Any leader will tell you “leadership creates culture.” Oddly enough, “knowing” in this case doesn’t reach very far. What is required is finding the connection between what I do as a leader and the kinds of cultural attributes I would like to change. Here is an example from my experience: I was the CEO of…
Paul O’Neill was the CEO of Alcoa from 1987 to 2000. Under his leadership, Alcoa’s market value increased from $3 billion in 1986 to $27.53 billion in 2000, while net income increased from $200 million to $1.48 billion. O’Neill began his first speech to Alcoa shareholders in 1987 by saying, “I want to talk to…
Most safety leaders and most operations leaders think they know how to assess risk effectively. Ineffective safety decisions happen at the front line employee level, but we leaders know better. This turns out to be false. A growing body of knowledge on cognitive bias shows that human thinking in general tends to be flawed, in…
Organizational leaders are always in the process of seeking out and developing talented people who can take on responsibilities and attain objectives. The higher up you get the more important this becomes. If you could just find five people who could do what you can do, or what your top leader is doing, life would…
I was on the way home from Houston, after several days of meetings with clients about decision making, cognitive bias and the prevention of serious and fatal injuries. I was in the terminal walking toward the gate. First I saw the kid, wild eyed, head jerking back and forth, looking down toward the gate and…
Most leading organizations today use a culture survey of one kind or another. Some are directly related to safety and some indirectly. Often they are given annually. How worthwhile are these instruments and how should they be used? Whether your survey is designed to measure organizational culture in general, safety culture in particular, or both,…
Global organizations often ask questions like, “Will the things that work in North America also work in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe?” or “Are the principles that inform safety excellence the same across countries and their cultures?” or “Is safety excellence in an underdeveloped country the same as in a developed one?”. These…
Organizational leaders recognize the importance of getting the culture right in order to enhance safety performance. A positive work environment is essential. But all too often they approach the safety culture issue with worn out platitudes. I once coached an inexperienced leader in his first job of supervising three manufacturing plants. He came up through…
Working in a good culture is fun. More than that it is meaningful. Look at the film All Things Must Pass, the incredible documentary about the rise and fall of Tower Records; 5 billion to bankruptcy in 5 years. Key employees tell their stories, fascinating in many ways, one of which is the deep sense…
Behavior-based safety is one of the most important and controversial approaches to safety improvement in the last 35 years. Some companies swear by it and some think it is time to move on. Labor organizations have never accepted behavior-based safety, especially at the national level. There are good people on both sides and good reasons…
Most of us know there is no off-the-shelf game-changer that will “fix safety.” It can be seductive to think otherwise, and of course there is no shortage of consultants out there who have all the answers. But the reality is that any single solution generally addresses only a sliver of the real issue. Safety performance…
You’ve see the astounding numbers: hundreds of thousands of Americans die each year due to medical treatment errors. Indeed, the median credible estimate is 350,000, more than U.S. combat deaths in all of World War II. If you measure the “value of life” the way economists and federal agencies do it – that is, by…
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