By: Shawn Galloway and Terry Mathis
Recorded: 21 September 2008
Welcome to Safety Culture Excellence®. Today’s topic: Safety Management vs. Safety Leadership. My name is Shawn Galloway, and I’m proud to be your host.
Certainly, one might take precedence over the other. One might be more important than the other, but you can’t throw just one out and say that you can only have one aspect of it. You can’t say we only want leadership and not management nor can you say we only want management and not leadership. This week, you’ll get to hear Terry and I discuss this issue. I hope you find some value in this week’s podcast. But, most importantly, I hope you have a great week. Let’s listen in.
Shawn Galloway:
So, Terry, as everyone is seeing these days, there’s a lot of books in leadership that focus on the difference between leadership and management. So, let’s put this in the perspective of safety – safety management vs. safety leadership – is one better than the other? How might they differentiate?
Terry Mathis:
I’ve heard a lot of these debates, also. And what I’d like to suggest is: we’re trying to choose whether we want our right leg or our left leg. I think they’re both necessary. I think they’re both a part of what has to happen in safety. But I think a lot of people get them confused, and they think it’s the same thing at both levels. And what I’d like to suggest is two things. One is a little visual that you can picture out here. To me, I call it the shepherd of the sheepdog. Leadership is standing in front of the flock and inspiring them and motivating them and saying, “I know where we need to go. I know where the water is. I know where the pastures are. Follow me.”
The other part is the sheepdog. And the sheepdog doesn’t stand out in front of the flock. He doesn’t motivate, he doesn’t inspire, he doesn’t set strategic direction. But, once the shepherd has the flock going in the right direction, he runs around and bites the heels of the stragglers and tries to keep them all up in a nice neat herd so the wolves don’t get them. Now, which one of these two is the most necessary? Which one of these two is desirable? Well, they both are. Someone has to know where you’re going, and someone has to manage the caravan. I think both of these have to happen in safety. And in most organizations, I see one or the other, but not both, happening.
I don’t see very many organizations who have a safety mission, a safety vision, a set of safety values. I don’t see very many organizations saying anything except to try – “Well, every accident is preventable, you know”, kind of dialogue out there to set strategic direction. The other example I’d like to suggest is kind of the military example. The General says, “We’ve got to take that hill.” And the Colonel says, “This Battalion has to take that hill.” And you go down the rank and file and pretty soon, there’s a soldier that’s got to shoot somebody on that hill. And there’s a lot of different things that have to happen out there. Now, one of these is strategic, and the other one is tactical.
And I think a lot of companies have either a safety strategy, or they have some safety tactics that they use. But very few companies have both. And even the ones who have both, they’re not necessarily well aligned.
Shawn Galloway:
And that’s something that I think that I tried to outline in one of our previous podcasts is: it’s better to identify within your safety culture the strengths, the weaknesses, the opportunities, the threats. Essentially performing a SWOT analysis on your culture rather than just going out and trying to identify new special weapons and tactics.
Terry Mathis:
Exactly. So, what are your strengths and weaknesses? What are your opportunities? And that’s where I think most organizations fall short. A lot of organizations can tell you their strengths. They can tell you their weaknesses. They cannot tell you their opportunities. What are their opportunities? We do something very often that – we do an assessment of a site, and we say, “What’s the one thing that if you did it well would produce the greatest transformational impact on your safety performance at the site?” And I don’t see a lot of safety professionals, I don’t see a lot of leaders in organizations asking themselves those kinds of questions.
And that’s where that SWOT, the S-W-O-T kind of analysis really pays off. But SWOT analysis is a strategic leadership tool. So, how many strategic leaders are there out there in safety? I would suggest that most great strategic leaders, safety is way down their priority list. And, if they ever get to it, it’s not in a strategic way. It’s a tactical way. “Well, where’s my safety guy?” I picture Patton out there trying to decide which Battalion’s gonna go first and how we can break away and disengage and go fight the Battle of the Bulge out there. And then, all of a sudden, he says, “Where’s the Chaplin? I need a weather prayer. I need a weather prayer. I don’t know anything about weather, but I want somebody that’s in tight with God.”
That’s the way I see a lot of managers managing safety. “We’ve got to do this strategically. We’ve got to do this financially. We’ve got to do this in an engineering and a marketing point. By the way, where’s my safety guy?” You know? “What do we do with safety out here? I want somebody that knows that safety stuff that can go out there and make it happen.” That is not strategic leadership in safety. And I think where that leadership is lacking, the tactical people come along, and they can put together a battle plan, but there’s nothing up in that top left corner that says, “What’s the goal of this battle plan?”
So, they fill in the blank and the blank is, “Let’s keep everybody from getting hurt. Let’s send everybody home with all their arms and legs,” and the usual trite stuff. And it’s not that that’s not humanistic. It’s not that that’s not worthwhile. It’s that that is not strategic. Most people haven’t thought, “How does good safety become good strategic thinking in the company?” And they haven’t given it the same level of strategic thought and planning that they have other aspects of the business, even though it deserves them, and probably is a more difficult management task than some of the others that get a lot more attention.”
Until next time, remember: “In safety, prevention trumps reaction.” For more information on Safety Culture Excellence®, or if you have a topic to suggest, please email us at podcast @ proactsafety.com.