Leadership

Your Legacy

This month Paul asks “What would you like your legacy to be?” You might be tempted to think this is just life advice and has little to do with what you do at work. You would be wrong. Paul holds up the legacy of one of the great leaders he met during his career who left a lasting impression on Paul. The lessons are important if you want to make a difference sending people home alive and well at the end of each and every day.

August 31, 2021 No Comments

Execution

On Followership

This month Paul analyzes followers and the underrecognized and underappreciated power in followership. Not those followers that followed their leaders into to conflict rather those working in an industrial operation, like yours. Along with examining the leadership mandate Paul explores leaders as followers. In the end it is the critical role followers play in execution, business performance and sending people home alive and well at the end of each and every day that gets Paul’s attention. If, after reading what Paul wrote, you feel compelled to go wildly dance on a hill… well, maybe I’ll see you there…

June 1, 2021 No Comments

Execution

A Crucial Conversation

This month Paul analyzes A Crucial Conversation, one particular real-world conversation, to understand the dynamics in play, especially those crucial to sending people home alive and well. He does a deep dive into the organization power present in such conversations. If more leaders understood that power, we might never have heard of the events of April 20th 2010.

April 30, 2021 No Comments

Execution

Recognizing Safety Leadership

This month Paul declares that those who make nothing happen should be celebrated for their effort and their leadership. What better way to end the first month of the New Year than with a positive story recognizing safety leadership? Paul talks about the importance of not just knowing what is most important but understanding it to set your leadership compass on True North. He discusses the challenges of making nothing happen and that those who do and do it over time ought to be recognized, and how they did it understood. He holds up the example of one such leader and how he did it as an example for others to follow. There is much to learn from Lonnie’s story.

January 29, 2021 No Comments

Leadership

Ode To Leaders

This month Paul spends time talking about the leaders he has met and observed along his working career journey. He dives into the process and practice of leadership. In his examination he focuses on execution and how leaders make a difference causing change and ensuring everyone goes home alive and well at the end of each and every shift, every day, day after day. He leaves us with some thoughts on practicing the practice of leadership.

December 18, 2020 No Comments

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 No Comments

Leadership

Lessons Learned? Really?

This month Paul talks about the investigation reports that he has read and the findings of those reports. He dives in on the lessons learned portion of many reports and provides a better understanding of investigations and lessons and leaves us with some Darn Good Advice about what we should get from investigations.

October 30, 2020 No Comments

Compliance

Individual Accountability

This month Paul talks about being held accountable. He explores common misconceptions about accountability and what it means to you doing your job. He examines a recent headline story about a CEO downunder. He provides a better understanding of accountability and leaves us with some Darn Good Advice.

September 30, 2020 No Comments

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 No Comments

Execution

Problems: Big and Small

This month Paul dives into problems big and small. He explores the nature of problems and how we think about them, then leaves us with some Darn Good Advice.

July 31, 2020 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.

Leadership

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