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…
The field of “organizational safety” has emerged over the past 20 years or so, mainly from the work of James Reason. The name “organizational safety” recognizes a central insight of relevance to those who want to understand and accelerate safety performance improvement. The insight is that getting safety right means getting the organization right. Safety…
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