Join MVP Seminars
Subscribe to RSS Feed 
“Any landing you walk away from is a good landing.” I grew up around small airplanes and larger than life pilots and had heard that quite often. Pilots are human, too. Since safety is largely dealing with the issue of problem solving – “How do we get the job done and walk away from it alive and unscathed?” it would be helpful to know how people are likely to attack a particular problem. The way problems are solved vary with the individual.
Recognize that behavior is observable and describable. Behavior describes how people do things including dealing with problems.
Jim Cornahan was an ag-pilot that loved and flew Grumman Ag-Cats, which is a bi-plane. Jim told me he loved those bi-planes as opposed to the fancy low-winged- mono-planes. When fertilizing or spraying rice fields the landing gear inevitably clipped a levee in and dumped that plane upside down. The top wing is now below the pilot, keeping them from being crushed into the mud. With a bi-plane and a good harness to hold you in, you could walk away unscathed. With no top wing you might be squished like the bugs you were spraying. Jim solved the problem of safety with logic – “It’s gonna happen, use the equipment that let’s you walk away from it.”
I know that everyone even remotely involved in safety is cringing at Jim’s story, especially the part where Jim says “It’s gonna happen…” Well, incidents DO happen. How will you and your people handle them? Better yet, how will you and your people look at safety before the mud hits the propeller?
The American Society of Safety Engineers – SF Chapter (of which I am a member) recently asked me for ideas on presentations I could do for them. As I searched the ASSE website and particularly archived articles I was surprised at the number of times that behavior was related to safety, yet I didn’t find anything written about actually determining behavior before hand. (Admittedly I didn’t read every word of every article…) What I proposed and has been accepted for February 2101 is a presentation on using behavioral assessments to not only get an idea of who might be at risk for over reacting to an incident, but making them and their team aware of this possibility.
Equally important though, is the idea that behavior can create a safe place to exchange ideas, and that in turn leads to safer workplaces. As an example, when I was superintendent in charge of dismantling an old small refinery in Oklahoma, I had guys that were great at what they did, but left on their own would scare the crap out of a big man. I also had a little guy, Donald, who was soft spoken and rarely said anything. He just did as told and went to work. What I learned about Donald though, was he thought his job through and never got in trouble. I learned to ask him for his thoughts on other operations we had going and to listen to his advice.
Safety is affected by how people deal with problems and people. Behavior is how people deal with problems and people. Therefore they are entirely linked. How deep have you thought about this? I mean, how deeply has your organization thought aboutsafety beyond saying “We just want our modifier to go to zero.”
If your organization needs help with or a speaker on this topic, please contact me at 925.757.7473 and mention MVP Seminars.
Bart Gragg Blue Collar University®
Habbo Retros…
Habbo Retros are slowly attracting more users with each passing day, most people prefer to play Habbo Retros with pets according to a recent google study, further evidence also supports that Habbo Retros have lead to an annual decrease in revenue for s…