Leadership

This month Paul talks about the importance of training, more importantly of knowledge, in sending people home alive and well at the end of the day. He discusses how good leaders doing Managing by Walk Around can make a difference when they show up at a class. There are some very important points he makes that make this probably the most important News he has written.

This month Paul starts by examining Deming’s Plan/Do/Check/Adjust cycle and supplements the discussion with lessons from Drucker and Fayol. Paul uses the lessons as a starting point for a deep dive into the Check step as it relates to sending people home alive and well at the end of the day.

This month Paul discusses two tools of leadership – Leading by Example and organization power. He makes the point that by the time anyone is promoted into a position of leadership they know about the important leadership practice of Leading by Example and while it may seem simple “there’s more to it than first meets the eye” and not always easy to do. Leading by Example is easier to understand than organization power and this month Paul does a deep dive into organization power and how not understanding it can lead to huge problems and catastrophic outcomes. He examines a case where the misunderstanding was deadly.

You probably guessed that recent headlines about a train in Northeast Ohio jumping the track has caught Paul’s attention. In that event and others of the same ilk Paul has found some lessons to share that can make a difference helping us send people home alive and well, particularly when things go bump in the night.

This month Newton Scavone, one of our senior teacher/consultants, who was born and raised in Brazil, shares his thoughts on many aspects of understanding and why it matters to sending people home alive and well at the end of the day. He shares his journey seeking understanding and explains the difference, in his terms of art, between “square feet” and “cubic feet” of understanding.

This month Paul steps aside so that Gary Rivenes, one of our senior teacher/consultants, can share his thoughts on the responsibility of leaders to own safety — theirs and that of those who work for them. Gary makes the case that owning safety is critical to getting great safety performance but that owning it, without acting on it, is not enough.