Hazard/Risk
Improvisation
Sometimes solutions are the stuff of genius. But not every one of those solutions turns out to be great – or safe. Here’s just such a case.
September 16, 2019
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Hazard/Risk
Go – or Stop?
This month in Go —or Stop? Paul examines lessons learned from another first day on the job in industry. This one went totally different than my first day but also made a lasting impression and offers some very important lessons not to be soon forgotten.
August 30, 2019
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Hazard/Risk
Asking “Should?”
Brand new to the world of industry, it’s your first day on the job. You’ve been given your first assignment: a seemingly simple clean up task. Having been given no training, getting ready to start…
August 15, 2019
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Execution
Managing Risk: The Right Stuff
This month in Managing Risk: The Right Stuff Paul examines lessons learned about managing risk in the space program. He provides four very important lessons that need to be understood about risk and sending people, to the moon and/or home alive and well at the end of each and every day.
July 31, 2019
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Execution
Missing The Obvious
Over the first decade of manned spaceflight in the US, no human life was lost in space. In managing risk, there no greater success story…
July 15, 2019
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Compliance
Factoring In The Human
Imagine your momentary queasiness as you start reading…US Airways 1549. You immediately know what that is about and have a pretty good idea Captain Sully has something to do with it. This month Paul examines the human factor when things go bump in the night…or the Hudson River.
June 28, 2019
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Hazard/Risk
Certain
Being sure. Thinking you’re sure. Acting as though you are sure. We do it all the time. In one sense, it’s impossible not to. To live a normal life, you have to….
June 19, 2019
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Leadership
The Power of Example
This month Paul examines the power of example, the power of the examples of leaders. Mimicking or copying the behaviors of others is inbred in us from the time we are young. We do it almost without thinking. If that is true then as a leader it is a powerful way to get people doing what you want them to do.
May 31, 2019
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Hazard/Risk
Sixth Sense
The five senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, smell. Together they form the foundation of hazard recognition, done real time where we live and work. There is also the notion of a sixth sense…
May 15, 2019
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Leadership
Changing The Culture
This month Paul looks at the challenges of creating the culture you want. Said another way, culture change. It is rare for me to have an initial conversation with prospective and existing clients without them using the term “culture.” Two calls already this morning and it is early. In Changing the Culture Paul provides some brilliant insights while cutting through all the culture change clutter. There is a lot in this one and worthy of multiple reads. This one is brilliant and important! He also will have everyone pulling out their old Geometry text book.
April 30, 2019
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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.