Leading – And Managing Safety

Welcome in the new year and welcome back from your holidays. Now it’s time to get back to business, starting with managing safety performance.

That we make such a big deal about one particular moment in our continuous orbit around the Sun is arbitrary, even comical. If you washed ashore on some deserted island, lost count of the days, you probably couldn’t distinguish December 29^th from January 3^rd. Sunrise in the morning, sunset in the evening. Daylight turns to darkness. After being rescued, you’d find out your New Year’s resolutions all started on the wrong day.

We have Julius Ceaser to thank. We’re fortunate he chose January 1: if it were November 1 or February 15, it would have ruined Halloween or Valentine’s Day.

Had Ceasar not chosen one day to be the day, eventually someone learned in the practice of management would have come up with the idea. That we officially put an end to things, and begin again with a clean slate fills an important need managers have to make plans and evaluate performance.

For good reason and purpose: planning and evaluating are two of four fundamental functions for what you do for a living, managing a business. Coming back from the holidays, starting off the new year puts these two center stage.

The Next Big Thing

Making a fresh start in the new year, it’s tempting to focus on “the next big thing.” If you’ve been around the business world for very long, you know there’s always some bold new idea or revolutionary processes making the rounds. They’re advertised as the surefire way to fix some big problem. Just do it, do it faithfully, your problem will be solved. If it isn’t, it’s because you failed to follow the process.

Hanging around the industrial scene for as long as I have, there’s a collection of these that would fill up a room in the Smithsonian Museum. Down the center of the room would be the big themes whose popularity lasted upwards of a decade: the management system, the quality process, organization re-design and the IT solutions. Not that they didn’t have their benefits, but from the outside looking in, it still looks like business as usual.

Then there were those next big thigs that were taken down almost as quickly as they were put up. Like quality circles and ISO registration. Although, unlike the holiday decorations at the house, these weren’t brought out the following year. If you were in some way a part of that, I’m sure you remember the excitement. 

If you were not, this serves as a useful lesson in industrial management history. You’re probably shaking your head, thinking “Why would anyone in management believe that some piece of paper named a registration certificate or a weekly meeting of team members in the Machine Shop would make that big a difference?” 

That so many of your former peers not only believed that but placed their full faith and confidence in the solution (not to mention their time and resources) is telling you something: it’s easy to fall victim to the next big thing. 

In hindsight, that becomes obvious; what’s needed is foresight.

As you make your plans for the new year, you owe it to yourself and your business to choose wisely. When those plans involve managing safety, you have a duty and an obligation to your good followers who work in harm’s way to do the things that will actually make them safer.

The Conventional Wisdom

Occupying the space below those next big things are those popular “conventional wisdoms” that spread like the flu. In the moment they’re accepted as the truth, and the whole truth. Invest time and effort in careful examination, they often turn out to be only half wise. Otherwise known as sophomoric. 

Not that it stops intelligent people from jumping on the bandwagon; one of those pesky Cognitive Biases plaguing managers.

That warning sign having been conspicuously posted, what do you think about the conventional wisdom, “We need leaders, not managers”?  

You might know some manager who never saw a procedure they didn’t like. Creating a new procedure was their solution to every problem; the management system was a far better solution than leaders leading better. I know the type well. 

Managing by paper or from the office is not how fabulous execution is achieved. Leaders must lead. 

But that’s only half the story. The other half is having a good sense of direction: an important set of goals, a practical plan to achieve them, the ways and means to track progress, and the good sense to adapt when things don’t go as planned. If those functions sound familiar, it’s because they sum up to the planning, organizing and evaluating elements of the management process.

No follower in their right mind wants to work for some unguided missile of a leader: a fireball of energy, with no sense of direction – or going in every possible direction there is. Bet you know the type. What’s needed in management positions are those who can plan the work and then work the plan.  

Aka, lead and manage. Nowhere is that more important than for safety. 

Seize the Moment!

Every supervisor and manager on the planet should hail Ceasar for handing them the perfect moment to plan and evaluate: the New Year. Carpe diem: seize the moment.

No doubt you have your process, as does the organization you are a member of. Some processes are better than others. Given that evaluating and planning are vitally important management processes, you would be doing everyone a big favor by asking yourself a few questions: 

• What are the metrics telling me about long term trends – for better and worse?

While organization performance evaluation processes typically focus on the prior calendar year, the true level of safety performance is more likely found in longer term metrics not subject to random variation. 

• What is the information telling me about the how and the why of events, large and small?

Information such as training records, investigation, inspection and audit reports represents a far broader universe than metrics. The careful examination of information provides insight not found in the numbers. 

As one example, reading a year’s worth of investigation reports in one sitting can reveal trends, problem areas and targets for improvement plans in the new year. Don’t limit yourself to the most significant events, as consequences are often random rather than proportional to hazard potential. On the other hand, if the consequences of events are diminishing, that probably tells you that smaller events are being reported and collectively the organization is getting safer. Consider both positive findings. 

• What has made a difference? What seems to have had little effect?

Yes, shifting through the performance information, trying to assess cause and effect is highly subjective, and changing the safety culture is a long-term proposition. But you did start out last year with a plan, and you should at least try to look for some evidence that tells you something about the effect you’ve had by virtue of the actions you took.

• How well have I performed my management functions of planning, organizing, evaluating and leading?

Since you’re the one asking the questions, no better time than now to look yourself in the mirror and examine how well you did in both leading safety and managing safety performance. Eventually, you’ll get your boss’s evaluation, but nobody is in a better position to judge your performance than you.

Follow the discipline of asking questions like these, the plans you make will be even better.

Leadership, Leadership, Leadership

The management functions of planning, organizing and evaluating are relatively simple and straightforward. They’re typically performed in the friendly confines of the office and conference room and on the computer, with the luxury of time and the absence of distractions.

Leading, by comparison, takes place in real time in the real world. More significantly, leadership involves followers: real life people who are not genetically predisposed to follow the plans and instructions given them by their leaders. Execution is the name of the game, and there are those who have proven better than all their peers. If it were otherwise, every outfit with a management system would be world class. 

What makes leadership such a tough undertaking is that followers play such a critical role in determining the outcome. As someone astutely observed, “If you lead and nobody follows, you’re just going for a walk.”

In the new year, what’s your plan to lead well – and better?

Don’t Forget to Remember

I doubt that anything you’ve read up to this point is something you didn’t already know. Being reminded of these things does obligate us to invest precious time to stop and think. 
Bear that in mind as you begin to prepare your plans for the new year. 

As for your plans and their execution, you know well that doing the same thing, over and over, expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. If you want the new year to be better, you need a plan that makes sense and the leadership skills to turn your plan into results. 

For that, we are here to help.

Paul Balmert
January 2025