friends and not foes.  Position and authority don’t matter as much to workers trying to survive as the distinction between friend and foe.  Friends are trying to help you survive; foes are trying to make you fail.  Workers will follow their friends and not their foes.  It is also critically important that you communicate accident data as stories from which you can learn lessons.  Survivalists view risk taking as necessary to survival and don’t generalize well.  Tell them the story of the accident and let them determine lessons learned from the story. In thrive mode, you need to focus on the passion and purpose of safety excellence.  To be excellent, it is not enough to convince workers; you must convert them.  Directives will get hands and feet moving.  It takes passion to move hearts and minds.  It is critically important to recognize the difference and to address it intelligently.  Many safety professionals think that more of the same will get them to the next level.  Unfortunately, that is seldom the case.  The tools of excellence are different from the tools of pretty good.  You can be the voice of reason and get the organization from bad to good.  You have to be an inspirational leader to get from good to great. -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.

I thinned some trees in a thick, forested area on my lot hoping the remaining trees would grow more wide limbs and spread their canopies.  It didn’t happen.  I asked my tree expert why not and he explained that new limbs on a mature tree were only growing out of the bark and not the core of the tree trunk.  They were weak and seldom reached large size without breaking off in the first strong wind. Many safety programs likewise are add-ons and have no real connection to the core values and strategies of the organization.  We hope they will provide extra coverage and fill the gaps, but they seldom survive for very long.  The strong limbs of our safety programs are connected to a solid strategy and designed to provide specific coverage.  They are not afterthoughts, but the result of solid planning. It is crucial for organizational leaders to think of the tree and the limbs as one unit.  If safety is a core value of the organization, there are no safety goals; only business goals related to safety.  The strategy of the organization includes safety-related strategies that connect to the core.  Leaders might fertilize the soil and stimulate the roots, but they don’t try to artificially graft on limbs that aren’t firmly connected. Many safety programs and processes are attempts to compensate for a lack of core strategy and seldom survive the winds of change. -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 both 2010 and 2011. 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.

There are two strategies in safety that don’t work; one is doing nothing and the other is trying to maintain the status quo.  The sad truth is that safety is constantly either getting better or getting worse.  It would seem logical that keeping a constant level of effort toward accident reduction would result in a relatively constant result.  While this can be true in the short term, it seldom continues for multiple years.  Many organizations get a wake-up call when, after a few years of relatively low accident rates, they have a rash of accidents they didn’t expect. Much of this thinking is the result of relying too heavily on lagging indicators to evaluate safety performance.  Periods without accidents can appear to be the result of safety efforts when in fact they are simply luck.  Low-probability risks do not cause accidents with every incidence, and it can take time to play out the results of such risks.  Lagging indicators will accurately reflect the risk level over time, but usually too late to respond effectively. The two ways to overcome this problem involve developing leading indicators and implementing continuous improvement.  Leading indicators help to evaluate the amount of effort and change that is happening in safety activities.  Continuous improvement simply means that the organization must maintain a healthy sense of vulnerability and constantly target new safety improvements.  The journey to safety excellence is long, but can be effectively taken a step at a time. -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 both 2010 and 2011. 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.

Certainly the average person desires to be both liked and respected. While a gross oversimplification of behavioral sciences, we behave in a way consistent with seeking out what we desire and avoiding what we don’t. Leaders of all kinds are often put in positions to make decisions that impact the lives of others. If our primary goal is to be liked, we act, or decide in accordance. The same is true if our goal is to obtain or preserve respect. Earlier this month the world lost Margaret Thatcher, the previous Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. She was once quoted as saying, “If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.” I’m sure we have all worked for people that we personally liked, but didn’t respect the professional position, with the opposite also being true. With leaders seeking out both hearts and minds and hands and feet, what should the primary focus be? Ultimately, we need to look at what the role of a leader should be (e.g., thought leader, challenger of status quo thinking, advancer of performance and culture)? Stephen Hawking, a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author once wrote, “Among physicists, I'm respected I hope.” During a recent dinner conversation on this topic with very well liked and publicly respected CEO, he commented, “Being liked is more about an individual’s self-esteem.” I tend to agree. Being respected comes from accomplishing what needs to be done and through creating the desire among others to do so without question, due to regard for the person and position. I’m very happy if those I work with and lead like me. More important, do they respect what I do and what I’m trying to influence them to do without my direction or oversight? What are your thoughts? Shawn M. Galloway is the coauthor of two books: STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence and The Hazardous Materials Management Desk Reference (3rd Edition). He is also the President of ProAct Safety.  As an internationally recognized safety excellence expert, he has helped hundreds of organizations within every major industry to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture.  In 2012, ISHN Magazine listed him in the POWER 101 – Leaders of the EHS World. He has authored over 250 podcasts, 100 articles and 30 videos on the subject of safety excellence. Shawn is the host of the highly acclaimed weekly podcast series, Safety Culture Excellence and a columnist for several magazines.

Three has been a lot of dialogue lately about high-severity accidents.  Some have questioned the basic assumptions of people like Herbert William Heinrich that tended to think that all levels of severity come from the same risk pools.  Several research projects have focused on severe accidents and sought to determine their root causes and find strategies to prevent them.  The real danger in focusing on topics like this is that we tend to lose the balance of our safety efforts.  We tend to focus either on the highest frequency accidents or the highest severity accidents and not on both. While the majority of severe injuries result from process issues that are usually covered by rules and procedures, and the most frequent accident tend to be more personal and involve worker behaviors;  there are exceptions to both.  It is crucial that we achieve compliance with regulations and our own rules and procedures while encouraging and empowering workers to go “above and beyond.”  If we take our focus off one kind of risk while we work on another, we do so at our workers’ peril.  Even mundane risks can sometimes result in unusually severe injuries.  A behavioral approach should not take effort away from compliance efforts.  While we strive to better understand both our severe and our frequent accidents, we should balance our efforts to prevent both types. -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 both 2010 and 2011. 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.

Health, Safety, and Environmental (HSE) professionals face an increasing challenge, one that intensifies with each new hypercompetitive priority. It is little wonder why organizations strive to move safety from a priority to a value. To create these shared values within an organization, they must be reinforced at or near the point of decision. In principle, this always holds true. In practice, accomplishing this grows increasing difficult. Simply stating that safety is a value at an increasing frequency and passion does not make it so. The successful HSE leader of tomorrow cannot simply work towards value creation; they must become a transformational leader. Key Issues Addressed During Workshop • The challenges facing future HSE leaders • Redefining safety excellence • Transformational opportunities for further cultural and performance improvement for organizations already leading in safety efforts • Best practices of top performing organizations in safety and operational excellence • Strategies to self-diagnose for transformational opportunities within your organization that will put you onto the path to safety excellence • Proven elements of the safety culture excellence model and behavior of the best companies to sustain this desirable goal • How to engage employees in safety, solicit discretional effort, and create a workplace culture that is committed to sustaining safety excellence • Updated safety models and approaches that have resulted in millions of annualized savings • A review of the better practices of excellence cultures • A review of the elements of Safety Culture Excellence® For more information contact ProAct Safety at 936.273.8700 or info (at) ProActSafety.com 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, available through WILEY (publisher), Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety www.ProActSafety.com