Leadership

Compliance

Earbud Nation

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.

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Leadership

THE Priority

This month Bill Wilson, one of our senior consultant/teachers, examines the decision making that can lead to people getting seriously injured or worse at work. He discusses why part of the problem may be found in the defining and communicating of priorities. He helps us focus on what really matters when it comes to setting and making THE Priority the priority.

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Leadership

Responsibility

This month Paul examines the responsibilities of leaders, especially when the goal is to make sure everyone goes home alive and well at the end of each and every shift. He explores the challenges of getting everyone working safely and the supervisor’s responsibility for making sure that happens.

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Execution

A Lesson from the Richest Man in Town

This month Paul unravels the mystery of the handshake. Not only does he solve it, but he ties it together with Jimmy Stewart’s It’s A Wonderful Life AND the goal of sending people home alive and well at the end of the day.

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Execution

The Risk Takers

This month, Jay Bizarro is our guest contributor and shares more of his great thinking about how to do exactly that and improve safety performance. He introduces us to “skydivers”, “The Safety Switch”, “The Probability Problem”, and “The Unsafe Behavior Database.”

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Execution

The Individual and the Team

This month Paul has been out on assignment visiting many of our clients. Last week he visited a client’s Safety Day and asked, “What is the secret of your great safety performance?” It lead to a fascinating discussion and some very important learning. In this edition of the News he dives into learning from success and failure on the road to great safety performance.

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Leadership

Behavior – And Safety

This month Paul makes the case that there is no escaping the truth that behaviors must be managed if the goal is everyone goes home alive and well at the end of the day. He considers different approaches that have been tried and discusses whose behavior should be targeted and who ought to manage them. Paul concludes when it comes to appreciating the times when “it’s on them” and when “It’s on me” it would be fair to say that’s the subject of wisdom. Paul leaves us with some of his experience and wisdom.

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Execution

Tough Safety Challenges

This month Paul discusses what happened in his old company every time it looked like safety performance was declining and introduces the term “political water.” He then dives into the toughest challenges as reported by one industry and compares and contrasts that to what we have heard over the last twenty-two years across a wide range of industries around the world. It leads to a discussion of the root of all challenges and management’s first duties. He shares some very important lessons.

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Leadership

About Training

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.

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Leadership

The Check Step

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.

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Popular Topics

Popular Articles

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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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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