Paul Balmert

Execution

Leading – And Managing Safety

This month Paul hails Ceasar’s selection of New Year’s Day as the beginning of the next trip around the sun, as well as the perfect moment for every manager and supervisor to plan and evaluate. He points out there is nothing more important than planning for actually making things safer for those who do the work of the business. In the process he takes on “the next big thing” and “conventional wisdom” that frequently appear during the planning process. He leaves us with thoughts on the critical importance of leadership and execution if the goal is to see that everyone goes home alive and well the end of the day.

January 7, 2025 No Comments

Measurement

The Holidays

This month Paul dives into the application of the Scientific Method to better understand factors that drive safety performance. He offers up a hypothesis worth testing when things are going well, and some advice on how best to examine the evidence if safety performance isn’t what it ought to be.

December 13, 2024 No Comments

Execution

About Practice

This month Paul examines the art and science of practice, specifically of safety leadership practice. When it comes to safety leadership practices, he clarifies what that means and how to evaluate the practices. He shares his thought on the critical nature of improving the practices and thoughts on how to do it. This is definitely one of the most important messages he has shared in the Managing Safety Performance News.

November 22, 2024 No Comments

Leadership

The Communication Challenge

This month Paul discusses the communication challenge when it comes to sending people home alive and well at the end of the day. He examines the process used by those who are successful to figure out easier and better ways. Understanding the communication process is key to improving it and he points out it is a challenge that falls on the shoulders of leaders around the world. He makes the point that improving communications can go a long way to keeping problems from ever happening.

October 31, 2024 No Comments

Safety Meeting Topics

Coach

In this month’s Flash we take a look at coaching followers on working safely, and offer three simple practices that can help what’s most important – sending folks home alive and well every day.

October 17, 2024 No Comments

Leadership

What’s The Problem?

This month Paul discusses problem solving when things go wrong at work that rise to the level of an investigation. He calls on his experience and expertise doing “Root Cause of Root Cause Investigations” to examine the quality and usefulness of the investigation findings. More importantly he discusses the critical importance of finding the truth about what really happened and why. His findings are very important whether the investigations you are responsible for are for little things or rise to the level of a full-scale root cause analysis.

September 30, 2024 No Comments

Safety Meeting Topics

Hazard Recognized?

In this month’s Flash we take a look at a tragic case, and the official findings, to help better understand why this happened and how it could have been avoided.

September 13, 2024 No Comments

Execution

Your Job

This month Paul discusses the difference between “what’s your job” and “how do you do your job?” In examining a “a day in the life of a leader” he focuses on front-line leaders and their role of making sure everyone goes home alive and well at the end of each and every shift. He talks about the critical difference between “checking the box” and successfully and effectively executing the activities that are critical to sending people home safe. He makes the case that doing those activities well takes training and repetition to make the common practice that makes a difference.

August 29, 2024 No Comments

Safety Meeting Topics

Observe

In this month’s Flash we take a look at the observation process, and offer one idea on how to make your observations on safety better.

August 15, 2024 No Comments

Leadership

Shooting Straight

This month Paul dives into the topic of effective management communication, and the importance of “Shooting Straight” when it comes to managing safety.

July 31, 2024 No Comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Paul Balmert

Popular Topics

Popular Articles