Paul Balmert

Leadership

Credibility Lost

This month Paul examines the credibility of leaders. How precious and useful it is, especially when it comes to sending people home safe at the end of the day. Wish I had his thoughts and advice back when I was trying to free that snake.

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Execution

Organization Power

In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News™, Paul examines Organization Power. He looks at who has the power to make a difference sending people home alive and well at the end of the day. And why power in organizations is so commonly misunderstood. I think you’ll find the lessons he draws from all of this very interesting.

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Top 10 Mistakes

Biggest Mistake Number 1

Managing safety performance– sending everyone home safe at the end of the day – is fundamentally a game of execution. No matter how good the game plan – policies, procedures and programs – when it comes to bottom line safety performance, the game is won or lost on the field.

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Top 10 Mistakes

Biggest Mistake Number 2

Read the mission, vision and values statement of just about any industrial company these days, and you’re bound to find safety prominently mentioned. Words to the effect that “The safety of our stakeholders is of critical importance to the success of our business” can be found right next to the other goals and values so important

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Top 10 Mistakes

Biggest Mistake Number 3

It’s a scene that every one in operations and those of us who have ever managed operations knows all too well.

We’ve gathered up the entire department for an important safety meeting – important because we’re rolling out a new company safety policy.

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Top 10 Mistakes

Biggest Mistake Number 4

When we were kids growing up in school, we all knew who the leaders were. They were the ones who were the best athletes, had the best personalities, and yes, were the best looking. Everybody – us included – followed them. They made leading look easy – and cool.

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Top 10 Mistakes

Biggest Mistake Number 5

Sooner or later anyone who’s ever golfed as fallen to the temptation: buy the latest club to hit the market. The one guaranteed to knock strokes off next Saturday’s round.

Every once in a while, the latest technology works like magic. At least for a few rounds, and then we revert to form.

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Top 10 Mistakes

Biggest Mistake Number 6

The people running operations – making the product, delivering the service, handling the materials – really are world class when it comes to measuring how well their business is performing. They’re all over all the important details of how much, how well, how often.

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Top 10 Mistakes

Biggest Mistake Number 7

The management team has gathered around the conference table in an emergency meeting. The urgent topic: what to do to stanch the rising tide of accidents and injuries?

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Top 10 Mistakes

Biggest Mistake Number 8

In his years of working with industrial clients, Deming built what many of us in the manufacturing management business would learn as his “14 Absolutes of Quality.” In the middle of his list of Absolutes was the proviso to “Drive out fear”, fear of getting in trouble for making defective products and reporting quality problems was a major roadblock to progress.

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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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