Paul Balmert

Execution

The Danger Zone

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News Paul starts the New Year by examining the challenges of leadership and looking at how complacency plays into the goal of sending everyone home, at the end of each and every shift, alive and well.

Read More »
Uncategorized

The Perfect Gift

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News Paul makes his suggestion for the best gift of all for your followers. Want to give a gift that really makes a difference, check out Paul’s suggestion.

Read More »
Hazard/Risk

Harm’s Way

When it comes to getting hurt, there are only three ways that can happen: from something you do; from something someone else does to you; by an Act of God.

Read More »
Execution

Effect – And Cause

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News Paul digs into some of those recent events to see what we can use back on the job to make sure everyone goes home alive and well at the end of each and every day.

Read More »
Hazard/Risk

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Behind every safety rule stands a reason. And that reason almost always has something to do with someone getting hurt, making “every safety rule written in blood.”

Read More »
Execution

Word Games

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News I sent Paul to an ancient place and he came back with some very interesting and useful insights that he shares in this month’s News. I was rewarded and I suspect you will be too.

Read More »
Hazard/Risk

Got Machines?

Machinery is everywhere: all that production equipment; maintenance equipment like mills lathes, welders; equipment moving equipment…

Read More »
Leadership

Your Safety Culture

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News Paul examines safety culture: What it is, why it matters, why it can be a problem, and what you need to know to change it. If you’re like me, you’ll get a lot of value out of what he has to say. You may even get a new appreciation of the paper that lines your hallways.

Read More »
Hazard/Risk

Recognizing What Can Hurt Us

You’re driving a truck. On a narrow, one-way street, eastbound on a beautiful late summer morning. Your route calls for you to make a right turn…

Read More »
Hazard/Risk

Stopping The Job

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News Paul examines making stop work decisions at work and the critical importance of that decision. Oh, yes, the client stopped the work and canceled the class in Houston. Our teacher did go to Salt Lake City so the client, in a Harvey-free area did not need to stop the work. Our teacher on the river stopped the work and headed to Fort Worth. Paul will give you some suggestions about making your stop work decisions.

Read More »

Popular Topics

Popular Articles

Teaching Followers

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, Paul teaches us why teaching followers is still one of the most important responsibilities of leadership.

From assigning work to developing people, Paul shows how teaching gives leaders a powerful opportunity to improve performance, reinforce expectations, shape culture, and stay connected to the people doing the work. He also shares what Jack Welch understood about teaching that many busy leaders have forgotten.

Paul’s lesson may change the way you think about one of the most basic things leaders do.

Read More »

Your Warning Indicators

In this month’s Flash, we take a look at what we call Early Warning Indicators. Seeing safety performance for what it actually is means looking beyond past performance, and further into what’s happening today. Using Early Warning Indicators is an easy and effective way to do just that.

Read More »

Practicing Leadership

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, Paul finds a leadership lesson in a decidedly unlikely place: a guy in a bright yellow suit who owns a wildly successful baseball team named after a breakfast fruit. What Jesse Cole and the Savannah Bananas have to do with the everyday practice of leadership—and what Paul sees in their story—is worth the read.

Read More »

Your Safety Meetings

In this month’s Flash, we’re giving your safety meetings a checkup. Instead of another idea for what to talk about, we’re taking a closer look at how your meetings are going—and what makes a good safety meeting good.

Read More »

Reliability and Safety

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, Newton draws on four decades in pulp and paper manufacturing to explore the relationship between reliability and safety. When equipment fails, production falls behind, and the pressure for results builds, does improving reliability necessarily improve safety?

Read More »

Real-Time Decisions

In this month’s Flash, we explore real-time decision making, what to do when urgency and pressure push us toward making faster decisions, and how to recognize when it’s time to slow the process down to make a better decision.

Read More »

Running Red Lights

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, Paul takes running a red light and turns it into a much larger lesson about safety, leadership, human behavior, and execution. He starts with a company vehicle that ran a red light near his house and connects that incident to the tragic runway collision at LaGuardia, where technology, procedures, radio communication, and red runway entrance lights were all in place. The system had controls, but the outcome still depended on execution at the point of contact.

Read More »

Appreciating Feedback

In this month’s Flash what might get in the way of intervention, why feedback matters, and how a simple “thank you” can encourage the conversations that help prevent injuries.

Read More »

Coaching Leaders

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, Gary Rivenes explores what effective coaching looks like when safety leadership moves from the classroom to the field. Gary writes from experience: before joining Balmert Consulting, he spent more than thirty years in mining leadership roles, from supervising a seventy-person crew to serving as Chief Operating Officer. In those roles, coaching leaders was not a theory or a program. It was part of getting the work done safely and sending people home alive and well at the end of the day.

Read More »

All “Those” Rules…

In this month’s Flash we discuss “dumb rules”, and re-visit an easy way to put on great Tool Box Safety Meetings. Unfortunately those sorts of rules are often unwanted and seen as unnecessary, here’s one idea to help you reduce the chance a new one might be needed in the first place.

Read More »
Scroll to Top