Frontline Fundamentals Archive

A trainer, speaking to trainees at the start of class: “Welcome, class. You are encouraged to ask questions and participate. Remember, if you have a question, 15% to 20% of the class probably has the same question.” A trainee, a few hours later: “I have a question.” The trainee then asks the trainer a question related to the material. The trainer, after walking to the board, writing the trainee’s question down and then crossing it out: “I have already covered this, and I’m not wasting time going over it again. You need to pay attention.” Trainee: “You said we should ask questions.” Trainer: “That didn’t include stupid questions.” Trainee: “You’re a liar.” Trainer: “I’d rather be a liar than an idiot.” Seventeen years after this real-life…

Are the things that hurt people the same as the things that kill people? Should safety focus on preventing serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs)? In this article, I’m not going to attempt to answer either of those questions. Instead, I’m going to do two other things. First, I’ll provide you with insights and resources that will help you answer the questions for yourself, and second, I’ll define above-the-line work planning and execution. Let’s start with Herbert William Heinrich’s injury pyramid from the 1931 publication “Industrial Accident Prevention: A Scientific Approach.” Heinrich proposed a 1:29:300 ratio, often called Heinrich’s Law, which states that for a group of 330 similar accidents, 300 will produce no injury, 29 will cause…

Stop-work authority is crucial in our industry. Understand me when I say this: If people aren’t using stop-work authority, they don’t have that authority even if it’s promoted on a bulletin board somewhere. With that said, I want to propose START (self, task, assess, reduce, thrive) work authority to reduce the number of times you’ll need to stop work. I admit this is a play on words and that what I am proposing is very similar to stop-work authority, but I want to challenge the norm of defining “fitness for duty” as someone being present at the work site and “work planning” as being limited to a singular job briefing at the start of the day. We can do that by exercising START work authority. Self Safety starts with you. You cannot assum…

Most leadership development programs talk about the vital skill of giving feedback, as they should. I hope you’ve been trained on coaching and feedback and that you practice and enhance those skills frequently. But what about receiving feedback? That is another skill that can be learned, practiced and improved. And it’s a skill I don’t think we provide enough training on. I’ll propose it is difficult if not impossible to give feedback if you aren’t good at receiving it. So, let’s talk about how to practice and enhance the skill of receiving feedback. Sources of Feedback Feedback is everywhere if we seek it out and are willing to receive it. Sources of feedback include yourself, other people, system responses and results. Your own assessm…

Given a relatively equal amount of talent on both sides, the sports TEAM (Together Everyone Accomplishes More) with the best game plan will likely win. Examining what champions – especially those that create dynasties – do well provides us with insight into achieving excellence in safety. Job and Task Hazard Analyses Most champions excel at scouting. They understand the strengths, weaknesses and tendencies of their opponents so well that they can predict what they will do in certain situations. This is fantastic news for us because our opponents – hazards and risks – are quantifiable and predictable. Apart from hazards like animals, we know exactly how they will behave, which makes it simple to game-plan for success. We do this by devel…

Given the predictable nature of hazards, how and why do incidents occur? Think about this: If I know the winning numbers ahead of a lottery drawing, it’s simple for me to be 100% successful at winning the lottery money. So, if we know how hazards are going to act and how they cause harm, why aren’t we 100% successful at safety? It’s because we don’t fully grasp and utilize the Art of Safety, or how and why you must understand, lead, develop and protect people. That’s why I wrote the book “Frontline Incident Prevention – The Hurdle: Innovative and Practical Insights on the Art of Safety” and why I am focusing my 2023 Incident Prevention articles – and their corresponding free webinars – on the Art of Safety. In this article and its associ…

Given the predictable nature of hazards, how and why do incidents occur? Think about this: If I know the winning numbers ahead of a lottery drawing, it’s simple for me to be 100% successful at winning the lottery money. So, if we know how hazards are going to act and how they cause harm, why aren’t we 100% successful at safety? It’s because we don’t fully grasp and utilize the Art of Safety, or how and why you must understand, lead, develop and protect people. That’s why I wrote the book “Frontline Incident Prevention – The Hurdle: Innovative and Practical Insights on the Art of Safety” and why I am focusing my 2023 Incident Prevention articles – and their corresponding free webinars – on the Art of Safety. So, let’s get started and disc…

Given the predictable nature of hazards, how and why do incidents occur? Think about this: If I know the winning numbers ahead of a lottery drawing, it’s simple for me to be 100% successful at winning the lottery money. So, if we know how hazards are going to act and how they cause harm, why aren’t we 100% successful at safety? It’s because we don’t fully grasp and utilize the Art of Safety. That’s why I wrote the book “Frontline Incident Prevention – The Hurdle: Innovative and Practical Insights on the Art of Safety” and why I am focusing my 2023 Incident Prevention articles – and their corresponding free webinars – on the Art of Safety. So, let’s get started and discover how to effectively lead and protect people rather than managing r…

C5 safety leaders care about their teams and focus on what they can do to prevent harm and encourage growth. The Art of Safety is understanding, leading, developing and protecting people, including yourself. It’s how to lead safety and work safely. We excel at the science of safety, things like ergonomics, electrical theory and fall protection. I can calculate, for instance, gravity and acceleration during a fall and how much force would be involved in hitting a lower surface. I know electricity is going to take every path to ground, and I can use Ohm’s law to determine current, voltage and resistance. I understand why trenches collapse, and I can calculate soil weight. In other words, the science of safety allows us to quantify and pred…

Not long ago, Utility Business Media Inc. published a book I wrote: “Frontline Leadership – The Hurdle.” During the research and writing process, I read a lot of books and want to share highlights from some of my favorites. This article will focus on the bestselling book “Who Moved My Cheese?: An A-Mazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life” by Spencer Johnson, M.D. I hope you find the article useful, and I also hope it inspires you to read both “Who Moved My Cheese?” and my book as part of your continuing personal and professional development.

Dang you, Ken Sheridan. I had a life and a job that I enjoyed, and I thought I had safety figured out. Then you wrote “No Compromise: The Truth About Workplace Safety & Business Success.” I couldn’t put it down, and worse yet, chapter four is so good I read it three times before I ever got to chapter five. On top of that, I just published my second book – “Frontline Incident Prevention – The Hurdle: Innovative and Practical Insights on the Art of Safety” – which I was really excited to promote in this issue of Incident Prevention magazine. Because of you, I can’t do that; instead, I must talk about your book and share some of its wisdom with my readers. So again, dang you, Ken Sheridan. Overview “No Compromise” really does tell the t…

Not long ago, Utility Business Media Inc. published my book, “Frontline Leadership: The Hurdle.” Researching and writing the book helped me learn to appreciate and apply knowledge and wisdom from other writers. In this article, I want to share some highlights from “The 8 Habits of a Highly Effective Safety Culture,” a book recently written by Rod Courtney, CUSP, who also serves as a board member for the Utility Safety & Ops Leadership Network. I’ve heard him speak on this topic many times and highly recommend you read his book. The Habits Now, let’s take a look at the eight habits the book title refers to: Stop Making Safety a Priority Make it Safe to Raise Concerns Make Safety a Responsibility of Operations Focus Left of Zero Stop …

During the research and writing process for my new book – “Frontline Leadership: The Hurdle,” published by Utility Business Media Inc. – I read a lot of books, and I want to share some highlights from a few of my favorites. This article will focus on the bestselling “It’s Your Ship” by Captain D. Michael Abrashoff. I hope you find this article useful, and I also hope it inspires you to read both “It’s Your Ship” and my book as part of your continuing personal and professional development. Overview Understanding. That’s a one-word summary of why you should read this book and what you will learn from it. Understanding yourself first and then understanding others. Understanding what others expect from you and your team. Understanding situat…

During the research and writing process for my new book – “Frontline Leadership: The Hurdle,” published by Utility Business Media Inc. – I read a lot of books, and I want to share some highlights from a few of my favorites. This article will focus on “The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be” by Jack Canfield. I hope you find this article useful, and I also hope it inspires you to read both “The Success Principles” and my book as part of your continuing personal and professional development. To highlight how much I believe in this book and want to encourage you to read it, I completed the program to become a Canfield Certified Trainer in the Success Principles after reading it once and being exposed t…

What actions can you take to solve problems rather than blaming, complaining, defending and denying? During the research and writing process for my new book – “Frontline Leadership: The Hurdle,” published by Utility Business Media Inc. – I read a lot of books, and I want to share some highlights from a few of my favorites. This article will focus on “Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win,” authored by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. I hope that you find this article useful, and I also hope it inspires you to read both “Extreme Ownership” and my book as part of your continuing personal and professional development. Overview Have you ever read a book and ended up with so many margin notes, highlights and sticky notes as placeho…

Understanding, developing and applying these habits enable us to better respond to stimuli, making us more effective people. I am excited to tell you that Utility Business Media Inc. recently published “Frontline Leadership: The Hurdle,” a book that I wrote. During the research and writing process, I read a lot of books and want to share some highlights from a few of my favorites. This article will focus on “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” the bestselling book authored by Stephen R. Covey. I hope that you find the article useful, and I hope it inspires you to read both Covey’s book and my book as part of your continuing personal and professional development. Overview Most people are familiar with the title “The 7 Habits of High…

Safety works with just the nuts and bolts, but not as well as it will if you apply these nine axioms. Too often we focus so much on the nuts and bolts of safety (e.g., grounding procedures, Ohm’s law, work methods for a pole-top rescue) that we lose sight of the big picture. There’s no doubt the nuts and bolts are important, but they lose value if we don’t understand and apply the following nine safety axioms. 1. Safety must be led. There is a video clip of Mike Rowe interviewing a crab boat captain from the TV show “Deadliest Catch.” During the interview, the captain said, “My job is to get you home rich. If you want to stay safe, that’s on you.” I won’t take the time to debate or explain that statement, but I will say this: In the abse…

Someone I hold in high regard once said to me, “David, if we can improve our job briefings, we will reduce our injuries by 60%.” I had some hesitation about his statement at the time, and to this day I am not sure I agree with that percentage. But I decidedly do know this: improving job briefings improves safety. I also know that the topic of improving job briefings arises at virtually every education event I am a part of and in conversations regarding almost every incident I’ve heard about. So, what can we do to improve job briefings? For starters, it takes confidence and competence to conduct them effectively. This article will briefly discuss competence and introduce you to Frontline’s Job Briefings training program (https://ip-instit…