Balmert News on Safety, Leadership & Workplace Trends

Compliance

Common Practice

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, Paul starts with an investigation into a fatality, sure there’s a lot to learn about getting meaningful investigation findings, but don’t stop there this is really about navigating a very large ship, in a very narrow channel, with lots of cross current and other traffic — changing direction. In the end it is about getting great safety performance. They say there is no silver bullet for getting great safety results, that may be true, but there are a few key fundamental things that are the difference that make the difference. Paul reveals them this month. I’ll be interested to hear what you think after you finish “Common Practice”.

May 31, 2018 No Comments

Hazard/Risk

Victims of Culture

Culture is best defined as “the way things really are around here.” That means every operation everywhere in the world has a safety culture.

May 15, 2018 No Comments

Compliance

On The Road – Again

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, from a restaurant in Siberia, Paul examines the differences and similarities of the challenges supervisors and managers face leading people to work safe the world over, including one very important challenge.

April 30, 2018 No Comments

Hazard/Risk

Good Questions

In our classes, we like to ask Darn Good Questions. Here are a few that you might want to answer – or, even better, ask others.

April 13, 2018 No Comments

Uncategorized

Safe Spaces?

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News Paul examines the case of a self-driving car and cyclist—actually a cyclist walking her bike across the street. You might have read the headlines. Below the headlines there is a lot to learn and take back to the shop floor to make sure every one goes home alive and well at the end of each and every shift. By the way, when I started to read Paul’s article I did not see his take on the lessons to be learned coming at all.

March 30, 2018 No Comments

Hazard/Risk

Proceed With Caution!

In your opinion, which is more dangerous?

Entering a confined space
Entering a pedestrian crosswalk on a busy street

March 15, 2018 No Comments

Leadership

Three Questions

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News Paul examines three darn good questions to see what we can learn. You might think this month’s article is about darn good questions, it is, but back up the truck: it is full of other darn good ideas including getting people to follow all the rules all the time, making change happen, execution, and safety leadership. You will be intrigued as he pulls the thread and brings them all together. There’s a lot to learn.

February 28, 2018 No Comments

Hazard/Risk

Safety Rules and the Wise

Remember when you were a kid and some grown-up would see you with your shoelaces untied?

February 15, 2018 No Comments

Execution

Perspective – And Leadership

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News Paul examines the perspective of leaders, how perspective can effect a leaders action, and how leaders can get a new perspective. He suggests the right perspective about safety is helpful, even critical, to sending everyone home alive and well at the end of the day.

January 31, 2018 No Comments

Hazard/Risk

Taking Care of Safety

The question of what comes first – production or safety – is one that is asked the world over. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment…

January 15, 2018 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.

Balmert News on Safety, Leadership & Workplace Trends

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