Safe Decision Making™ Articles

Decision Making for Safety: Part 2

Categorized under: Improvement Strategy, Safe Decision Making™ Articles, Safety Leadership

Tagged as: Organizational Safety, SIF prevention, Thomas Krause

Decision Making for Safety: Part 2 Organizational Improvement Strategies Introduction In the first part of this series, we shared findings from our research on organizational decision making. We are learning more and more about the opportunities leaders have to impact serious injuries and fatalities (SIF). This article explores some of the most significant situations and types of decisions where these opportunities arise. It also presents a new perspective on incident causation with important implications for improvement strategies aimed at SIF prevention. Let’s examine one of the publicly available cases from the study of over 600 decisions leading up to 60 life-altering...

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Decision Making for Safety: Part 1

Categorized under: Improvement Strategy, Safe Decision Making™ Articles, Safety Leadership

Tagged as: Innovation, safe decisions, SIF prevention, Thomas Krause

Decision Making for Safety: Part 1 New Research and Implications for SIF Prevention Introduction The notion that leadership matters to organizational safety is intuitive for most people. Over the years, we have accumulated a thorough understanding of certain aspects of safety leadership, what excellence looks like, and how that leads to safety improvement. Countless books have been written, leadership assessments have been developed, and organizations have entire programs dedicated to developing the safety leadership skills of their employees. Despite this progress, safe decision making is an aspect of leadership that has not received enough attention. Until recently, we hadn’t recognized...

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How Safety Improvement Works, Part 3

Categorized under: Improvement Strategy, Safe Decision Making™ Articles

Safety-Related Decision Making and Implications for Serious Injury and Fatality Prevention In the first and second article of this series, we explained the importance of safety leadership to initiate and drive safety improvement. We showed how leaders can impact safety performance through continuous improvement processes like meaningful safety conversations and strategic risk reduction. This approach not only prevents fatalities but also creates the kind of culture that transforms the business. Recent studies have made something new and exciting clear: The central theme, the through-line most useful to SIF prevention, is all about decision making for safety. Yes, reducing exposure to...

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The Roles of Decision Making and Behavior in Ending the COVID-19 Pandemic

Categorized under: Behavior-Based Safety, Safe Decision Making™ Articles

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, organizations scrambled to understand the risks and develop comprehensive prevention strategies.  Today, most organizations have implemented safeguards at every level of the hierarchy of controls. No matter how good a job management has done to eliminate, substitute, engineer and administer away the hazards, we remain dependent on leadership decision making and human behavior to prevent transmission of the virus. Critical behaviors like handwashing, maintaining physical distance, using a mask, and self-quarantining require high levels of behavioral reliability in order to be effective. We know that leadership decisions directly influence these critical behaviors. In the graphic...

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ABC Analysis

Categorized under: Behavior-Based Safety, Safe Decision Making™ Articles

Here's a 5-step method for an ABC analysis, with an example. Step 1 Pinpoint a single action that you want to change. Be extremely specific. Think of a specific person, at a specific point in time, in a specific situation. Step 2 Identify as many antecedents that were present in that specific situation. Antecedents are signals, events, and cues that triggered the person to do what they did.  Reminders, email, conversations, signs, training and rules are all common attempts to trigger behavior in organizations. Step 3 Identify as many consequences that were in play in that specific situation.  A consequence...

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7 Insights into COVID-19 Prevention

Categorized under: Behavior-Based Safety, Safe Decision Making™ Articles, Safety Culture, Safety Leadership, Serious Injuries & Fatalities

Long before COVID-19 upended life as we know it, there were organizations demonstrating exceptional safety leadership. We are proud to have worked with countless safety professionals and leaders, from small companies and major global organizations alike, who ‘Get It’ when it comes to safety. We even wrote a book about what distinguishes a leader who is very successful in safety from one who struggles, called the 7 Insights into Safety Leadership[1]. Then came COVID -19 which threatened us all and changed everything.  Every leader and every worker, in every company we knew, turned their full attention to maintaining business continuity,...

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Safe Decision Dilemmas and COVID-19

Categorized under: Safe Decision Making™ Articles

Most of the time leaders make decisions easily and quickly. The situation presents itself and I know what to do. Or I take action more or less automatically, without thinking much about it. But important, sometimes pivotal decisions also present themselves with uncertainty. COVID-19 has given us plenty of these. Is Mary the best person for the job or John? Under budget pressure should we defer maintenance or bite the bullet? Are the COVID-19 protocols we’ve developed as we return to the workplace sufficient in themselves and will they be followed? What data should we monitor to know if employees...

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Do Your Leaders Understand How Safe Decisions and Safe Behaviors Work Together? COVID-19 as an SIF Issue

Categorized under: Behavior-Based Safety, Safe Decision Making™ Articles

Tagged as: Insight 7

Within the network of causal factors underlying incident causation are two points of intersection: the safety related decisions that are made, and the safe behaviors performed. This applies across levels, from the board of directors to the front-line worker, but the dynamics change depending on level and role. In order to craft and execute optimal SIF prevention strategies, including COVID-19, our leaders need to understand the dynamic relationship between decision making and behavior, at all levels. For example, as we face COVID-19 uncertainty, how should leaders be thinking about where to focus attention? Our clients tell us there are two...

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Making Good Decisions in a Sea of Statistics

Categorized under: Safe Decision Making™ Articles, Safety Leadership

Tagged as: Insight 7

Introduction In a previous life, I was a statistician. I used to be able to tell you how many ways you could win any given poker-hand, hand-calculate complicated multivariate statistical equations using matrix algebra, and explain the difference between an autoregressive integrated moving average and an autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average. But in all those years of studying statistics, I stayed far, far away from epidemiological statistics. Why? Because they were too hard.  Epidemiologists have to work with limited data, from biased samples, taken from flawed reporting systems, that shift and change over time: Impossible! Now, suddenly, every scientist, writer,...

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Making the Workplace Safe from COVID-19

Categorized under: Safe Decision Making™ Articles, Serious Injuries & Fatalities

Tagged as: Insight 2

Making the Workplace Safe from COVID-19: Let’s Apply Learnings and Strategy from SIF Prevention Over the past 40 years working with global organizations of all sorts on EHS improvement, I’ve never seen anything like the situation we face today. We have less knowledge to go on, more uncertainty and a larger threat than anyone saw coming. At the same time we have unique capabilities, in data and organizational understanding, leadership and culture, and we have unprecedented reason to be highly motivated. Mitigating the impact of COVID-19 is of special interest to every organization but of even greater significance for organizations...

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