Nick Saban - Process Over People

Coach Nick Saban just won another NCAA Football Championship and may soon be regarded as the greatest college football coach of all-time.  He‘s now won four championships at the University of Alabama and one at Louisiana State University. That’s a pretty big deal!

Many individuals will argue that Nick Saban has refined “his process” over the years and has a consistent, sure-fire formula for success – largely because of his process.  After all, he often stresses “the process” when asked about success.  Still others would suggest he has the best players in the country.  That’s more difficult to argue.

I would strongly contend against the point regarding “process.”  And I have first-hand knowledge about why Coach Saban just might be considered a players’ coach. 

I was a back-up player at West Virginia University (WVU) when Coach Saban was a 28-year-old assistant, fresh out of Kent State.  Although Coach Saban wasn’t my position coach, and I didn’t play as much as I hoped to, Coach Saban always showed respect toward me.  Among other things, he always spoke to me by name and that still resonates.

During his time at WVU, many recognized that Saban might be special. He was a perfectionist and grinder.  Two of my closest teammates and friends, Jerry Holmes and Fulton Walker were coached by Saban at WVU.  As defensive backs, Jerry and Fulton knew what Saban expected, and he offered little compromise.  Saban helped each of them to have very productive years in the National Football League.  But here’s the twist – many believe that Nick Saban is not a players’ coach.  They believe he’s all about “his process.”  Jerry and Fulton would suggest otherwise.

I don’t believe any coach or leader can have much success, at any level, if they don’t connect with their people.  But I needed some validation regarding Coach Saban as a players’ coach. 

About two weeks ago, I called Jerry and Fulton to inquire about the “players side” of Nick Saban.  Each of them fully agreed and clearly felt that Coach Saban connects with his players.  Going back to WVU, Jerry and Fulton said their coach would often ask about family, grades, and other personal interests.  He had them in his home as guests, for food, conversation, and get-away time from football.  Finally, Jerry said in an all too familiar way, “oh yeah, he knows how to connect and he really cares too.”

In safety, our processes are critically important and we can’t function at a high level without them.  However, I’ll continue to argue that relationships – the connections made with your people are at least as important, or more important than any safety process you will ever embrace.

The next time you watch Nick Saban talk about the process – don’t believe everything you see and hear.  And don't be fooled by his public persona.  At least not completely.  Nick Saban knows how to connect and he cares about his players.   Coach Saban is a largely a great teacher, who builds trust, which in turn creates great outcomes.  But in the end, it really is all about his people!

Gettin’ Dirty for Safety’s Sake - Where’s Your Dirt?

Culture is an archaeological construct and it stands to reason that you have to dig a bit in order to find out what’s really going on in your organization. When I conduct various types of culture assessments for safety, people often get nervous.  Many feel that they might be unnecessarily exposed.  However, if you aren’t getting dirty and going deeper and broader, you’ll never get better!  If you don’t bring up some “dirt” and find out about the “bad stuff” - why begin to contemplate conducting a culture assessment for safety in the first place?

Here’s six ways to get dirty and begin to improve your culture for safety.

1. Anonymous pencil and paper perception surveys provide a wealth of comparative information about our cultures for safety which needs to be embraced and acted upon, when appropriate and necessary.

2. Open-ended questions placed near the end of the survey provide valuable information that needs to be further explored.

3. Safety focus sessions give homogeneous groups a chance to voice their opinions.  This type of upward feedback can be ranked and sorted in order of importance and provide further insights not revealed in the perception survey.

4. On-the-floor or in-the-field interviews provide a valuable means for open two-way discussions for EHS improvements.

5.  Properly executed employee safety suggestion boxes are a very simple and straightforward way to bring up some dirt that can be used for ongoing improvements.

6. Safety maturity matrices and grids offer groups of people further insights and strategic road maps for improvement, but you need to have the right cross section of participants.

Any way you look at it – you have to bring up some dirt on your organization if you want to get better.  Better yet, your leaders need to get dirty, a bit naked, and more transparent with your people too!

And if you want a quick and dirty snapshot of your culture for safety, take this brief survey.

Steve Harvey and Learning Safety Leadership

If you didn’t see or hear about the Steve Harvey blunder at the most recent Miss Universe contest you may have been travelling. Oh well, when Steve inadvertently called and crowned the wrong winner, many people shuddered and reacted wildly.  Some say his error was inexcusable.  I say it’s not a perfect world.

But if we reflect, we can all learn from his mistake.  Steve Harvey immediately recognized his error and stated “I will take responsibility for this. It was my mistake … horrible mistake.” In this case, I’m not sure what responsibility is or what consequences will occur, but I do know the leadership lesson we can learn.  Own up immediately.  Don’t spin off your mistake to someone else.

This is a great time of year to forgive, reconcile, repair, and re-build relationships.  Own up if you have to – let go and move things forward.

Consequences pertaining to safety-related mistakes can be quite severe and egregious but owning up helps.  It’s not a perfect world and safety leaders are a part of it.

Have a great Christmas and Happy New Year!

The Popeye Principle and Your Safety Information

As a child, I loved watching the cartoon show and character, Popeye.  Most memorable are the fits Popeye would take when he lost patience with someone or was frustrated by something.  But before he took extreme action, he'd typically say, in his own peculiar way, “Enoughs is enoughs and I can’t takes it no more!” 

Have you ever thought that your managers and supervisors sometimes feel the same way when they receive various kinds of safety-related information from you?  Maybe it's dashboard content related to leading and lagging indicators.  Possibly it’s a newsletter or lessons learned.  Maybe it is a policy or procedural change.  Whatever the source and content of your safety information, begin asking these types of questions:

Volume. Is this too much information or is it getting lost among other information of equal or greater importance?

Value.  Is the information you’re providing of value or is it getting in the way of helping your people lead and perform better?  Maybe you’re simply in love with your own information or trying to fulfill an objective.

Timing.  Is the frequency of information appropriate and is the timing right?  Can you release the information at a more appropriate time and manner, when and where you know it can be better processed, accepted, and utilized?

Clarity.  Is the information clear enough in its present form? Can it be made simpler, clearer, and better?  Are there conflicts in what the data or information reveals versus the way leaders feel, act, and speak when they're with your workers?  Does the information require meeting with others face-to-face?

Popeye stayed strong and lasted long, “because he ate all of his spinach.” Like Popeye, help your leaders stay strong to the finish by providing the right type and amounts of safety-related information or you just might hear your people say, “I can’t takes it no more!”

Help them digest all of their spinach and safety information, too!

Visioning with Oliver Luck

I thought that most of you would enjoy hearing from someone other than me regarding vision and forward thinking for safety professionals, and the rest of your organization. Well, I enlisted my good friend and former teammate, Oliver Luck, to talk briefly about vision as a part of resilience and mental toughness. You and I know that visioning does much more than that, so take a look.

Oliver was an academic all-American at West Virginia University, Rhodes Scholar finalist, and played quarterback for the Houston Oilers. He was president of NFL Europe and the Houston Dynamo of Major League Soccer. Most recently he was the athletic director at West Virginia University and is currently an executive vice president with the National Collegiate Athletic Association. He is the father of Andrew Luck, star quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts.

Is Your Safety Tech Hurting Your Safety Touch?

I’ve been speaking about this for years.  I feel strongly that we are made to be touched.  Hey, I even like to hug!  Yes, I liked to reach out and hug people - touch people and shake a hand.  That comes naturally within my family and with many of my friends.  I also know that not everyone is comfortable with it and I’m good with that too.  I know my limits and I always respect a person’s space.  And for some, I also know that a handshake is the most I can expect.

But did you know, many post World War II infants’ experienced abandonment and touch deprivation issues that led to serious developmental problems?  Newborn babies and infants who ended up in orphanages and institutions suffered mental and physical illnesses, social problems, and many other related disabilities.  For the most part, these children had their physical needs met but their emotional needs were lacking.  Some observations suggest that as many as 30% of these types of emotionally deprived infants eventually died because of the lack of human touch.  And the broad spectrum of developmental problems that stemmed from limited human touch was largely viewed as permanent and pervasive.   The lack of appropriate human contact at a very early age leads to serious developmental issues.

You may have similar concerns brought about by the far-reaching impact of technologies used in our everyday lives and to improve safety performance.  There are numerous handheld applications that help to make safety communications and reporting more efficient, but relationships can and will suffer, particularly if we don’t take deliberate actions that put us in direct contact with others.  Technological improvements and current e-learning advancements bring about similar challenges where personal interactions and face-to-face activities are lacking.

We are living within a society that is losing touch with people in more ways than one - so go ahead - reach out and touch someone.  We all need to be touched!

We need human touch from our leaders and peers.  Touch helps us to connect with others in ways that help to repair, rebuild or build relationships.  Touch helps us to show empathy, understanding, and at times it’s symbolic, signaling a beginning or end to something important.

Touch brings people together and improves our ability to influence individuals and groups.  To get our message through to people who need to know that working safely is the right thing to do - all of the time!  And for people who feel comfortable with this kind of contact, touch helps lead individuals to work safer on a day-to-day basis.

Try to remove human touch from the lives of some of the toughest individuals in the world - within our armed services and from various elite levels of sport - it just won’t work!

Human touch may have a temporary affect, but the lack of it is permanent.  Sorry HR and labor law attorneys, I promote appropriate touching in the workplace and I’ll keep hugging as much as possible.   

How about you - don’t you think we’re losing touch, too?

Are You Building Resilience Into Your Culture for Safety?

“You can’t do better than your best.”  Those are the words I heard from legendary football coach, Bobby Bowden during a recent time together.  I can only imagine Bobby using those words to “settle his team” during or after a difficult time or situation.  Or possibly to help them become more focused and resilient to the challenges at hand over the course of a long and difficult season. In our work, our groups, teams, and organizations will go through difficult times and we need to help prepare them to work through various difficulties.

When organizations are threatened by a challenging economy, downsizing, right sizing or re-engineering, we have to do our best to help ensure that that our culture for safety won’t drift.  Similarly, when a key leader leaves the organization, we have to prepare it to work through a wide-array of challenges, changes, and opportunities for growth rather than regression.  Let’s take a look at the 3Rs that can help you build resilience into your cultures for safety.

Relationships have to be addressed and will help to build resilience into our cultures for safety.  Building upon important relationships requires that we mentor the right people who can help lead the way and to engage even more individuals to move the organization forward.  It also requires that we help the right people build relationships with key leaders in our organizations rather than insulating future leaders from the types people that will be needed to provide ongoing support.  Being political and insular - “protecting your relationships” rather than expanding roles and relationships by including others and creating openness in communications with the right leaders is necessary.   Roles and relationships will change in the midst of challenges, so they must be carefully addressed. 

Resources will be challenged by change and may have to be stretched.  That’s why we have to build-up resources along the way, while things are good, and not “play catch-up” when our organizations are disrupted and stressed.  Whenever possible, we have to consistently plan and budget for improvements that relate to materials, tools, equipment, and facilities.  This needs to be accomplished in a methodical and deliberate manner, without major surprises.  Oftentimes, capital improvements are viewed as quality and productivity enhancements that inherently add value to EHS performance.   Leverage quality and productivity improvements as multi-dimensional opportunities that can be sold and supported as such. 

Reporting Systems and reporting requirements need to be strong and structured so they can be easily maintained and used by others with minimal effort and communications.  Reporting applications and systems are more efficient than ever and big data is our friend – use them to your advantage.  Systems relating to near-miss and accident reporting, ongoing communications, and upstream improvements that are tied directly to your facilities and equipment are a part of this same equation.   

There’s obviously much more that can be done to increase resilience, but you need to be very deliberate in building your cultures for safety to withstand future challenges and changes.  Certainly, these challenges will require a resilient organization that’s well equipped to create opportunities for improvement rather than crumble under the weight of change. 

Are you working in a way to build-up EHS resilience in your organizations for sustained improvement, so you’re a little closer to being better than your best?