Managing Safety Performance News

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.

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?

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.

Good questions can do the heavy lifting for managers. A question starts by getting someone else talking. For all of the sophisticated theories that have been offered about the art of interpersonal communication, doesn’t communication fundamentally boil down to someone speaking, and others listening to what is being said?

Of all new assignments we encounter in the course of our career, no one is bigger than the change from managing yourself to managing others. When our new assignment and responsibilities were described, we were reminded “you are also accountable for the safety of those assigned to you.”