In a post on my blog, I recently discussed the difference between supporting safety philosophically and operationally. One reader posed the question, “how do you get leadership to move from philosophical support to actual support?”
It’s a good question, and like most good questions doesn’t have any simple answer, at least not ethical ones.
In many cases, we’re to blame for people supporting safety philosophically but balking at taking any action that would expose the hypocrisy endemic to valuing something in the abstract but not really caring enough to DO something of substance about it. Most of us, if we are honest, are hypocrites about some things. For example, I care about the homeless but you don’t see me building bunk beds in my basement. I have volunteered to feed the homeless, but doing something once a year is hardly doing making a difference except for making me feel better.
Most MBA programs don’t cover the basics of safety and what little many executives know about safety was taught to them by one of us. I’ve met heads of lettuce with more going on intellectually than some of the puffed up, self-important safety “professionals” who corrupt entire generations of leaders with the heretical beliefs about safety. If we are going to change the values of leadership it will be an uphill battle.
The best way to get buy-in is for the leader to have a significant emotional event. This is safety-speak for something that happens to a person that really shakes them up. One colleague and friend of mine tells of the 23-year old who died when he first became a safety professional. He told me in all earnestness how profoundly it changed him and how he doesn’t think he could do what he does without having had that experience.
No one who has had someone die on our watch,…