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.
This month Paul examines multitasking and distracted walking. From his own experience as a pedestrian and data in a recent report he draws some lessons that can help us back on the job with earbuds, hazard recognition, and distracted working, including walking and driving.
In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News Bill is back to dive deeper into improving safety performance this time through the lens of Root Cause Failure Analysis. In this new article, he focuses on applying the tools and concepts of RCFA on the challenge of rule compliance, or if you prefer, the challenge of rule non-compliance. Bill admits it took him a long time to learn some important lessons. He shares them with you here, so you don’t have to learn the hard way.
This month Paul looks at some recent very public cases where change was mandated and some cases where compliance has been resisted. Paul draws out some key learnings that every leader responsible for making change happen needs to understand.
This month Paul begins with a story from the other side of the coin, noncompliance and unsafe practices. He examines the rewards and risks of taking shortcuts. Certainly, there are rewards and consequences, both good and bad, for every behavior. Paul sheds light on them in order to help you send people home alive and well at the end of the day.
This month Paul talks about being held accountable. He explores common misconceptions about accountability and what it means to you doing your job. He examines a recent headline story about a CEO downunder. He provides a better understanding of accountability and leaves us with some Darn Good Advice.
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.
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.
This month Paul examines lessons learned from a highway construction fatality where earbuds were involved. The discussion is central to understanding hazards and risk both personally and for those you work with. This may be the most important newsletter that Paul has written and he has written a lot of good ones.
Imagine your momentary queasiness as you start reading…US Airways 1549. You immediately know what that is about and have a pretty good idea Captain Sully has something to do with it. This month Paul examines the human factor when things go bump in the night…or the Hudson River.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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