Align for the Front Line

View my 8th Annual Appalachian Safety Summit presentation here:

By the time workers find themselves in a position to take risks, we have already lost. There were a whole host of behaviors, done by a host of other people, unaware they have participated in perfectly creating the conditions for workers to take risks. If we blame workers we severely limit our understanding of the incident. However, if we see workers’ risk taking as an opportunity to learn, then we just may uncover the interlocking behaviors from others that may have taken place earlier in the day or a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. We will discover that the variance in behaviors related to hi-potential close calls (or SIFs) are the result of variance being pushed to the front line by support roles when they ‘hand off’ workflow across people, workgroups and functions. Front line supervision and workers are champions when they take all this ‘churn’ and successfully produce and do it safely. But when variance is forced on the front line by upstream processes we also find pencil whipping and serious risks to safe operation.