Safety Culture Excellence®

296 - Stop Trying To Create A Safety Culture

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Bismarck, North Dakota. I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published March 2013 in Occupational Health and Safety Magazine.  It was titled, Stop Trying To Create A Safety Culture. The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com. I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, available through WILEY (publisher), Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Have a great week! Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety, Inc

295 - Passionately Proactive: Show Appreciation Before It's Too Late

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Clinton, TN. I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published March 2013 in BIC Magazine.  It was titled, Passionately Proactive: Show Appreciation Before It’s Too Late. The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com. I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, available through WILEY (publisher), Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Have a great week! Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety, Inc

294 - The Power of Shared Definitions

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Winnipeg, Manitoba. For the podcast this week I’d like to share an article written by Terry Mathis, published in February 2013 in EHS Today Magazine.  It was titled, The Power of Shared Definitions. The published article can be found under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com. I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, available through WILEY (publisher), Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Have a great week! Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety, Inc

293 - From Edicts to Discretionary Effort: Maturing Your Safety Culture

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Harlingen, Texas. I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published February 2013 in Occupational Health and Safety Magazine.  It was titled, From Edicts to Discretionary Effort: Maturing Your Safety Culture. The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com. I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, available through WILEY (publisher), Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Have a great week! Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety, Inc

Changing Safety Terminology

I would like to suggest an update to some basic safety terminology.  As ideas evolve the language used to describe them should also. The first term is provocation.  The word has several meanings including to “incite to action.”  It also means to irritate, enrage, anger, or exasperate.  The negative side of this word tends to outweigh the positive and there are many other words that work better with fewer bad side effects (depending, of course, on your intent).  If your intent is to further the pursuit of safety excellence, it seems that words such as advance, motivate, progress, and innovate would provide a call to action without burning bridges behind it. Underlying this term is the assumption that beating and kicking the locked back door of the mind will somehow open the front door to new ideas and opportunities.  In my experience, attacking ideas almost always results in a defensive rather than a progressive response.  If your goal is to stir things up without any real progress, the old word works just fine. The second term is confrontation.  I can no longer count the number of times I have heard it espoused that workers must be trained in how to confront each other about safety issues or how supervisors must not be afraid to confront workers.  Confrontation also has several meanings, but it overwhelmingly connotes attacking and creating enmity. Attacking creates defensiveness which tends to minimize openness to change.  It also tends to damage relationships and cultures.  I think the term coaching is a far superior term and concept.  Coaching is helping another person to perform better.  It does not require attacking or demeaning.  It does not require the destruction of old ideas to form new ones.  It tends to promote progress via evolution vs. revolution. It is what friends do for each other and what parents do for their children.  It is what experts do for aspiring athletes, dancers, singers, and others desiring to develop excellent performance.  Why not call this what we do for each other as we aspire to create excellent safety performance? They are just words; but words create meaning and meaning can direct actions.  If we want the best actions, why not choose the best words? -Terry L. Mathis Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS’ in both 2010 and 2011. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

291 - Safety As a Business

Most companies attempt to integrate safety thinking into their business, but forget to integrate sound business thinking into safety. Terry L. Mathis, CEO of ProAct Safety shares an important perspective often ignored in safety. ProAct Safety provides more strategies in the area of safety culture and safety excellence in the public domain than any other firm, organization or association. For access to increased, advanced value in the form of videos, podcasts, public workshops and seminars, please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store This video can also be viewed at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYxrAN6SpUs

Going Out on a Limb for Safety

I thinned some trees in a thick, forested area on my lot hoping the remaining trees would grow more wide limbs and spread their canopies.  It didn’t happen.  I asked my tree expert why not and he explained that new limbs on a mature tree were only growing out of the bark and not the core of the tree trunk.  They were weak and seldom reached large size without breaking off in the first strong wind. Many safety programs likewise are add-ons and have no real connection to the core values and strategies of the organization.  We hope they will provide extra coverage and fill the gaps, but they seldom survive for very long.  The strong limbs of our safety programs are connected to a solid strategy and designed to provide specific coverage.  They are not afterthoughts, but the result of solid planning. It is crucial for organizational leaders to think of the tree and the limbs as one unit.  If safety is a core value of the organization, there are no safety goals; only business goals related to safety.  The strategy of the organization includes safety-related strategies that connect to the core.  Leaders might fertilize the soil and stimulate the roots, but they don’t try to artificially graft on limbs that aren’t firmly connected. Many safety programs and processes are attempts to compensate for a lack of core strategy and seldom survive the winds of change. -Terry L. Mathis Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS’ in both 2010 and 2011. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

290 - Zero Accidents Does Not Equal Safety Excellence

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Topeka, Kansas. For the podcast this week I’d like to share an article written by Terry Mathis, published in January 2013 in EHS Today Magazine.  It was titled, Zero Accidents Does Not Equal Safety Excellence. The published article can be found under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com. I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, available through WILEY (publisher), Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Have a great week! Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety, Inc

288 - Is Safety Mandatory Or Discretionary?

Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. For the podcast this week I’d like to share an article written by Terry Mathis, published in December 2012 in EHS Today Magazine.  It was titled, Is Safety Mandatory or Discretionary? The published article can be found under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com. I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, available through WILEY (publisher), Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Have a great week! Shawn M. Galloway ProAct Safety, Inc

There is No Stasis in Safety

There are two strategies in safety that don’t work; one is doing nothing and the other is trying to maintain the status quo.  The sad truth is that safety is constantly either getting better or getting worse.  It would seem logical that keeping a constant level of effort toward accident reduction would result in a relatively constant result.  While this can be true in the short term, it seldom continues for multiple years.  Many organizations get a wake-up call when, after a few years of relatively low accident rates, they have a rash of accidents they didn’t expect. Much of this thinking is the result of relying too heavily on lagging indicators to evaluate safety performance.  Periods without accidents can appear to be the result of safety efforts when in fact they are simply luck.  Low-probability risks do not cause accidents with every incidence, and it can take time to play out the results of such risks.  Lagging indicators will accurately reflect the risk level over time, but usually too late to respond effectively. The two ways to overcome this problem involve developing leading indicators and implementing continuous improvement.  Leading indicators help to evaluate the amount of effort and change that is happening in safety activities.  Continuous improvement simply means that the organization must maintain a healthy sense of vulnerability and constantly target new safety improvements.  The journey to safety excellence is long, but can be effectively taken a step at a time. -Terry L. Mathis Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS’ in both 2010 and 2011. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.