How to Make Unpopular Decisions: The Key to Good Leadership

Keri’s Dilemma: As the newly-hired head of sales at a family-owned company, Keri faced a challenge that had been ignored for far too long. Since its inception 25 years earlier, the owners had brought in only trusted family members and friends to work in the business. These people were smart, energetic, and available, but were…

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How Senior Leaders Lead Safety Improvement

One of the most difficult things for a leader to understand is how we influence the safety, health, and wellness of an organization. It’s easy to know the outcomes we want – zero injuries and a thriving workforce. It’s much more difficult to know what individual leaders do on a day-to-day basis to achieve those…

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The Power of Context: How Leaders Create Context and How Context Influences Behavior

A shocking situation In a small California town, 1,000 gallons of unknown chemicals exploded and sent 3 firefighters and several workers to a hospital. The investigation after the incident discovered that text messages were sent to managers of the wastewater treatment facility where the chemicals had been stored. The text messages warned managers of upcoming…

What is “Organizational Safety”?

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…