Oliver Luck on Safety

Last week I attended the Indiana Safety and Health Conference & Expo in Indianapolis which offered a number of very good sessions.   I also spent time with my former West Virginia University (WVU) teammate and longtime friend, Oliver Luck.  He was Academic All America at WVU.  Oliver is also a former NFL quarterback and well respected sports executive who is now second in charge with the National Collegiate Athletic Association  (NCAA). Most recently, he served as AD at WVU but in reality, AD doesn’t stand for Athletic Director but for Andrew’s Dad. That’s Andrew Luck, star quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts.

Oliver delivered a wonderful closing keynote entitled, Quarterbacking Your Team, and I’ve summarized the major points below. If you weren’t able to attend the conference or keynote, I think you’ll appreciate his thoughts. And of course, you’ve  missed Oliver’s quips, quotes, and extended commentary – nonetheless, his thoughts are noted below.

On planning or scheming, especially in the NFL. It may be difficult to out-scheme another team or organization but you can outwork and out prepare them.

Trust is developed when groups and individuals work together over time. Individuals need to be open and clear about expectations and roles. Often being brutally honest is necessary. And if trust is one side of the shiny coin, accountability is the other.

Accountability can and should be measured. Use BIG DATA to make BIG Decisions. Players in the NFL are held accountable every week and their performance is measured. Create positive forms of competition to get people moving faster, better, and more efficiently. Leaders need to walk the shop-floor to be visibly accountable.

Educate and train continually. Continual education is needed at every level within an organization so people can perform better and at increasingly higher levels. Safety professionals need to continually educate themselves and those around them. Communicate constantly to inform, coach, and facilitate positive change.

Mental Toughness is difficult to improve but incremental gains can first be achieved by allowing others to experience success early on and subsequently setting increasingly higher standards and goals.

In closing, Oliver used the mantra of Bill Belicheck, head coach of the New England Patriots, who has won six Super Bowls as an assistant and head coach – Do Your Job. In some ways – it should be that simple and we need to be reminded to always do our best – always work as hard as we possibly can, and simply do our job!

Contact David Sarkus if you want to hear both Oliver and David speak at greater length on this topic.

Three Ways Walt Disney Got Safety Right

I’ve been on the road for nearly a month with two great stops in Florida.  During my second speaking engagement in the sunshine state, I stayed at Walt Disney’s Grand Floridian, the flagship hotel for Disney World in Orlando.  It’s a great place with fantastic service.  But what resonates the most from my speaking event wasn’t the wonderful audience and standing ovation or grand hotel, but the backstage tour of the Disney facilities.  You see, Walt Disney got safety right!

Vision.  Walt Disney had a brilliant and creative mind with a vision for utopia in the Disney facilities.  As an animator, he was exceptional about helping his world, objects, and animations come to life – he saw those things in his mind’s eye and was able to clearly share his vision in ways that made them believable, perceptible, and life-like.  We need to be able to see, embrace, and communicate a great vision for safety, and the culture for safety, we want to create – in order to make it visible and life-like for others to see.  Walt Disney’s vision not only included safety but safety was a deeply held value that remains as a “non-negotiable” part of the Disney culture.  Nothing great gets started without a vision or some grand picture of the future, especially in terms of our need to create a “safety utopia.”

Courtesy.  Disney also knew that everyone needed to be treated with dignity and respect.  Everyone at his facilities was seen as special and needed to be treated that way too.  People who work at any of the four world-wide facilities are called upon to go out of their way to make visitors feel special – be it in giving someone directions or helping them with suggestions during a visit.  And that “specialness” is meant to not only bring others back for more, but their friends and relatives, too.  Courtesy works well when it comes to how you treat others at work and engage them when it comes to safety.  Courtesy and respect go hand-in-hand – everyone wants to experience them, but few are willing to first express courtesy and respect from their position, on a consistent basis.

Safety.  The Disney facilities make safety come alive – it’s visible and perceptible.  Walt Disney believed that every customer needed to feel and remain safe.  If they didn’t feel safe their experience of his world would not be satisfactory.  He also believed his workers needed to feel safe and remain safe, too.  If his workers didn’t feel safe, he knew their performances would be lacking, and in turn would impact the visitors’ experience in a less than acceptable way.  Safety remains as one of the pillars of the Disney quality standards – the first of the Disney quality-standards that’s always talked about from the very start.  Without great safety as part of the cultural foundation, Walt Disney believed his world would not be all that it should be for his workers and his guests. 

“You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.”  Yes, that's Walt Disney

I believe we can all do a better job in sharing our vision for safety, and we can do better when it comes to engaging people - engaging them in every viable process we create and hope to sustain.  How about you?

North Dakota Safety Council and David Sarkus - The Safety Coach®

Just wanted to let you know where I was last week - Bismarck, North Dakota.  I had a great time and made some new friends and connected with a  number of new colleagues.  Take a look at the video below, please.

What's Your Golden Dog Bone in Safety?

I recently heard a saying that I really like, “the dog with the bone is always in danger.”  Most all of us have a “golden dog-bone” within our organizations – whether it be sales numbers, market share, profit numbers, new product alignment, employee turnover rates, quality, productivity, and yes, safety performance indicators.  But what’s your “golden dog-bone” when it comes to safety and how does it allow complacency to creep into your groups?

Some of us rely too heavily on lagging indicators and get much too comfortable with so-called good to great numbers.  Leaders who lack a robust scorecard and appropriate coaching, especially with regard to leading indicators, pass down their comfort level to managers, supervisors, and the workers – not a good thing.

In contrast, mature leaders know they can’t relax and get comfortable.  Astute leaders know they have to keep engaging and creating more EHS ownership within the workforce.  They keep pushing to get better, continuously.  Great leaders are always asking and looking for ways to improve materials, tools, and equipment, procedures, and people interfaces in order to raise the bar for safety performance.  And they know that some numbers, especially lagging indicators, create a false sense of comfort that is very dangerous – a summit that may signal, it’s time to relax.

Once we feel too secure with our golden dog-bone (whatever it may be) we relax and take a nap of sorts.  And when we do, bad things are bound to eventually occur.  We are always in danger when “that golden dog-bone” becomes the ultimate prize or goal that we chase and embrace. 

So what’s your golden dog-bone in safety?  Is it zero-recordables?  Is it a 35% reduction in TRIRs?  Is it the absence of serious injuries? 

When it comes to creating a culture of continuous improvement in safety, we all have “a golden dog-bone” of sorts, and that bone will put us in danger - if we let it!

The Safety Grind

Three Steps to Evolving Your Culture for Safety

Managing Safety and That Nasty Trickle-Down Effect

“Joe, I’m so tired of this ___________ , ______________, __________!  I just met with Lou and he ripped me a new __________ hole.  I don’t care about you, your people, or anybody else – get it done!”

You fill in the blanks. If you’ve been working long enough, you realize that it happens and I’m sure you’ve been a part of it in one way or another.  Yep, the trickle-down effect and the spill that spreads all around.  In part, I call it the Jelly-Doughnut Principle.  When you push down on two stacked doughnuts, you get a mess.

Managers and supervisors are sometimes used to getting dumped on from above.  Maybe an undeserved emotional outburst from their boss or a mean-spirited decision that somehow trickles down – it can be ugly.  What happens next?  Well, the manger or supervisor who just got knocked down by the outburst or anger-driven decision starts to take on that affect.  These individuals now push down on their workers with similar emotional force, mean-spirited decisions, or unfair decision-making.  Did the workers deserve that outburst?  Were they aware of what was happening above them?  Often, workers do not deserve it, and the trickle-down can be harmful.

Managers and supervisors have to be made aware of their negatively imposing, trickle-down behaviors and how their actions might affect those they supervise.  They have to help ensure that the trickle stops with them and their workers don’t unnecessarily receive the wrong signals, that can lead to increased exposures and poor decision making, which may lead to errors and accidents.

Supervisors are a direct conduit to their workers when it comes to both the good and bad.  At times, front-line leaders take on the persona and behaviors from those above them.  All individuals in this chain have to be made aware of the trickle-down effect, learn to manage it, compartmentalize it, and to de-personalize it.  Sometimes that takes training, and open and honest communications.