How HSE Professionals can Understand the Impact of Business Models on Safety Culture

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Tanya Hewitt, a safety regulations and health population expert who is passionate about safety science and human and organizational performance.

Tanya gives safety professional’s a bird’s-eye view of organizational models and assesses the role that HSE currently plays in these business structures.

She strongly believes that old models based on command and control are no longer appropriate and shares practical guidance on how safety professionals can influence senior leadership and drive positive change.

Using compelling case studies, Tanya shows HSE professionals how to expand your influence, redefine your role and move safety up the boardroom agenda.

♪ [music] ♪ - [Mary] My name is Mary Conquest. I'm your host for "Safety Labs by Slice," the podcast where we explore the human side of safety to support safety professionals. We move past regulations and reportables to talk about the core skills of safety leadership, empathy, influence, trust, rapport, in other words, the soft skills that help you do the hard stuff.

♪ [music] ♪ Today, we're going to talk about better business models. What do they have to do with safety? We've got Tanya Hewitt as our guest. Tanya has a master's of science in medical physics and a Ph.D. in population health where her thesis work involved practices related to incident reporting and patient safety in hospitals.

She worked for 18 years with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. Tanya is the founder and CEO of Beyond Safety Compliance, an Ottawa-based consultancy that helps organizations increase their organizational health, so, they can enjoy a happier, safer workforce. She joins me from Ottawa today. Welcome.

- [Tanya] Thank you, Mary.

- So, let's start with definitions. How would you characterize the current prevalent business model? What are its defining features?

- Okay. So, when we look at a lot of organizations at present, we see that there is a strong emphasis on profit-driven models. A lot of this hinges, especially for public organizations on maximizing shareholder value.

This shouldn't be a surprise to a whole lot of people in the Western world because this has been the reigning model for, oh, about 40 years or so. So, this model where almost all decisions are driven by this quest to increase profit in order to satisfy shareholders has had consequences both internally for the workforce and externally for, you know, customers of that business and for the broader environment.

So, the maximizing shareholder value model that I think a lot of people are familiar with, I believe, has run its course, and we can see right now we are in, you know, a society with extreme income inequity.

We have a lot of problems with climate change. We really don't need to hold onto a model that doesn't serve us in the environment that we find ourselves in now.

- Okay. And so, narrowing it down a little bit, how would you say that this prevalent business model affects organizational safety?

- So, a lot of organizations are listening mostly to boards and the importance that the boards place on whatever they would like to place importance on. There is a lot of expertise within organizations, including, in safety professionals, who might see issues, and notwithstanding the importance of these issues, they are not going to have the same type of weight when compared to something that a board would be talking about.

If organizations can start to realize that a lot of information can come from within, including from safety professionals. In order to be able to see how they should be planning, how they should be resource allocating, how they should be running, you know, their business going forward, instead of it relying exclusively on boards and the importance that boards have at any point in time, which, by and large, has been principally profit-driven.

I think we can get to a much more holistic understanding of what business truly can be in a different way to proceed.

- Okay. So, yeah. I have a few questions around that. So, who then are the stakeholders in a business? You're talking about shareholders in the board, but I think you have sort of a broader definition. So, when we are looking at a lot of organizational models, as I have said, we have tended to prioritize CEOs and executive boards.

Executives is C-suites kind of understanding of where the importance lies in organization. But, in reality, not to say that they don't have any importance. That's not what I'm trying to say, but I would like to broaden the understanding of the stakeholder model of organizations where you do have an importance given to employees who work at the business, work for the organization for… I mean, why is the business there at all in the first place?

So, we could be looking at the recipients of the products or services of that organization, they have a role to play in this stakeholder model. If the business has a physical presence, as many do, even if they are virtual, their presence is going to have a footprint environmentally by a server somewhere that is allowing them to practice virtually, and understanding that every footprint has neighbors, and being able to have the neighbors of any kind of footprint be part of this sphere of stakeholders.

And so, this would include also the environments that would be affected by the presence of that business. So, it's a much broader table than the traditional understanding of stakeholders. A lot of this is explained in a movie that was published by Darden University in 2020.

I was thrilled when I came across this, called "Fishing with Dynamite." So, I mean, in as much as you can fish with a line, and a reel, or with nets, or you can fish with throwing dynamite into an ocean and just getting all of the dead fish out, there are different ways to practice business.

And this is what this movie talks about. And a lot of wonderful ideas come from this movie called "Fishing with Dynamite" that I encourage your listeners to maybe check out.

- Okay. And maybe some of these answers are in that movie, but what alternative business models would foster a better safety culture? And do you have any, or do you know of any real-world examples where people are doing things a little differently?

- So, your listeners might be aware of the whole new safety movement that has been growing and burgeoning for about 25 years, and how businesses are beginning to understand that leadership is not exclusively command and control.

That the type of situation will call for the leadership style that is necessary to suit that situation. And, by and large, a more servant leadership model, you know, that kind of nomenclature, is the better way to go forward in this different way to do things.

I mean, certainly, if the new view of safety, even though there are communities who do not like that term, for lack of a better term, safety differently maybe, is premised a lot on the understanding that work as imagined, as espoused by Hollnagel, is not work as done.

Work as imagined is work that can be written down. So, this means if you can write it up in legislation, or regulation, or in rules and procedures, and work instructions, then it's written down, which means that it is static and invariant to a changing context which work is always done in.

So, the procedure writer or the person who wrote the work as imagined had a particular context in mind when they wrote it, often an idealized context. But, in reality, the idealized context is very rarely seen, and work as done is far more complex, and changing, and adapting than the work as imagined world realizes.

If workplaces can start to embrace this concept that what they perceive to be the work being done is through a work as imagined lens is likely not reality, it's likely not work as done.

So, you had asked for, how to proceed going forward? That alone would be revolutionary. And there are some companies starting to understand that if they want to understand work as done, then they've got to be a lot more curious about it, and they have to be proactive about it, and they have to understand that safety is not the absence of negatives, safety is the presence of capacity.

And in order to be able to get an understanding for what the capacity is in your business, you need to be curious, and you need to ask, and you need to actually engage with the people who do the work, who are the experts in that work.

- Do you know of any organizations that are kind of doing it right or maybe leading the way a little bit in this, or maybe even regulatory environments like particular industries, or countries, or… - So, the best example I can think of who is sensitive to their workforce, and is sensitive to their customers, and all this kind of thing is Southwest Airlines.

And they've been doing this for a very long time, as long as they have been a company. Part of why they are such a good example is that they know who they are, and who they serve, and who they don't serve.

I'll give you a very good example. One of the core values... So, A, they know their core values and they espouse them constantly. They talk about them, you know, all the time, all employees know what they are. One of their core values is humor. So, they know that they have to be able to laugh to be able to, you know, get through a day, and they constantly want to be able to espouse humor in their work.

And I can remember being on a Southwest Airlines flight many, many years ago where the FAA announcements, that are regulated, that have to be done before you take off in a plane, about how to put on your seat belt and the emergency, you know, procedures of that aircraft, they were given in a very light way, very humorous way.

And I thought it was hilarious. One customer did not find them hilarious, found them insulting. "These are serious safety communications and you are making light of this stuff. And how dare you make fun of FAA regulations when it comes to safety on an airplane?" And I know this because this customer had written to the head of Southwest Airlines, and the head of Southwest Airlines responded to this very angry, detailed letter with, "Sorry, we'll miss you."

And realizing that you can't serve everybody. And if they want to be in an airline where, you know, there's deadpan delivery of all of the FAA announcements, there are plenty of those out there.

You can fly with them, but you're not going to fly with us because we are going to… The customer is always right is not how a healthy organization runs. They understand who they are and what they can offer to the world. So, that is one concrete example that is safety-related that I think can describe how these healthy organizations work.

- Yeah. I remember actually the first time I ever encountered a humorous spiel, if you will, about airline safety, it was WestJet, a Canadian company. And, you know, everyone sat on the plane and sort of, you know, looking down, whatever distracted. And as soon as they started with a joke or something humorous, we were all like gophers popping up, like, "What's this?"

And paid attention likely more than we would have otherwise. I would suggest.

- I think you're right.

- Yeah. So, I want to pivot a little or focus a little more on safety managers. So, I understand that safety managers have a high burnout rate. Do you think the structure of organizations has any effect on that?

- Oh, absolutely. I mean, I can remember attending a talk years ago where they had shown the org chart of an organization where the safety manager was given office space away from everybody else, you know, and it was just okay.

So, what do we think the safety manager's job is? I mean, is it truly just to sit in an office and create charts all day, or is it to actually engage with the workforce and understand what's going on and to be a resource to people? I mean, a lot of the revised safety manager-type role could be seen more as a facilitator because a lot of safety managers do have contacts throughout the business.

They know the different business lines, and they could actually be a facilitator and introduce people to each other who can help one another as opposed to being, you know, the savior of all kind of role. I can tell you one story this was at NAV Canada.

This was years ago where an executive couldn't go to a meeting and offered a delegate in their place. And the delegate just so happened to be a safety manager. And the safety manager went to this executive meeting who, it was not a normal meeting that, that safety manager went to, and they were talking about finances.

And they were talking about changing the type of buses that they use at remote airports because they realized that the orange school buses don't have as high a resale value as the white buses that they can procure in order to be able to, you know, maximize, again, their potential for money at the end of the life that they owned these by buses.

And they use these in remote airports because a lot of these remote airports are remote enough that they need to bus in the people who work there as air traffic control, and pilots, and so forth. So, this safety manager realized that this decision was being made and spoke up and said, "Whoa, wait a minute. Do you realize where a lot of these remote airports are in Canada? They are in places that have snow more of the year than they don't have snow. Do you know how difficult it is by air to see a white bus? For a plane to land on a runway with a white bus that could be, you know, could be in a place it shouldn't be? Yellow buses stand out in the snow. You need to keep the yellow buses just for safety sake so that the pilots, when they're landing at these remote airports, can see them as opposed to being disguised in the snow."

And this story circulated because that was serendipitous. It was possible that the safety manager might not have gone to that meeting and it was possible that the financial person who couldn't go to that meeting and sent the safety manager wouldn't have known what that safety manager knew. And so, it's this kind of knowledge that a lot of safety managers have that isn't being utilized nearly to the extent that it could be if it were asked for.

- Yeah. It sounds to me, as you're describing it, sort of the difference between a safety department and a safety culture, right? You talked about org charts. So, if there's a safety department, it's sort of siloed, right? It's off to the side as opposed to a culture, which, you know, the implication there is that everyone is involved, it's sort of part of the fabric of the organization.

- Exactly. Exactly. I mean, just talking about everybody being involved, just to go back to a Southwest Airlines example, they empower their low-level employees to do two things. So, I'm going to tell you two stories about Southwest Airlines.

So, one is they allow them to make decisions, real decisions that other airline lines don't allow ticket agents to make. All they need to do is run through a list of core… Again, these, I'm trying to recall the nomenclature, but they're anchoring decision points or something.

There's a word in Pat Lencioni's language that gives this more eloquently than I'm thinking up at the moment. But the idea is you have your core values that really define you as a company, and then you have these strategic anchors, I think, is the word, that allows you to function the environment in which you find yourself right now.

And so, these ticket agents had both and were able to operate according to those strategic anchors. So, if a passenger came to them and said, "You know what, my meeting ended early. Do you have a flight going right now? Like, can I get on that flight instead of this one that I'm scheduled to take in four hours?"

All the ticket agent has to do is realize, "Will it delay the flight? Will it affect customer satisfaction negatively?" And I've forgotten their third one, whatever the other anchor was. But very simple anchors.

And as opposed to a lot of other airlines who would say, "Oh, you want to change your ticket? Well, you're going to have to go to that desk over there and figure out if they can, you know, rearrange things on the plane." Right there at the gate, that employee is empowered to make that decision and allow them to satisfy the customer and go home on a different flight than they were scheduled to.

So, that's one example. If I can proceed with the other example. They realize that interpersonal conflict is inevitable in the workplace and they really want these employees to recognize it and not need some outside facilitator to come in and resolve things.

So, when they realize that there is something not right between two employees, a baggage handler, and a ticket agent, or, you know, whatever, they label these "come to Jesus moments." So, they give them that type of nomenclature so that everybody knows, "Oh, so, we have to take 4 minutes now, or 10 minutes, whatever it takes, and figure out what went wrong in that communication we just had."

And they've been trained on this. They know how to do it, they know how to not attack the person, they want to get at the issue, they understand that conflict is not bad if you're trying to get to the best answer you can. And they are constantly involved in this come to Jesus kind of nomenclature so that they can get to the best airline that they can be without having interpersonal conflict guiding a whole lot of what happens in the way that they conduct their business.

- What comes to mind there? What was your first story? Oh, context. What I was thinking as you were saying that is what they've done really is empowered their employees to account for context, right? Rather than follow up a very prescriptive, "This is the way it is." You know, I always thought, you know, there's a big difference between maybe the urgency of an adult saying, "Oh, I'm sorry. I know we're not supposed to right now, but can I go to the bathroom?"

And a toddler saying that, like, there are differences in how, you know, things can be managed. And exactly, I like the idea of the strategic anchors, I think you called them.

- Yeah. So, that comes straight out of Pat Lencioni's world of organizational health.

- So, that's indicative. I mean, clearly, the way they've organized things from the top is indicative of the leadership's view as well as, you know, in this case, maybe in all cases, you can comment on that, but it comes from the leadership.

- Yes. I mean, there's a lot… The traditional leadership model that a lot of business schools, maybe Darden-accepted is trained in doesn't take this kind of approach into account in the way that they teach people. And that in itself is a big problem.

And when a lot of leadership graduate from business school, they think they know it all because, you know, they've spent four years on this stuff, they know it all. And nothing could be farther from the truth. This is actually true in almost any profession, right?

- Yeah. I was thinking that's...

- As soon as you graduate, you think you know it all.

- The fall of youth.

- And absolutely not. Yes. That's right. And there is so much more to understanding what actually goes on in a workforce than what a business school teaches. A lot of this recognizing the expertise where it lies is a big part of it. That business school doesn't train you on mechanic's skills, doesn't train you on, you know, how to fly a plane or how to, you know, repair an engine, or how to do a risk assessment.

Like, that's not what it's for. So, it's really, really important to recognize what you don't know, and value the people who do know this stuff to be part of your team as opposed to seeing them as an other.

There's so much othering that goes on within organizations and, you know, it was amazing when Alan Mulally took over the Ford Motor Company, how he had recognized that Ford, well, it was doing terribly at the time he took it over and it was fighting itself. I mean, it was in competition with itself and he was like, "Wait a minute. We're all on the same side here. Why are we fighting ourselves? We need to start realizing, if we can be in this canoe and steer it, you know, with the paddles going in the same direction, we can actually get somewhere. Right now, we're going in circles and we're literally fighting ourselves. And we have competitions between different departments. What are we doing? Like, this is not helpful. We need to start realizing that we can be helping each other."

I can give you a story on that if you'd like. So, Alan Mulally, when he first took over Ford, took over a very dysfunctional company. And so, a couple of stories. So, Number 1, when he took it over, all the business magazines were like magnets to him because, "Oh, wow. Alan Mulally has taken over Ford and Ford looks as though it's not doing well."

Like, "Oh." And so, they all wrote up articles, and he talked to business, editors, and they wrote up articles on his plan going forward. A year went by and one of those reporters came back and asked him, "So, Alan, what is your plan this year?"

And he said, "What do you mean?" And he said, "Well, I was here last year, and you gave me your plan for last year. And I'm now here to get your plan for this year." And he said, "Well, it's the same plan." And he said, "No, no, no, no. You don't get it. I came last year to get your plan for last year, but I'm here now to get your plan for this year because, of course, it has to be different, right? I mean, this is a different year."

And he said, "No. It's actually the same." And the reporter told him, "Look, I can't write the same article that I wrote last year. Like, they're not going to pay me. Nobody will buy the same thing." So, really, this drive that we, in society, have for the constant new and innovative, and everything has to change is part of this.

If it works as Alan Mulally's structure does, then you don't have a new model going forward. It is the same model. And you have to be willing to admit to that as opposed to needing new all the time. So, that's story Number 1.

Story Number 2. When he came into Ford and he had his executives, and this was, you know, at a time when remote was not all that popular, so people were on telephones and, you know, this new videoconferencing that was going on in 2008, and he asked, "So, how is business going?"

To this international audience. And everybody said, "It's going fine." And he checked in individually with, you know, a whole lot of people. And he said, "Well, that is remarkable because we are literally hemorrhaging money right now. We cannot stay status quo because we will not be a company in another four months. So, I'd like to try that again. How are things going?"

And shockingly, a Canadian, the Oshawa Plant, had put up their hand and said, "Well, actually, we won't make delivery next month." The way Allan Mulally tells it, you would have thought that he had a firing squad outside in the hallway, and he was about to escort this guy outside to the firing squad and, you know, make sure that he was eliminated because how dare he tell the CEO what's actually going on?

But over time… So, he held these meetings with increased frequency once he started to realize that he was starting to make a difference when that Oshawa guy revealed that. And not only did he not have that Oshawa guy executed, at subsequent meetings, that Oshawa guy started to sit beside him at the meetings like this, you know, just a manager of a plant sitting beside the CEO of Ford.

Like, this was unheard of. Like, you don't sit beside the CEO if you're just a lowlife like that. But, yes, you did because the Alan Mulally type leaders out there understand that hierarchy doesn't dictate the importance that you play, you know? The importance can come from virtually any role in the organization.

And this Oshawa guy, when he started to talk about how he… There was something wrong with the hitch, for the trailers, he didn't have the part. And when he revealed the details of the problems he was encountering, somebody from Ohio said, "Well, hey, we have a surplus of those parts. We could ship them up to you tomorrow if you want."

And, you know, this is what Alan Mulally was saying, like, stop fighting with each other and work together, because if we work together, we can actually achieve far more than any plans would ever reveal that we could because we do have this potential within us that we don't tend to realize because we are stuck to a status quo that doesn't serve us.

- Well, that's an excellent example of how leadership affects, you know, just as you said, the visual signal of having someone sit beside the CEO and sort of not questioning the hierarchy, but showing that there are more important things than the hierarchy for the sake of hierarchy.

So, how would you suggest that safety professionals assess an organization leader's attitude towards safety culture? So, that was sort of a signal there, for example, maybe not safety culture in that example, but how would you suggest that a safety manager sort of put out their spidey senses to see what leadership really thinks about safety?

- Well, I mean, the safety manager… And a lot of this kind of approach takes a lot of personal introspection. So, the safety manager has to first check themselves to see if they might have been contributing to this kind of command and control, "I am right.

You listen to me, I know everything," kind of understanding of things. And if they have to, A, admit that they have, and B, apologize if they have, you know, offended people by this kind of approach, and C, start learning about a different way to do things. So, the safety manager has to start listening to podcasts like yours, like "The Safety of Work," as I think is a fantastic one that comes out of Australia with Drew Rae and David Provan.

That would be a fantastic podcast for safety managers to listen to. The "PreAccident Investigation" podcast that Todd Conklin has, and maybe to start listening for different types, try getting their material from different sources. Nippin Anand's podcast, "Embracing Differences," is a fantastic way to do that because the more siloed that we make ourselves, "Oh, we are safety managers, and that's not safety, and that's not safety," it doesn't help.

The more that we can see safety as… I mean, if an organization existed exclusively for safety, it probably wouldn't exist.

- Right. Because there's no risk with no action.

- Yeah. I mean, any organization that has, you know, "safety is our first priority" on banners and things like this, has to realize they can't actually mean that. If they actually meant that, they would stop engaging in the hazardous activity that is making them say that in the first place.

They would stop producing the chemical that is making them, you know, they would stop flying planes. They would stop, you know, doing whatever the hazardous activity is. The purpose of organizations is to provide a product or service, right? That's what it is. So, don't deny that.

That is your number one priority, to be providing that product or service. Safety is always supporting that, always supporting that. So, when we get into this narrative of, "Oh, leadership doesn't understand safety, you know, safety is…" "They don't appreciate safety." "They never prioritize safety."

Well, if they truly prioritize safety, the company wouldn't exist. So, you know, you've got to appreciate that first. Safety can help the organization, not hurt the organization. We need to be able to do the work safely, not have safety as the first priority. So, I think a lot of this comes to the way the safety manager views themselves, and views their role, and views how they can support an organization, not have safety as the overriding priority.

So, that's probably the first thing that I would say, which is a big ask because a lot of the safety training might not be aligned with that, which is where, again, the "PreAccident Investigation" podcast, listening to people like Sidney Dekker, and Todd Conklin, and David Provan, and Drew Rae, and a whole lot of other people out there in this sphere can help make the safety manager a bit more humble.

Humility is probably the greatest virtue in everything that we've spoken of here. Humility really needs to lead the way in this stuff. You were talking about, you know, what the safety manager's spidey senses should be out looking for, humility. See if the leadership has any humility. If there is humility, you know, figure out how you know that, and start reflecting that back to them because humility is the greatest of all of these principles that we are talking about.

And once we can detect humility, then that's the key in. And you cannot abuse it, but you can start to realize that, yes, there is a way for change because of that humility that was shown in this certain circumstance.

- So, then too, that begs a question, of course, what if, let's say that a safety professional has sort of done that self-reflection, and education, and that sort of thing, and they're just not sensing that humility, they're sensing a very stuck hierarchical culture from the leadership.

Is there anything, and to what extent could they perhaps influence change in that situation?

- So, I would suggest a couple of things. Number one, I would use what Pat Lencioni always says, "Be the leader you want to have." So, notwithstanding what others, especially above you in the hierarchy are acting, be the leader you want to have.

Make sure that your actions towards others, including them, are the way that you would like them to be. So, you know, make sure that you don't react offensively and get into a very adversarial relationship as a result. Try to make sure that you are grounded in your approach.

So, the "PreAccident Investigation" podcast has been running since 2014, I think. There are lots of episodes that Todd Conklin has recorded for your listening pleasure. Some of those episodes are very short because his listenership had asked him to do just safety moments that can be played to executives at their meetings.

So, I would see, if you can find somebody in your… I would see, well, A, start to book meetings with this C-suite that you're having issues with individually, and see if you can get an ally with somebody. And this ally might not be workplace-related.

This ally might be because you have a shared interest in, you know, a music group that you both love, or that you, you know, you've had a similar love of a vacation spot that you both can talk about. That is how you are going to get some kind of relationship, well, with anybody, really, but especially with somebody that you need to work with strategically.

And start to treat them as a person, not just a job title. And, again, this extends out broadly, but once you have a relationship with one of these executives, see if they can play some of these safety moments, some of these snippets of information.

And I don't know if Todd Conklin's podcast is the only one out there that is worth listening to, I will be having a podcast shortly, your podcast. There are lots of YouTubes, lots of short, worthwhile… Simon Sinek is a fantastic resource for a lot of YouTubes on this kind of stuff.

Brené Brown is another one. Like, there are lots, and lots, and lots of resources out there that if you can curate... As the safety manager, don't have, you know, two hours of content, get it down to, you know, six minutes, like the gem of what it is that you want them to know from that video, or from that podcast, or from that, whatever.

And see if this new friend that you've made an ally with is willing to play it at their meetings because, you know, six minutes, I think, will be given to something. Two hours won't, half an hour won't, but six minutes probably can be. So, be realistic, of course, in your expectations, manage your expectations in this whole thing.

You won't be able to change things overnight, but you will be able to change things over time. But you have to be willing to put in the investment to do it. And that investment involves very much on yourself, for one, maybe undo some of the learnings that you've gotten in your schooling to be a safety manager.

You know, you have to be willing to admit that. And, B, you know, the goal is for these messages to take hold. So, one of the things that is important to realize in this approach is that people will only take in a message once they've heard it.

I think it's anywhere from 17 to 24 times, you know, like, you have to hear the same message over, and over, and over, and over again. CEOs are actually CROs, chief reminding officers. Their role is mostly to be able to get the message delivered over, and over, and over, and over again. And people have asked Pat Lencioni, "But what happens when they get sick of hearing it?"

That means that they probably haven't reached everybody in their organization yet. They've got to be mega sick of hearing themselves say the same thing. So, that is important to realize, that when you're trying to make a change, this is part of it.

You need to be dedicated to being monotonous, and boring, and say the same thing over, and over, and over again.

- Yeah. So, it's… - I hope that gives you a few strategies.

- Yeah. Well, it sounds to me like, you know, build rapport, first of all, right?

- Absolutely.

- Build rapport, find allies, and then persistence, you know?

- Absolutely. I mean, really, another way to do this is if you can find out, what is the executive team interested in? What drives them? You know, read their minutes. If you can, go to their meetings and see for yourself, what are they interested in? What are they spending time on?

What do they get excited about? Those are going to be the levers that you can use in order to be able to get an entry into this world. So, if you can align whatever change you're wanting to make with what they are already interested in, that's going to be all the easier to be able to get an entry into that foray.

- Yeah. I want to circle back to… You sort of hinted at this before, but there is a tension between the way the C-suite will define success. I mean, in the existing business structures that we have, typically, it's the shareholders and its profit that they are beholden to.

It's great if organizations can move towards a wider view, but the reality, for most safety professionals in a business organization, is that that's what they're dealing with. So, they're trying to build rapport with someone whose success is measured differently, right? And it's that tension between if it was absolute safety, nothing would happen.

And if it was just go, go, go and no consideration of safety, then you know that's not ideal for anyone, really. That's not sustainable. I guess, what do you say, or how do you suggest that safety managers navigate that tension?

- I mean, taking a look at the companies who have lived this for some time, Southwest airlines being one, maybe I'll give you a different example, and this comes from Simon Sinek's world, it's not… Again, this is broadening the definition of safety, but it gets into this same kind of thing. Drugstores basically all have the same kind of mission, and it is to improve the health of the population.

And CVS drugstores, in the U.S., their employees realized when they were selling cigarettes to people, they didn't feel as though they were living their mission. And they went to their board and said, "I don't think we should be selling cigarettes anymore. And the board kind of tabled this for a little while.

I mean, there were all sorts of detractors. I mean, "Do you understand how much profit we get from selling cigarettes?" The public health people were saying, "Do you not understand how you're going to be depriving people of, they're an addiction that they have, and you're not going to be serving that population very well?"

So, they had a lot of backlash, but to their extraordinary credit, they said they agree that yet fundamentally, they cannot sell a product that doesn't, in any stretch of the imagination, that they could find, serve people's health.

So, they pulled cigarettes from their drugstores. What happened after that? The first thing that happened was they didn't have to invest in advertising anymore because their employees were ambassadors for their drugstore.

They were so proud to work there. They boasted to everybody, "CVS is the best drugstore out there because they listen to us." And once you can get… You know, we're talking about, you know, superfans for sports teams being the ambassadors for their team.

Like, you don't need to invest in advertising. You just show the superfan. You know, you can do this if you listen to the employees and they feel heard, and they feel listened to, they will be trumpeting your company like nobody's business. Furthermore, people drove long distances to support CVS as opposed to their neighborhood drugstore because they wanted to support a company whose values they aligned with.

CVS, in the quarters after they made this intervention, made more money than their competitors. So, you know, you can actually do better financially at this whole thing even though money is not your focus.

- Yeah. It's an irony there, is like, you know, money isn't the most important thing actually gets you more money, you know?

- I mean, there are stories about this.

- Interesting.

- I mean, Southwest Airlines has existed much longer than a whole lot of airlines have. You know, the aviation industry is full. The graveyard's full of aviation companies who have lasted for 8 years, 10 years, 12 years. Southwest has been one of the longstanding airlines, and there's no question, it is their internal cultural approach to how they run their business that has allowed them to be sustainable in this otherwise hypercompetitive industry.

- Well, thank you. I'm going to move into some questions that I ask every guest. So, a little broad here, and the first one, I'm going to call the University of Tanya. So, if you were to develop your own safety management training curriculum, where would you start? What core human skills do you think are the most important?

And actually, you touched on this a little, to develop in tomorrow's safety professionals.

- Humility, learning what being humble truly is. So maybe I'll just go over that because humility is best espoused by C. S. Lewis. It is not thinking less about yourself. It's thinking about yourself less. So, it's not denying the talents that you have.

It's not saying that you're not good at something that you are good at, but it isn't going out there and bragging about it all the time, and saying, "I am the best" kind of thing. So, humility, living, breathing, humility. Curiosity. Instead of thinking that, you know, you know it all, question yourself and be… Well, it goes with humility, really, be curious instead of… And have curiosity as being your main method of interacting with other people so that you can be truly understanding and more trying to get an appreciation for what they are telling you as opposed to judging them and just being, "Well, my position is higher than yours, therefore…" kind of thing.

A lot of safety courses begin with legislation and what the law says. I don't say that the law is irrelevant, but I don't think it is primordial. I think we need to lead with some of these critical people skills, how to listen, would be another massive skill that people could learn in safety training.

I mean, I think a lot of the safety curricula is more on the technical side of things and it can, the technical side is often… The safety person might not be the only person who knows this stuff in an organization.

So, I think instead of having redundancy with the safety professional knowing the exact same things as other people, maybe have the safety professional be the facilitator that I was talking about before, to understand how people are talking and be the translator for people so that they can talk to each other.

And, again, to focus more on communication, on listening, on being a lifelong learner is another massive, massive thing that a safety professional, I think, should embrace in their role. Safety professionals can be hugely rewarding careers and important people to organizations, but not necessarily the way that they're currently trained or that they currently work.

So, they need to start embracing some of these different ways to add value to their organizations.

- Now, if you could travel back in time and speak to yourself and at the very beginning of your safety career and you could give young Tanya only one piece of advice, what would that be?

- Probably not to be so fearful. Not to have this understanding that your value is externally provided. To realize that there is value within yourself, and to be true to that value as opposed to depending on it being defined by everybody else.

- Yeah. That's excellent advice for anyone just starting out because we all sort of have, I guess, sometimes called imposter syndrome, but, you know, just the two sides of the coin, the overconfidence, the lack of humility, and then something that goes beyond humility where it's a lack of confidence.

So, yeah, we all need to find that sweet spot. I think that's part of growing up.

- I think you're right.

- Okay. So, let's get practical now. This is where I ask our guests for their best, most practical tips or resources for safety managers. And I know you've mentioned some, looking to improve their work relationships and their core skills. So, it could be a book, or a website, or a concept.

What would you recommend listeners go to?

- I think it would be some of the work that David Provan and Drew Rae have done in this whole sphere. So, they have put out a publication on a manifesto for safety professionals. I think that would be a fantastic resource for safety professionals to read and understand.

I mean, their Safety of Work podcast has a LinkedIn page. They respond to comments that are put on their LinkedIn page. So, I think it would be an excellent resource for people to start engaging in this whole thing.

- Okay. Well, thanks so much for joining us, Tanya. I wanted to ask, where can our listeners find you on the web or otherwise?

- So, I am very active on LinkedIn, so, that's probably the easiest way to find me. I run a series of webinars that people are invited to go to that happen on the third Wednesday of the month at 11:00 Eastern Standard Time where we talk about some of these things in more depth than a lot of people get a chance to do in their daily lives so that...

Shortly, I too will be having a podcast called "Beyond the Minimum" where I will be espousing this message of only keeping to the legal requirements doesn't get you very far.

We need to start setting our sights higher than that, on values, and ethics, and going beyond the minimum.

- Okay. Well, thank you. That's great. That sounds like an excellent resource, and we wish you lots of luck with launching a podcast. It's lots of work, but it's also a lot of fun. So, thanks for sharing your time with us today.

- Well, thank you so much, Mary, for this opportunity. ♪ [music] ♪ - "Safety Labs" is created by Slice, the only safety knife on the market with a finger-friendly blade. Find us at sliceproducts.com. Until next time, stay safe.

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