Paul Balmert

Leadership

Not On My Shift!

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, Paul looks back to the lessons learned on his last trip of the year that included developing a new teacher for Balmert Consulting in Germany. But that is not the story, not this month.

This month Paul finds safety leadership in the most unusual place and follows the thread back fifty years to his first boss and the plant manager.

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Hazard/Risk

No Laughing Matter!

Safety is serious business, but that hasn’t stopped some from poking fun at the way those of us who work for a living get hurt. Before he became famous as a Cajun chef….

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Information, Please!

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, Paul describes role-modeling a successful technique used by Malcom Forbes. In our circles, we have a familiar name for the practice. You can read about it in his book, Alive And Well, or you can come to one of our open enrollment sessions and learn it first hand from Paul, who certainly practices what he preaches.

This month Paul also discusses some basic principles to measure safety performance. They can be found in more detail in the chapter, Measuring Safety Performance. It’s the longest chapter in his book.

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Hazard/Risk

Ranking Hazards

If you’re someone who works with your hands, on the list of hazards you face doing your job, how high would you rank Power Tools? …….

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Hazard/Risk

Failure To Learn?

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, Paul examines the problem of failing to learn and there is a lesson we should not fail to learn. He focuses on the real problem of the perception of risk, aka, probability.

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Hazard/Risk

Assumptions

We make assumptions all the time. When it comes to safety, we routinely rely on those assumptions to keep ourselves safe. In the vast majority of cases, no harm comes from doing that.

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Compliance

Clickit – Or What?

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, Paul shares the experience of 1 of the 7.7 billion. A person who had an impact on 139 fellow passengers during one of Paul’s recent trips. It got Paul thinking. I asked Paul if he was sure about running a “go” story and he said, “This story is one filled with things to be observed and learned. All you have to do is to look and pay attention.” Turns out Paul’s message is not really about “the go”, but critical lessons about compliance for sending people home alive and well at the end of the day and it does not require air freshener.

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Hazard/Risk

Click It or ….?

Not all safety rules are followed the way they’re supposed to be. Board an airplane, and there is one that is followed 100% of the time.  Every single time a flight takes off.

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Execution

Hazard Recognition: What’s the Problem?

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News, Paul turns his attention to diagnosing the problem of hazard recognition. You could attribute Kettering’s quote, above, to my father or Paul. Both masters of — solve the right problem! Sometimes you have to think differently, they did/do. When it comes to hazard recognition Paul’s message is critical to sending people home alive and well at the end of the day.

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Hazard/Risk

Knowing the Hazards

Here’s today’s question about hazards: things that can hurt you.

Think back in time to all the times you got hurt – including the minor cuts and scrapes, bumps and bruises, and the close calls where you almost got hurt…

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Popular Articles

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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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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