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

INTRODUCTION

In the twenty‐first century, if you work in industry anywhere in the world you know how important safety is. Whether you own the business, serve as the CEO, are a general manager, department manager or you’re a front‐line supervisor, managing safety performance—leading people to work safely—is a huge part of your job. When that responsibility isn’t carried out effectively, the consequences can be devastating to the people working for the business, the company you work for, and for you, professionally and personally.

You would think that every business that takes safety seriously would teach its new managers and supervisors how to manage safety properly. That’s often what’s done for the other important functions managers and supervisors are responsible for, such as production technology, information technology, accounting, sales, project management, and human resources.

It seems like common sense, but it’s hardly common practice. Recognizing that to be the case, shortly after starting up my consulting practice, I developed a practical course on safety leadership. It was called Managing Safety Performance, and its premise was simple: if you’re a leader and your job is to send everyone home alive and well at the end of every day, you need to know what to do, and how to do that.

That course was written in 2001. In more than two decades since, I’ve enjoyed the privilege of teaching and consulting with tens of thousands of industrial and business leaders from the front ...