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

CHAPTER 15CREATING THE CULTURE YOU WANT

With the slightest push—in just the right place—the world can be tipped.

—Malcolm Gladwell

Every organization has a safety culture. If you want to know what it is, all you have to do is to look.

7:45 a.m., Control Room

It’s the first day on the job for a new maintenance technician, but one with many years of experience in the trade. During the safety orientation the day before, the technician was told how important safety was to the company’s top management: an injury‐free workplace is the goal, and every safety rule must be followed completely. There was a test on the safety rules: the tech passed with a 100% score. Now qualified, it’s time to go to work, a member of a crew assigned to perform a field repair.

First stop: the Control Room. The operator in charge of reviewing required safety precautions specified on the Safety Permit before the work starts shows the maintenance crew the document and says, “Just sign here, and you can get to work.”

Everyone on the crew signs, except the new technician. Taking the safety orientation to heart, the technician says, rather timidly, “Is that all that’s required? Don’t you think we should walk out the job and double‐check everything like we’re supposed to? That’s what they told me to do during orientation.”

Everybody laughs—except the new maintenance technician.

The operator frowns. “What are you trying to do? Slow the job down?”

The peers on the crew chime in: “Look, you’re new here. Nobody ...