Alive and Well at the End of the Day: The Supervisor's Guide to Managing Safety in Operations

271 Pages·2010·5.34 MB·English

by  Paul D. Balmert(auth.)

ALIVE AND WELL AT
THE END OF THE DAY
ALIVE AND WELL AT
THE END OF THE DAY
The Supervisor’s Guide to
Managing Safety in Operations
PAUL D. BALMERT
A JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC., PUBLICATION
Copyright © 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Balmert, Paul D., 1950–
Alive and well at the end of the day : the supervisor’s guide to managing safety in operations /
Paul D. Balmert.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-470-46707-7 (cloth)
1. Industrial safety—Management. 2. Work environment—Safety measures. I. Title.
T55.B254 2010
658.4′08—dc22
2009037095
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Nancy
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii
ABOUT THE AUTHOR xv
CHAPTER 1 A GUIDE TO THE GUIDE: GETTING THE MOST OUT
OF THIS BOOK 1
CHAPTER 2 THE CASE FOR SAFETY 7
CHAPTER 3 THE PRACTICE OF LEADERSHIP 17
CHAPTER 4 MOMENTS OF HIGH INFLUENCE 27
CHAPTER 5 MANAGING BY WALKING AROUND 35
CHAPTER 6 FOLLOWING ALL THE RULES . . . ALL THE TIME 45
CHAPTER 7 RECOGNIZING HAZARDS AND MANAGING RISK 53
CHAPTER 8 BEHAVIOR, CONSEQUENCES—AND ATTITUDE! 69
CHAPTER 9 THE POWER OF GOOD QUESTIONS 87
CHAPTER 10 MAKING CHANGE HAPPEN 93
CHAPTER 11 MANAGING ACCOUNTABILITY 101
CHAPTER 12 SAFETY MEETINGS WORTH HAVING 111
CHAPTER 13 MANAGING SAFETY SUGGESTIONS 121
CHAPTER 14 CREATING THE CULTURE YOU WANT 129
CHAPTER 15 INVESTING IN TRAINING 143
CHAPTER 16 UNDERSTANDING WHAT WENT WRONG 157
CHAPTER 17 MEASURING SAFETY PERFORMANCE 169
CHAPTER 18 ON THE HORNS: MANAGING SAFETY DILEMMAS 189
CHAPTER 19 LEADING FROM THE MIDDLE 209
CHAPTER 20 THE TOP 10 MISTAKES MANAGERS MAKE IN MANAGING
SAFETY PERFORMANCE 223
vii
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER 21 EXECUTION: THE NAME OF THE GAME . . . AND SAFETY’S
BOTTOM LINE 253
CHAPTER 22 CAN YOU REALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE? 265
REFERENCES 269
INDEX 271
INTRODUCTION
Today, books on business management and leadership are commonplace. That
hasn ’ t always been the case; Peter Drucker wrote the fi rst signifi cant work on the
subject of business management in 1954. In the half - century since, hundreds of
CEOs, generals, sports coaches, and business professors followed suit, authoring
their own books on variations of the theme of business, management, and leadership.
In writing The Practice of Management , Drucker was among the fi rst to rec-
ognize the critical role played by those who manage the business. Drucker saw
management as a profession, and wrote for that audience. His ideas shaped many
of the management and business practices that are today considered standard: busi-
ness strategy, management by objectives, customer focus, developing people, and
even understanding and shaping corporate culture. He even wrote about the vital
role played by front - line supervisors. But he missed one subject that is of vital inter-
est to every leader in a business who is responsible for work of others: safety. Seeing
to it that at the end of every business day, every person who came to work for the
business goes home alive and well.
The consequences can be devastating … to all
If you work as a supervisor or manager in an industrial enterprise in the
21st century, you know accomplishing that is a vitally important part of your job.
Whether you own the business or serve as the CEO, general manager, department
manager or front - line supervisor, safety is a big part of your job. When that part of
your job isn ’ t done well, the consequences can be devastating to the people you
supervise — and to you, personally and professionally.
Given its importance, it would follow that plenty of books should be available
on the management practices necessary to achieve great safety performance. That ’ s
certainly the case for all the other goals critical to running a successful business.
Consultants, experts, and even former executives with names like Drucker, Crosby,
Collins, and Bossidy have written extensively, and sold millions of books on manag-
ing the business. As important as managing safety is, you would think that by now
there would be a best - selling business book on that subject as well. There isn ’ t.
This is more than just a case of some missing book on the shelves at the local
bookstore. You would also think that any business that takes safety seriously — and
most of them do — would teach its new supervisors and managers h ow to manage
safety. Just as they do for all the other important functions that managers and super-
ix
x INTRODUCTION
visors are responsible for, functions like information technology, accounting, sales,
and project management.
Sounds like common sense — but it ’ s hardly common practice.
In nearly a decade as a consultant, I ’ ve enjoyed the privilege of working with
thousands of supervisors — from the front line to the executive suite — all over the
world, employed by manufacturing and industrial services businesses that number
in the hundreds. In those businesses — from small, privately - held family businesses
to the biggest industrial names in the world — safety really is a core value, and it ’ s
not just given lip service. Yet few of these well - managed businesses have a formal
process to teach their new leaders what to do and how to do it to accomplish their
safety goals.
I can ’ t say that I ’ m at all surprised: in the fi rst 30 years of my working life I
worked for those kinds of businesses, and that was exactly my experience. I received
a great deal of technical training in the functions that I worked in and managed, and
even a great deal of management training, back in the days when business could
afford that luxury. But little of that training was specifi cally about leading others to
work safely. Perhaps the businesses just assumed we already knew how to do that.
I didn ’ t, and in a sense I even had a head start
Making an unsafe car a bit safer
For the last 200 years no industrial company has done a better job managing
safety performance than DuPont. I grew up in a DuPont household: my father was
a line manager for the DuPont company. I didn ’ t appreciate it at the time, but can
say that we had what must have been the only 1961 Corvair on the planet equipped
with seat belts. Those seat belts weren ’t original equipment: we had them installed
after Dad brought them home from work one day — an off - the - job safety award from
DuPont. When it came time for me to enter the workforce — two weeks after gradu-
ating high school — I followed my father ’ s footsteps into the chemical business: as
a general helper, working the midnight shift. That was my summer job for the four
years I spent in college. There, I got to see the world of operations — and manage-
ment — from the bottom up. In retrospect, it was terrifi c experience. It just didn ’ t
seem that way at the time.
After college, diploma in hand, I went back to work there, this time in a pro-
fessional capacity. Three years later I joined the second biggest chemical company
in the States, Union Carbide Corporation. Working there, I came to appreciate how
good a job DuPont did, and why DuPont was the role model for the rest of us in the
business. Ten years later, when I became responsible for all the operators working
in a large Union Carbide plant, I made the transition to line manager. That ’ s when
I really started learning how to manage safety performance.
Some great leaders and some who just don ’ t get it
INTRODUCTION xi
I was fortunate to have grown up with an excellent role model for safety — my
dad, the DuPont manager. And, early on in my career, I worked for and around some
really great leaders with names like Don Wiley, Bob Perry, Gene Shackelford, and
Charlie Hale. And there were many more, good friends and former associates with
job titles that ranged from shift coordinator to maintenance leadman to chief opera-
tor to production supervisor. If there were enough space on a dedication page, all
their names would be listed as the source of what I ’ ve learned and am now teaching.
I spent 13 years in the everyday practice of leadership. I now realize my great-
est talent wasn ’ t leading: there were many people far better at that than I was. But,
like a golf teacher who once tried his hand as a player, I turned out to have the gift
of insight: I got to see leadership as it was practiced by everyone from the CEO and
executive vice president to the fellow in the machine shop fi lling in for his boss, and
paid close attention to what they actually did to lead others to work safely.
Peter Drucker believed that leadership was vitally important to success. It
was — and is. It wasn ’ t all that hard to see what leaders actually did to lead: all
you had to do was to watch. Spending 30 years working in a variety of positions in
the chemical business gave me plenty of opportunity to observe these leaders at
work at every level in the organization, starting with how they led and managed me
when I was an eager 18 - year - old kid on the midnight shift. As you might expect,
some really were great leaders … and yes, there were more than a few who just
didn ’ t get it.
As a consultant, I ’ ve been teaching leadership practices that I learned from
the leaders I admired most. In nearly a decade I, and the other members of my
consulting practice, have shared them with upwards of twenty thousand supervisors,
managers, and leaders all over the world. I know they see a lot of themselves in
these practices, and as I watch them in the classroom I often see them practicing
what we ’ re teaching. All of which simply confi rms that there is a certain timeless-
ness to the practice of leadership: management fads may come and go, but the
important practices last for generations.
And now we ’ ve written this book about managing safety to share those lead-
ership practices with the next generation of leaders.
Peter Drucker — as well as subsequent management gurus — has been proved
right: leadership really is of the utmost importance in managing business functions
… including the function of keeping people safe.
So this book starts at that point: given that leadership matters, what should
leaders do, and how should they do it? We ’ ll take you through the challenges —
leading is tough duty — the best practices, the dilemmas, and even the lessons learned
in failure. At the end you ’ ll understand what to do, how to do it, and why those
practices work the way they do.
I hope these insights help you protect the people you supervise on the job. I
can think of no higher business or professional objective than to do exactly that.
Paul Balmert
December 2009
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In writing and publishing a book, content and process turn out to be two separate
but intertwined matters. A live and Well describes the practice of leadership in the
real world and real time of operations. Because of this, the principal source of the
content is a lifetime of having worked for and around successful leaders. In a span
of 40 years, it ’ s impossible to correctly recall the particulars of what any one leader
said or did that has found its way into the practices written about here. But the
names and faces of those good leaders have not been forgotten. The content of this
book refl ects what I learned from them, good leaders all. I thank them, each and
every one.
On the other hand, the process of writing this book has largely taken place
over the last year. But for the help received from two longtime friends and associ-
ates, it would not have been written. Mel Anderson didn ’ t just edit the manuscript,
but provided the encouragement and cheerleading necessary to press on, and the
great work in helping the book get published. Scott Pignolet prepared the graphics,
but even more essential to the process has been the great counsel he ’ s provided — not
to mention a plethora of great ideas about making the content better.
PDB

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