Paul Balmert

Compliance

Changing Habits

This month Paul explores habits. Not just the changes we each have made in response to COVID 19 but more importantly the nature and value of habits related to sending people home alive and well at the end of the day. He investigates habits as they apply to managing risk and gaining compliance and leaves us with some Darn Good Advice.

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Safety Meeting Topics

Habits

It’s now been more than 90 days since the world around us was transformed by a hazard so small as to be invisible to the human eye. The next time you fill out a…

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Execution

Stressed Out!

This month Paul dives into the stress we all are feeling. In this edition he talks about the assumptions, hypotheses, and facts we use to make decisions and the biases that influence and inform them. If you are a regular reader then you know Paul is going to pull it all together, share his perspective and offer some thoughts on how to leverage the lessons. Some Darn Good Advice.

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Webinar

Safety Leadership In The Time of Covid

With all confusing, confounding and even contradictory things going on in the midst of the COVID crisis, the most important goal every leader has remains unchanged: seeing to it that everyone goes home, alive and well at the end of every single day.

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Compliance

Deepwater Horizon: Lesson Learned?

This month Paul, with the help of Erick Reyna one of our teacher consultants, goes back 10 years to examine the lessons to still be learned from the Macondo Deepwater Horizon events of April 20th 2010. He shares five important lessons that are still important today. Some Darn Good Advice.

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Hazard/Risk

A Second Set of Eyes

One of the great benefits of having co-workers is that they represent a “second set of eyes.” They can see what we are doing; they can see things we don’t see ourselves…

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Hazard/Risk

Stop Everything!

This month Paul explores another lesson to be learned about stopping the job and the decisions-maker’s choice. There are lessons about taking action or choosing not to that can be useful sending people home alive and well at the end of each and every day.

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Hazard/Risk

Precaution!

On the subject of the Coronavirus: yes, or no, are you taking precautions? Have you seen others taking the kind of precautions they would not normally take?

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Hazard/Risk

A Deadly Serious Hazard

This month Paul discusses that the risks that scare us and the risks that kill us are different. He examines the lessons to be learned from the Coronavirus and how those lessons can help leaders like you send people home alive and well at the end of each and every day.

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Popular Topics

Popular Articles

A Case Study

This month Paul explains that investigation reports are valuable leadership tools not simply because they identify technical causes, but because they reveal how familiar execution challenges—such as limited training, inexperience, weak supervision coverage, fatigue, time pressure, and inconsistent use of PPE—combine to produce serious outcomes. The primary purpose of an investigation is to help ensure an event does not happen again, but equally important is the Performance Visibility investigations provide: a clearer understanding of what is actually happening where work is being performed.

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Situational Awareness

In this month’s Flash we look at static hazard recognition. Knowing and understanding where stored energy exists, which might not always be obvious, helps us ensure everyone goes home alive and well.

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Looking In The Mirror

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, guest contributor and Balmert Consulting senior teacher Van Long reflects on a simple but powerful idea: the most effective safety leadership begins with self-reflection.

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Expectations and Assumptions

In this month’s Flash we look at the difference between an expectation and an assumption. That distinction might seem subtle at first glance, however the difference found in the definitions proves a very critical point for anyone who leads and manages safety.

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Environment And Safety

In this issue of Managing Safety Performance News, Paul looks at why separating “environment” from “safety” misses the point. Using real work examples—from hauling tools over a snowbank to executive debates about compliance—he makes the case that many hazards don’t come from the job itself, but from the conditions in which the work is done. By stripping injuries down to simple “headlines” and sorting them by the source of the hazard, patterns start to emerge that are easy to miss in root cause analysis reports. The takeaway is straightforward: environment and safety are inseparable, and leaders who want better safety performance need to see the work—and its hazards—clearly, from the moment it begins.

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Finding “The Source”

In this month’s Flash, we explore where hazards come from—and why that matters. Understanding their sources is a critical step in identifying what could cause harm.

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It’s Just Common Sense

This month Paul examines how leaders often misuse the phrase “it’s just common sense”—either to dismiss learning or to assume shared understanding without definition. He argues that many leadership statements presented as fact are really opinions, and that poor communication stems from assuming others interpret words, experience, and expectations the same way.

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Resetting PPE Habits

In this months Flash we are re-visiting the fundamental concept of getting folks to follow all of the rules, all of the time. As to how you might move the needle a great place to start is with PPE.

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The Holiday Season

This month Paul shares that for twenty-five years, our work has been grounded in disciplined observation, analysis, and testing. That process has shaped how we identify the leadership practices that most directly influence safety performance—the same ideas we teach.

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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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