We will inaugurate our new President on January 20, 2017. Lots of change is promised. We are all full of questions and wondering about the unknowns. In all of this, we need to depend on each other in our families and workplaces so everyone can thrive.
I think that this is a time, for the good of our families and co-workers, when we need to come together by being respectful, helping, listening, and sharing information, ideas and the workloads so that our families and workplaces are kinder and safer for us. We can control how we are willing to be together even though the world seems in turmoil.
To start 2017 off on a good footing, let’s choose to manage ourselves and decide to help each other through all the unknowns.
I’m reminded of the mid-1980’s when self-managed and self-directed work teams first came into vogue. Each team lived by a set of principles to which they committed to do the work they collectively needed to do (without supervision or having to be told what to do and when), while respecting each other’s individuality and contribution to the overall team. Those behavioral principles are good ones…a little bit of self-management (EQ) (a.k.a. “controlling your emotions in healthy ways”) can go a long way to interpersonal success.
As this year comes to an end, we will be looking at our overall performance to see how we did and to plan for 2017. We will usually look at our injury statistics like the total recordable injury rate and try to determine how we performed. Often quite independently, others will look at other performance indicators to see how they came out. We act as if these are independent of each other, but in our organizations everything is connected so all aspects of performance influence each other. Everything happens through the people. All the parts are interconnected. Excellence in safety performance is strongly related to our total performance because it all works through the will of the people.
Work-as-imagined and work-as-done are ideas developed by Erik Hollnagel in his book, Safety-I and Safety-II (2014. Ashgate Publishing Ltd., UK). Safety I is our traditional top-down management approach to safety management where rules and procedures are issued by those far from the actual work. This is like the approach discussed in the proceeding paragraph. I think that a lot of people are trying to do good safety work from the Safety I perspective, but the results are not improving fast enough.
A recent article in the October 13, 2016 
This story illustrates so many of the changing conditions and people involved in our work places. Most of our companies do a good job in risk assessments and developing safe working procedures. However, this planning often takes place away from the actual location where the work will be done. This is sometimes called the “blunt end” of the safety process where the people doing the planning do not understand what happens in the work at “sharp-end” where conditions and demands may be quite different, and where most of the injuries happen.
Consider the Golden Gate Suspension Bridge (San Francisco) built between 1933 and 1937, an architectural marvel, thought to be impossible because in order to bridge that 6,700 ft. strait, in the middle of the bay channel, against strong tides, fierce winds, and thick fog, meant overcoming almost impossible odds. But it was built, with a grand opening in May of 1937, deemed, at the time of its completion, to be the tallest suspension bridge in the world as well as the longest. A man named Joseph Strauss engineered many new ideas, including developing safety devices such as movable netting, which saved 19 lives; though in all, there were 11 men lost during this construction. Thousands of men – workers of varying ages and from varied ethnic groups – came together to complete this project. (They had to listen and learn to be successful together.)
Consider the feat of building the monumental Hoover Dam (1931-1936) – a miracle of technology and engineering. No dam project of this scale had ever been attempted before. There were 21,000 people working at that site with approximately 100 industrial deaths. The walls for this structure – that would uphold the weight of the dam – required workers called “high-scalers” who excavated the cliffs, dangling on ropes from the rim of the canyon. Can you even fathom this?
Consider the great Niagara Power Project (1957-1961). During construction, over 12 million cubic yards of rock were excavated. A total of 20 workers died. When it opened in 1961, it was the Western world’s largest hydropower facility. Many people, including from the “greatest generation” and the “traditionalist generation,” worked together on this project. It was a 24/7, multi-year project.
In many of our newsletters, I have talked about helping organizations co-create their safety future using the 
In my June 29th presentation at the American Society of Safety Engineers 2016 Professional Development Conference, I discussed the fact that one of the best ways for the safety professional attending the talk to help to improve the safety performance in their workplaces was to show the people that they cared about them and to enable them to make decisions about their specific work. I want to elaborate on these ideas in this newsletter. This is not just for the safety professional. This is for every team leader, supervisor, and workgroup leader. Going into your workplaces and opening up the conversations is a journey; each time you do this it gets easier and more effective. (Caring, Understanding and Openness!)
Eighty (80) pages and counting…that’s how far I got while perusing the numerous pages for the 2015 fatalities logged on OSHA reports – there were still many names and circumstances yet to read.
Hardly any of us can do our best work all by ourselves.
