Paul Balmert

Execution

On Followership

This month Paul analyzes followers and the underrecognized and underappreciated power in followership. Not those followers that followed their leaders into to conflict rather those working in an industrial operation, like yours. Along with examining the leadership mandate Paul explores leaders as followers. In the end it is the critical role followers play in execution, business performance and sending people home alive and well at the end of each and every day that gets Paul’s attention. If, after reading what Paul wrote, you feel compelled to go wildly dance on a hill… well, maybe I’ll see you there…

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Safety Meeting Topics

Second Thoughts

You’re in a rush. There’s a delivery about to show up and your crew has equipment to be repositioned to prepare for the arrival.
 
In the middle of all of that, you have a safety concern…

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Execution

A Crucial Conversation

This month Paul analyzes A Crucial Conversation, one particular real-world conversation, to understand the dynamics in play, especially those crucial to sending people home alive and well. He does a deep dive into the organization power present in such conversations. If more leaders understood that power, we might never have heard of the events of April 20th 2010.

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Safety Meeting Topics

Knowledge vs Fear

This month’s edition comes in the form of an opinion poll question: When recognizing things that can hurt you, what matters more: knowledge or fear?

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Execution

Another Close Call

This month Paul brings clarity to some of the different word choices in play to explain events where something bad happened and events where nothing bad happened but could have happened. But that is not the big story. Paul takes us below the surface of the debate of terms to examine some critical things that need to be understood to prevent recurrence of an unplanned and unwanted event beginning with you need to know something happened.

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Safety Meeting Topics

Safe Spaces

When you’re sitting in the office or break room, It’s easy to have the sense that you’re safe. The hazards you need to be on the lookout for are found “out on the jobsite” not “back in the office.”…

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Hazard/Risk

Natural Hazards

This month Paul explores how we ought to determine which “old things” are important and that we ought to prepare for. He discusses the most common misunderstanding that leads us to get it wrong more often than not. There is a lot to learn from a good hard freeze that can help you back on the job.

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Safety Meeting Topics

Risky Conditions

Getting behind the wheel of a vehicle and drive to work. In a typical year in the US, ten times as many of us suffer fatal injuries out on the streets and highways than we do on the job. Most of us spend more time working than we do driving, and face a lot more hazards on the job…

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Execution

Recognizing Safety Leadership

This month Paul declares that those who make nothing happen should be celebrated for their effort and their leadership. What better way to end the first month of the New Year than with a positive story recognizing safety leadership? Paul talks about the importance of not just knowing what is most important but understanding it to set your leadership compass on True North. He discusses the challenges of making nothing happen and that those who do and do it over time ought to be recognized, and how they did it understood. He holds up the example of one such leader and how he did it as an example for others to follow. There is much to learn from Lonnie’s story.

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Safety Meeting Topics

Beware Complacency

Complacency is a state of mind characterized by an absence of fear. If there really were nothing to fear, there’s nothing to hurt you. When there is something that can hurt you and you’re not fearful, beware…

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Popular Topics

Popular Articles

Accountability

This month, we are pleased to feature an article by Newton Scavone, one of our most experienced members of the Balmert teaching team, based in São Paulo. Newton started as a client learning and using the MSP tools, then became one of the leaders developed to teach the course inside his company. For the last six years, many of you have known him as a Balmert Consulting teacher. He brings deep operational credibility and a clear understanding of what it takes to make these tools work in the real world.

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Enough Said?

In this month’s Flash, we take a look at a very important first step to ensure conversations go as well as they ought to when expectations around safety haven’t been met.

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Managing Hazards

This month, Paul takes on one of the toughest challenges every leader faces — managing hazards. Not just the big, obvious ones that make the “A List,” but the ordinary, everyday things that cause most of the injuries. He reminds us that managing hazards isn’t about eliminating every risk; it’s about handling them — and the people around them — “with a degree of skill and care.”

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Beyond the Rules

In this months Flash we look at the importance of Safety Rules, and a very critical concept about the rules that ensures they help keep us safe.

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My Supervisor

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News Paul takes on the challenge of trust and credibility in leadership—he discusses why they’re eroding at the top, why supervisors hold the real advantage, and what that means for influencing followers to work safe. He makes the case that trust is not a given but a hard-earned reward—and the most powerful tool any leader has for sending everyone home safe, every day.

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Setbacks

In this month’s Flash we take a look at setbacks, and the unique opportunity they provide to a leader in ensuring followers know and understand what is most important.

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Blowing The Whistle

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News Paul reflects on the investigations into Challenger and the Titan submersible. From Richard Feynman’s ice-water demonstration to the Coast Guard’s scathing report, Paul points out that history shows how truth can be buried, warnings ignored, and lives lost.

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Managing Success

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance, Bill Wilson explores the importance of analyzing and understanding success with the same diligence that organizations typically reserve for failures. He argues that leaders often overlook everyday successes, missing the opportunity to identify and replicate what works. He makes the case that by focusing on success organizations can focus resources on impactful initiatives, reduce waste, and improve long-term performance—ultimately making sustained improvement a strategic priority rather than a lucky outcome.

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