Alive and Well at the End of the Day, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 4MOMENTS OF HIGH INFLUENCE

Carpe diem. [Seize the day]

—Old Latin proverb

Leading, and leading well, demands the most precious resource a leader has: time. When it comes to sending everyone home safe every day, there is no substitute for the time and attention of a leader. Time is the one resource that a leader can’t buy more of: there are only so many hours in the day. Leaders—supervisors and managers who are running the business—are some of the busiest people on the planet, with production, cost, quality, customer, reliability, business process improvement constantly competing for their time. If you’re a leader, how do you find the time it takes to lead people to work safely?

You could try the time‐management trick of finding things to stop doing. Prioritize the important things: do only them and ignore the less important stuff. It sounds like a great idea—until you put it into practice. Try not doing something that’s important to your boss, or your customers, or your followers: how long do you think it will take them to notice? If you ask them what you might stop doing, you’re more likely to come away from that conversation with even more to do. Everything you do is important to someone else.

There is an alternative, a better answer to the question, “With so much on my plate, how do I find the time to lead safety?” You already have plenty of time to lead—if you consider the time you’re already spending leading people to work safely. How much time is that? Leaders ...