At every conference I hear BBS champions and Safety Managers voicing the same request: “Do you have any ideas about how we can give our BBS process a ‘shot in the arm?’” BBS processes in which observers are enlisted voluntarily suffer more conspicuously than companies that have institutionalized their BBS process as a job requirement and a “condition of employment.”

As an aside, I believe that BBS processes should be voluntary until employees are familiar with the process and have refined and customized tactics to functional efficiency. At some point you have to ask the question, “If BBS is essential to ensuring our employees work more safely, then we need to make it mandatory.”

Safety training, job safety analysis, incident analysis, accident investigation, hazard identification, safety audits, safety policy, permits, emergency response – all these practice and many more are not considered options; they are institutionalized and mandatory components of safety management. Similarly, observations – work sampling for safety – should be an essential and obligatory part of safety management.

Getting back to the issue of how you can reenergize your BBS process, in previous blogs I have suggested some alternatives:

• Performance Observations – use observer skills to identify behaviors that add value to quality, productivity, teamwork, reduce waste and more.
• Employee Initiated Observations – allow employees to spontaneously initiate an observation of a coworker and record those data
• Emergency/Critical Task Observations – identify situations, tasks, conditions that are rare but possible. Allow observers to watch employees doing drills for their particular circumstances
• Workgroup/Team Observations – use observers to watch teams working together routinely or during intermittently scheduled non-routine events like plant shutdowns for major maintenance

I have just added the last observational practice, and I am aware that some companies are already doing observations of work group “results” as well as behavior. For the most part, BBS observations are based on predetermined checklists that are developed based on data review of incidents and injuries.

The variations I am suggesting are within the skill sets of properly trained observers – that is, observers who have been trained to discriminate, define, and identify specific, observable behaviors and provide a written description of that behavior in a way that allows others to make an observation using that description. If your observer group thinks that “has a good attitude about safety,” is a behavior you are on a slippery slope.

A well trained observer group should be able to watch an individual or team task being performed and identify value-added behaviors, list them, and communicate that list to other employees. If one employee does one thing that saves time or product waste, a trained observer should be able to discriminate that behavior and pass it on to other employees – thereby saving the company time and money.

Many companies do not know enough about Behavioral Technology to ensure that their observers are more than “list-checkers.” If your observer training class does not include a strong section on how to identify behaviors from non-behaviors, then your observers are not going to be able to add value to the observational process by identifying behaviors that will create a safer working environment.

You should be able to provide the following assignment to your trained observers with the confidence that they will be able to do it effectively:

“Warren, would you and Mary do an observation of the shift-change in Head Stack Assembly. I want to see if we can identify any behaviors that can be changed or added or deleted to decrease wasted time and improve the hand off. We’ve been having some operations problems that seem to be related to communications, but I want you two to observe what they are doing and saying and let’s see if we can smooth out the process.”

If properly trained, Mary and Warren should be able to handle this assignment without any problem. They should be able to come back with a list of specific behaviors that employees can say or do to make things run more smoothly, cut out waste, and improve efficiency. Once the list is developed, then it can be used as a checklist by everyone involved in the shift change or it can be used by the observers in a formal way – to do observations.

Safety observations of individuals working together – looking for coordination, cooperation, task alignment, proper sequencing, and peer support are logical applications of observer skill sets. The use of observational checklist on individual workers performing task sequences is important, but only one application of the observational process; limiting your observers to this application creates boredom, disinterest, and is a waste of the resources and investment you’ve made in observer training.

If your BBS process was properly implemented, then your steering committee can meet with a selection of observers and organize the proper tactics for implementing any one of the 4 suggestions bulleted above. Behavioral Technology is about understanding how to identify value-added from wasteful behavior in an organization.

Six Sigma, Lean, and many other initiatives seek to eliminate waste and increase quality and service levels. BBS is based on the application of Behavioral Technology to safety and the identification of a safe from an unsafe behavior is one use of its principles. Challenging your observers to apply their learning to other organizational performance opportunities is a key to maintaining their interest and enthusiasm and ensuring that your company receives the highest return on their investment.

Anyone who is involved in Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) for any length of time is going to go through this down cycle and hear other companies voice these same complaints. The answer is too simple to get much attention: Apply trained observer skills in other areas of organizational performance.

Your trained observers know how to identify specific behaviors – safe and unsafe. Why not apply that skill to other types of behaviors? What employee behaviors might decrease costs? What behaviors might improve efficiency – save time, redundancy, parallel efforts, improve communication, decrease waste, and improve a system or process?

BBS observers need to stick to safety, but what about the observers that have been trained and are not currently doing observations, or all the people who have rotated through their role as observers and are no longer doing safety observations?

Trained observers understand “behavioral root-cause analysis” (often referred to as the ABC Analysis). They know how to identify the factors that contribute to behavioral causation. You don’t have to have a Six Sigma Process or a Lean Manufacturing initiative in place to organize your trained observers to identify behaviors that either create waste or the behaviors themselves are a waste of time.

I’ve never had a job where I didn’t ask the question, “Why are they asking me to do this? It’s a waste of time.” I bet you’ve had the same experience. Not only do employees routinely identify job behaviors that waste time and money, but they usually have a suggestion about a behavior (or behaviors) that will work better – save time and money.

If your company has implemented BBS, you’ve already invested in training your employees to “observe what works and what does not.” If you are not using that investment to improve quality and productivity, you are leaving money on the table. All you have to do is ask employees to identify behaviors in their job that can be deleted or behaviors that need to be added to the job. The same goes for processes and procedures – let your behaviorally savvy employees help you find a more efficient way – a better behavior.

You don’t want to go “lean” on safety behavior. You want to make sure that employees have the time and take the time to be safe; you do want to eliminate (go lean) on behavior that wastes time and resources.

Gather a few of your trained observers – active and inactive. Explain this approach and ask them what they think is the best way to apply it. Maybe each observer could collect ideas from employees; maybe each employee is asked to “observe” their own jobs and identify behaviors they have always wanted to delete or add.

The idea of “doing it lean” is pretty appropriate for the economic times. Employees who are bored with “just doing safety observations,” may find it interesting and novel to use their skills to eliminate waste – to reduce costs to the company and insure people keep their jobs.

Safe behavior, quality related behavior, productivity related behavior, efficient behavior, time-saving behavior – it’s all behavior – what people do on the job. Why not turn behavior-based safety into behavior-based quality, and behavior-based productivity. Not doing more; doing it differently or not doing something that doesn’t work well.

If you are implementing behavior-based safety correctly, you have taught your observers what a behavior “is,” or “is not” – meaning they know a behavior from a non-behavior. A behavior can be observed; a non-behavior, like “thoughtfulness,” (the word implies a state of mind, not directly observable behavior) cannot be directly observed. We can only observe behaviors (something someone says or does); we use the word “thoughtful” when we later summarize all the specific behaviors for someone else.

So when I say Bob is really “thoughtful,” I am usually summarizing my individual behavioral observations, perhaps over time and in different circumstances, rather than say, “I saw Bob open the door for a female coworker, send his wife flowers on their anniversary, phone a sick coworker, help a kitten out of a tree, and visit his neighbor in the hospital.”

Your observers should (if you are allowing them to evolve their skills and rewarding them for new ideas – new approaches) be developing good “observational skills” – like Sherlock Holmes, they should be picking up on increasingly fine-grained discriminations about what they see others doing at work. And hopefully, they know the difference between a state of mind (something they can’t see) and a physical behavior (something someone says or does that can be directly observed and counted.)

“Performing observations” increases an employee’s self-awareness about their own job behavior; they become more vigilant and often rehearse their movements self-consciously in accord with observational checklists. They anticipate possible contingencies – variations that might create risk or lead to an incident.

“Being observed” has a similar effect. Although knowing that you are being observed may create a level of self-consciousness, that is not a bad thing. Self-consciousness is a heightened state of awareness – a more intense state of mental focus. Physical and mental practice are important components of building or rebuilding work habits – of creating new neurological pathways – often referred to as “habits.”

Any company implementing BBS – observing people at work for all the reasons stated above – should also use the observational process to develop emergency response practices and behaviors to a level that equips employees to react automatically to prescribed situations. Most jobs functions have either “high-risk” tasks, or high-risk situations – many of which have been identified because of past accidents or near-misses.

Even if there is not precedent, a brain-storming session about almost any job allows us to identify potential circumstances where we will need to react quickly and automatically to the situation. In most cases, when emergencies happen – because they are usually rare events – no one is prepared and chaos prevails.

The media is rich with examples of crisis situations where unprepared employees panicked and the consequences were dire. Each of us has an emergency brake in our car; if your brakes fail coming up to a stop light, will you have the presence of mind to quickly reach down and pull (or push with your foot, an even more demanding emergency response) the emergency brake?

If you are honest, you know full well that you would probably panic and keep stabbing the foot brake harder and faster. The only way you can be prepared for that specific emergency is to get in an empty shopping mall parking lot and practice quickly coming to a stop using the emergency brake. Even better, if someone in the car cues the stopping crisis by yelling “stop!” or “tricycle!”

Trained BBS observers can work with employees to help prepare them for the most likely job-specific, hazardous, at-risk situations. Observers can take 5 to 10 minutes to watch one or more employees practice their response behaviors in high-risk situations where the employee will not likely “pull up the handbrake.”

The idea of practicing to handle emergency situations is not new. The notion of using BBS observers to provide employees with feedback while they practice “what-if,” scenarios for job specific situations is new – to me. If you have been using your BBS trained observers (which should include every employee, but that’s another discussion) to strengthen emergency, crisis, high-risk, and unanticipated circumstances, then I apologize and please send me an email and tell me about your experiences.

Your employees may not have to land an Airbus 320 on the Hudson River, but I’ll bet you can think of some situations where an employee or a coworker may need to perform a proportionately dramatic response. Your coworker falls from the scaffold and is hanging by his safety belt. You are the only one around; what do you do?

There are a thousand similar possibilities, but like at-risk behaviors, there are some more probable than others. If we don’t practice our responses in these likely circumstances, we are unlikely to react decisively and effectively. This is just one more potential opportunity to profit from the observation process and build increased interest in the observer role.

I’m continuing to advocate putting some sizzle back into your behavior-based safety process by encouraging employees to carry observation cards in their back pocket and to perform spontaneous, brief observations of their peers – when their peers ask for the observation.

The key point here is the observation checklist; let’s think “lean” for a moment. But maybe you can’t – you can’t change your observation process because you paid a consulting company $MM dollars for a process and if you change it they will sue you. Bet you think I’m joking; check your contract. Some of the big consulting houses claim that a particular way of applying a BBS process is their proprietary property – they own it – and they may own your process and you can’t change it.

Hopefully you are not one of those companies in bondage to a BBS process that is running you, not you running it. But if you have some latitude – if you can be creative – try the idea of focusing on a few behaviors that are relevant to specific jobs and work groups. I said a few “behaviors,” not categories like “lifting ergonomically correctly.” More like “feet pointed toward the object being lifted or moved.”

Behaviors are very specific muscular movements; they can be observed as they are stated: “Places safety glasses on your face before walking into the door of the plant.” Instead of, “Is wearing proper protective equipment.” Verbal behavior is extremely important in the workplace. We are humans (most of us), with the ability to communicate fairly precisely through language.

For instance: “Joe, this box is too heavy for me to lift alone; would you give me a hand?” That is a verbal behavior; it can be observed and counted and reinforced. On Joe’s observation card – because there has been a recent rash of sprains and strains or because of changes in through-put or the work process has increased the need for lifting behavior – we include this behavior: “Ask a co-worker for assistance when an object exceeds the specified safe weight.”

Instead of going to committee on this, the employees are encouraged to place behavior on their “Lean Observation Card,” that they are concerned about or that have recently surfaced as risks. They are in control of the risks they encounter and they can solicit help from their peers or supervisors.

They pull the very short, personalized card out of their back pocket, walk up to a co-worker in their work group and say, “Hey Jim, would you check me out on for a second? I’m trying to break a couple of unsafe habits; I’m always twisting when I lift and I can’t seem to remember to align my feet with the object. If I don’t align properly, scream at me like my wife does (just kidding), let me know. I’m keeping a personal graph on my safe behavior to make some changes.”

Uh Oh, you say; “That’s not gonna work.” No employee is going to keep a graph on their own behavior. They can’t self-manage the way a manager or supervisor can.” (J, another blog topic). Frontline employees can do anything that they think is reasonable and puts control into their own hands. You provide the organizational template – orient them to the process, give them the right…the paper and the place and they will do the job.

One of the problems with BBS is that it assumes the best way to change behavior is by providing positive feedback to an employee for working safely, and that will “reinforce the right behavior.” Well, there is nothing wrong with that, but what’s wrong with allowing, preparing, advocating and training people to self-manage through the use of checklists and co-worker engagement? Acknowledging that employees can take charge of their own behavior will, in and of itself, encourage behavior change.

Let’s summarize:

• Employee self-management
• Short, in the pocket behavioral checklist
• Employee can change for relevance and impact
• Employee keeps their own measurement
• Employee asks co-worker to “Check me out”

Benefits:

• Augments existing lengthy observational process
• Creates increased level of employee empowerment
• Increases the “look out for each other” factor
• Decreases the stigma about being watched
• Behavioral samples more valid

I’m sure you can think of other benefits. Talk to your employees about this process; see if they think self-management and peer engagement is a good idea

Maybe I did not make myself clear: Employees initiate safety observations with their peers; the idea of protecting your coworkers is taken to a new level. You hand your personal safety card to a coworker, supervisor, or BBS observer and say, “Hey…check me out.”

I’m amazed how literal the marketplace is; “Oh no, so and so wrote in his book that you have to do observations this way or that way.” Folks, BBS is not rocket-science – it’s work sampling. Do random samples of people working, and let them know when they are behaving safely or not. Identify anything in the environment that prevents them from behaving safely, or anything that could make it a safer place to work and expedite the solutions and opportunities.

What about pencil-whipping; how can we trust employees to be honest about what they see or do? Well for one thing, why would you ask someone to watch you work to help ensure you don’t have any bad habits and then want them to lie about what they saw? They are not going to use your name; there is no discipline attached. It’s about self-protection and peer protection.

Yes it is important to keep the data accurately, particularly to record any issues that might impede an employee from performing their work safely. Many companies go wrong because they don’t understand that it is important to use this process positively. You want to reinforce employees for helping the company remove hazards and reduce risk.

It reminds me of the old days; years ago employees were punished for making mistakes – which of course had a direct influence on mistake-hiding and dishonesty. Suddenly, there was a big “aha,” an epiphany; isn’t it really better if employees report their mistakes – that they come to management with problems that could result in unplanned problems or injuries.

Instead of shooting the messenger, it became clear that even though a supervisor is not happy to hear someone confess about a mistake or a problem, the response they have to rehearse is, “Thanks for bringing that to my attention; what do you think we should do to fix it?”

The quality improvement movement in America caused most organizations to rethink the ways they related to frontline employees. The epiphany is really a behavioral one: “Decide what behavior you want to reinforce – consciously decide. Don’t let spontaneity determine whether you thank and employee for bringing a problem to your attention.

My mantra is to increase empowerment for frontline employee in safety. The more they do to protect themselves and each other, the safer the work place will become. Employee willingness to help each has to be somewhat formalized; left to their own devices, people are reluctant to nose into other peoples’ business. “If the fool wants to do it that way; let him. It’s his funeral.”

Those days are over and if you get employees together and train them briefly about the value of behavioral self-awareness and the role their peers can play in facilitating safety self-management – it can happen.

My recommendation is to do a pilot. Take a portion of you workforce – a workgroup or department and try my approach. Do an orientation, ask them to discuss how, when, what, and who. Let them design the details of the process. Allow employees to whip out an observation card and ask a coworker to check them out.

The reason this seems impractical to many organizations is that their observation checklist are 3 pages long and they require 30 minutes to perform. Employees can each have a checklist that will fit on a 3” by 5.” The behaviors on the card should be essential to that person – their circumstances and risks. The precision and focus of this type card accelerates the reduction of at-risk behavior.

Keep it anonymous and positive. Let the employees themselves make a commitment to give each other feedback and keep them safe. I naturally look out for others. I’ve saved a lot of people from getting hurt because I stopped them from walking out in traffic without looking or made them wear their seat belts.

I think this kind of thing is infectious. If you allow an employee to feel good about helping a coworker, that good feeling spreads and becomes an epidemic of thoughtful behavior.

One big problem is that many people don’t like being the object of an observation or the company culture does not favor people watching each other and giving feedback – even if it is positive.

The solution is to put control of the observations into the hands of the employees; when an employee is ready for an observation, he takes an observation form (or card hopefully) and approaches an observer with whom he is comfortable. Instead of being observed, he requests an observation.

It sounds like a small change, but I think it has big implications. For one thing, why shouldn’t I be able to have some input to my safety observation card? What’s wrong with training employees to play an active role in their own safety – as well as look out for their coworkers?

I might have an unsafe habit I want to break; maybe I am concerned about a specific aspect of my job where it is good to have some help – an observer who is my safety angel; someone to watch over me. Sound too “soft?”

There are a lot of people who do dangerous jobs in America; and, a lot of jobs have very dangerous tasks that have to be performed routinely or intermittently. Why not allow an employee to take his or her safety card to a “safety facilitator” (I like that better than observer) and say, “Hey Jim, how about giving me a look while I’m up here. I want to make sure I put all the safety steps in.”

Lets make observations employee controlled and “on demand.” An “On – Demand” observation is discretionary. An employee can get the oversight they want from a peer; he or she can help themselves build safe job habits by asking someone to make sure they put in all the steps and procedures.

So, let’s take the observation process to the next level:

• Let’s allow employees to initiate an observation when they want one
• Allow employees to add behaviors, conditions, or practices to their observation list that they want on there.
• Allow employees to move to the next level of safety management – “self-management.”
• Let’s move to a new level of comfort with the behavior-based safety process – employee controlled observations.

• Length – some observational checklists are several pages long; they are more like safety audits than behavioral observations, while other lists have as few as 3 or 4 behaviors.
• Items – many observational lists have warnings, instructions, and practices; some have very specific behaviors – ergonomically precise.
• Lists vary in focus; many check every possible combination of possibilities while other lists focus on at-risk behaviors that statistically have proven to be lead to employee injuries.
• Some observations lists require 30 minutes plus to complete while the short behavioral list can take less than 30 seconds.

So what is the best type of list to have? What gets the best results?

The data is inconclusive; every type of checklist has the potential to reduce injuries – and 15 years of highly variable in-house and out-house checklists – that have led to favorable results, indicates that the checklist itself is not the most critical factor in BBS process success.

In my opinion, every behavior-based safety process should have two types of observations checklists:

• A thorough audit that incorporates all the conditions, precautions, behaviors and practices relevant to the department or work group. These audits would be about 30 minutes long, comprehensive, and performed on a frequent basis.
• A two or three behavior checklist that observers keep in their back pocket which they can whip out and check off in 10 or 15 seconds; a checklist focused on critical at-risk behaviors that the work group upgrades as the work environment requires.

The first, lengthy observational audits should be scheduled; the second, opportunistic behavioral observations should be spontaneous – when the work requires certain at-risk behaviors to be performed, or when employees are working together and can do quick observations without interfering with the tasks at hand.

The two-dimensional observation strategy allows you to obtain both comprehensive data and a high number of unannounced observations – for increased data validity. Announcing observations has always been the preferred method; it eliminates trust issues and allows employees to become comfortable with being “watched” while they work.

The fact that employees behave differently when they know they are being watched has been eschewed by consulting providers and broadly in the literature, but anyone with commonsense knows that it corrupts the data and makes the value of the observation questionable.

If you participatively engage your employees in spontaneous, brief observations (anonymous of course), you can collect hundreds of data points per week and the data is more reliable – it reflects the way employees are really working. Using this type of observations, you see employees doing their work naturally – not self-consciously. It is imperative that you get the permission and involvement of all employees in this process.

The short, critical, in-the-pocket observation list combined with the longer, more thorough audit type observations enriches and deepens your observation process. There is no absolute authority on observations, and for the last 20 years announced lengthy observations has been the method of choice.

The Critical-Behavior, in-the-pocket observation process has been used successfully in dozens of applications and the results have indicated that it is the observational process of choice when you want to impact employee safety quickly. One key element of the variable observation approach is to make sure employees are empowered to change the behaviors as needed. This ensures participation, and the robust relevance of the behaviors.

Many companies have overlooked true behavioral observations because they assume that safety is a complex topic and there are many factors that contribute to at-risk behavior – and I agree. But the belief that you have to have one or the other – that you cannot do both for increased impact – is overlooking the realities of the observational environment and its effect on employee behavior.

One recognizes that a transformational leader may also function as a manager, but the average manager cannot hope to attend a “leadership” course and learn how to be charismatic – how to inspire others to “follow” you. I hate to be cynical about something that on the surface appears to be a noble objective, but it is hard to overlook the facts: over the last thirty years the role of manager has been defined and redefined by book writers, consultants, and academics as facilitators, coaches, mentors, team leaders, servants, now leaders. The emphasis on leadership is likely to change its theme at any time.

I have been a behavior-change consultant for over 35 years, and during that time I have seen many trends, fads and fashions in the world of management training and development. The most interesting phenomenon is the corporate naiveté demonstrated by a willingness to buy every new leadership analysis, profile, style, inventory and assessment product that hits the market. The more expensive, arcane, esoteric, complex, and inaccessible – the more likely senior executives are to pay for it.

A few of the well know products include Blake and Moutons “Managerial Grid,” the “Myers Briggs Type Indicator,” the “Keirsey Temperament Sorter,” and the “Hogan Personality Inventory.” But every leadership theorist, business school, and consulting company has their own proprietary product that will place your personality snugly within their well-defined, assessment criteria. Fortune 100 companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on personality inventories hoping to predict the leader/manager performance of their employees.

Most of us are not transformational, inspirational leaders; we are men and women who have authority thrust upon us by virtue of our performance, experience, and skill sets. So, to begin with the cold, hard truth I don’t think any of us are going to become charismatic leaders no matter how hard we try.

I do think we can learn to change our own behavior and the behavior of others – in fact we do that all the time, but we don’t do it consciously and constructively. We are constantly inadvertently reinforcing (encouraging) behavior in others that we abhor and extinguishing behavior in others that we would like to see more of.

Because behavioral principles are rather boring (except for the principle of positive reinforcement that has been abused and hyperbolized until it is dismissed as complimenting people to try to get them to do things for us), people rush to sexier material – like Freud, Jung, and Maslow, none of whose theories can be easily utilized in the office or on the shop floor.

In my 35 years of management consulting (behavior change, organizational change) I’ve made one or two simple observations that explain why Safety Leadership has become such a big, complex industry.

1. Contemporary Senior Leadership has no training or education in the basic principles of behavior change – in how you arrange consequences to affect the frequency of specific, individual behaviors. They typically think that the phrase “positive reinforcement,” was invented by Human Resources as a euphemism for “being nice to people to encourage them to work harder.”

In business school, they were taught some personality-driven, explanatory models for human behavior – old, outdated stuff by Maslow and Hertzberg that they quickly dismissed as effete and academic – divorced from the realities of cost and profit. These cognitive models usually culminate into one take-away: You can’t change people. Their personality is hard-wired from genetics, early learning, and neurological predisposition. The dissonance and contention between schools of psychology in regard to the causes for human behavior encourages distrust in the change models they promote.

Senior leaders don’t approach individual or organizational behavior change from a set of principle or a science; they use personal experience to guide them. Failing, making mistakes, appearing stupid, losing position to a peer competitor, not getting a promotion or raise, not being the smartest guy in the room – you work hard to avoid all the negatives. Nobody, not even your father, ever praised you – gave you positive feedback to encourage you in any specific way.

I’m not being cynical; I’m pointing out the philosophical-psychological-pragmatics of the business world. When someone has a “job,” you can use programs and incentives to get them to do more. When someone has a “career,” you don’t have to use incentives to get them to do this or that – they are self-driven; they bust their butts to do as much as they can – within the natural limitations of talent and cerebral endowment.

So most senior leaders don’t really believe that someone’s behaviors can be changed using differential consequences – positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement (please don’t confuse negative reinforcement with punishment; Google it – there is a big difference.)

2. Most Senior Leaders don’t know how to make change initiatives work. Organizational change – evolving an organization’s effectiveness by capturing information from its market environment – is a poorly perfected art. It is certainly not a science, because organizational change initiatives are not implemented using scientific methodology – data-basing change, using empirical evidence in pre and post analyzes to determine if training, development, education, processes, models or methods have really improved human performance.

Many leaders seem to think that supporting an initiative means writing a check to pay for the consultants.

Behavior-Based Safety leadership means behaving in ways that demonstrate that the value of safety and the importance of a BBS initiative are primary to the business – for good business and because the health and well-being of the people who work for you are more important than getting something done unsafely to make more money.

It sounds simple – and it is. The difficulty is that it is hard for anyone to tell leaders what to do. Everyone in the organization knows that leaders communicate their values by what they talk about, listen to, laugh at, promote, bonus, demote, and fire. So if they do all those things in regard to safety and your BBS initiative then everybody knows that it matters and they get on board.

Leaders reinforce, encourage, strengthen, cultivate, and incent the things (behavior, results) that they attend to in a favorable way. They smile or ask questions, or tell stories, or make decisions that favor, or bring up the subject often in public and private. Of course they can more formally include some language about it in the mission statement or in the annual report or in the CEO’s newsletter, but those platforms are generally considered to be rhetorical incubators which are meaningless compared to the pragmatics of who leaders smile at and what they become angry about.

So if you want to be a strong safety leader who creates a legacy around safety you just have to demonstrate the same obsession around the topic that you have for golf or wing-shooting. You attend meetings (sometimes at early or late hours) of safety committees and training classes. You make decisions that favor safe equipment, materials, engineering, and purchases. You do a behavioral observation, you look at the safety data, and you make sure that you keep your eye on the safety process.

One other point – you measure your behavior, just like we do in behavioral observations of employees at work. With your peers, sit down in a leadership meeting and come up with a list of things that you will do each week to support your company’s safety management system and its behavior-based safety initiative. Things that will ensure everyone knows it is a primary value. “I will attend a safety committee meeting at the Covington, Georgia plant next week. I will do a “Walkaround;” go out on the shop floor and talk to people about our BBS initiative and their thoughts, feelings and ideas about it.”

Make a list; attach points to each item; weight them if you want to prioritize an item or two, and then agree to review your list and your score with your peers each month. Hold yourself and your peers accountable for doing the things – the behaviors that will communicate that safety is the most important responsibility of your job as a leader and that of your managers and that of your supervisors. It is important enough for you to track your support. Do you walk the walk?

I know that it is more fun to take a personality inventory and review the findings. You want to know how you are diagnosed by one of these pseudo-clinical tests; much more fun than getting up at 4:00 A.M. to attend a BBS safety committee meeting. But, there is comfort in knowing what works and what doesn’t; what is real from what is theoretical. Stand up, show up, and speak up about safety. Forget the charisma workshop .

Providing positive feedback during observations is critical to behavior change. Recognizing the people who are doing observations, and celebrating the up and down stream data improvements is important to creating energy and enthusiasm. Employees need to know that their behavior makes a difference. In some companies BBS involvement is a condition of employment.

Human behavior is determined by consequences; what pays off for you or what does not determines what you are going to do on the job. If your BBS system has not incorporated the basic principles of behavioral technology – of behavior change, then you are unlikely to be successful at evolving and maintaining your BBS process over the long haul. Celebrating and rewarding safe behavior is essential.

1. You did not do your homework.
2. You got an off-the-shelf BBS system instead of a  customized  process.
3. No pickles, no lettuce—Special orders do upset us: You chose an  inflexible consulting firm.
4. You bought complexity instead of basic tools.
5. Your leaders are not involved.
6. You did not know when to ask for help.
7. You don’t know how to deliver effective feedback, recognition, and celebrate success.

6. You did not know when to ask for help.  Your gut tells you that your organization’s BBS process is not working. Employees are not enthusiastic; heck, they’re not even involved. Meetings are not being held and observation sheets are being pencil whipped. You don’t trust the data. Your process is dying; atrophy is obvious but you keep looking for a quick fix.

What you need to do is find an experienced freelance or small group of credentialed BBS implementers and pay one of them to come in for a day and take a look around. Talk to them, ask them questions, and let them talk to the employees, because there is no substitute for third-party objectivity. There are plenty of experienced BBS consultants who have implemented dozens of BBS processes who are willing to spend a few days with you to give you some guidance.

Allowing your employees to meet with a BBS consultant and do some course correction and problem solving can energize them. It allows them to make changes their experience has identified and to make improvements that will customize the process to the work, the company, and the culture.