Hazard/Risk
Hazards, Everywhere
In this month’s edition of the Flash, Paul lends some advice on where to look for hazards and some perspective about the environment around us.
August 17, 2022
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Hazard/Risk
Working For A Living
This month Paul examines what happens when the right things aren’t done to make sure the hazards do no harm. He examines the case of Jacob Dean and how the decisions, not just of Jacob, led to a tragedy. There are many lessons to be learned from this case regardless of where you work or what you do that can make the difference between going home alive and well at the end of the day or not going home at all. The Case for Safety depends on doing the right thing.
December 16, 2021
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Execution
Regarding Trust
This month Paul disects three similar events to examine the issue of trust. You might be surprised how he ties it all together. He provides us some very important thoughts that we all need to understand.
July 30, 2021
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Execution
Another Close Call
This month Paul brings clarity to some of the different word choices in play to explain events where something bad happened and events where nothing bad happened but could have happened. But that is not the big story. Paul takes us below the surface of the debate of terms to examine some critical things that need to be understood to prevent recurrence of an unplanned and unwanted event beginning with you need to know something happened.
March 31, 2021
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Hazard/Risk
Natural Hazards
This month Paul explores how we ought to determine which “old things” are important and that we ought to prepare for. He discusses the most common misunderstanding that leads us to get it wrong more often than not. There is a lot to learn from a good hard freeze that can help you back on the job.
February 26, 2021
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Execution
Job Hazard Analysis
This month Paul’s lede story is about a recent accident while working on a similar water tower. Paul dives in on the “job” hazard analysis process. There are several lessons from this accident and the JHA process that need to be understood to make sure no events occur doing the work you and your crew do.
November 30, 2020
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Hazard/Risk
Look Out!
This month Paul shares his experience around hazard recognition and lists. He explores the nature of hazard recognition challenges and leaves us with some Darn Good Advice and a suggestion for a better way.
August 31, 2020
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Hazard/Risk
Asking “Where?”
When the time comes to look for the hazards that can hurt you, where do you look? Without giving that question a lot of thought, you might answer…
August 17, 2020
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Hazard/Risk
Has Coronavirus Increased Stress On Your Job?
People are worried about a serious hazard they can’t see. They’re being forced to change the way they do their jobs, some in very significant ways. They’re worried about their….
May 15, 2020
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Compliance
Deepwater Horizon: Lesson Learned?
This month Paul, with the help of Erick Reyna one of our teacher consultants, goes back 10 years to examine the lessons to still be learned from the Macondo Deepwater Horizon events of April 20th 2010. He shares five important lessons that are still important today. Some Darn Good Advice.
April 19, 2020
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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.
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.