December 5, 2024 • 46 mins
What happens when a former Canadian Army sergeant takes his military precision and applies it to the world of safety consulting? Craig, our distinguished guest and founder of Keep Safe Consulting, joins us to share his transformative journey from high-pressure military operations to empowering workplaces with a people-first safety culture. His fascinating story of evolving from instructing mountaineers to advising industrial leaders is sure to captivate anyone interested in real-world applications of leadership and safety.
Craig unpacks the pivotal role safety professionals play in shaping organizational culture and the vital shift from a compliance-driven approach to one that prioritizes human well-being. Through his experiences in high-stakes rescue operations and the oil field industrial sector, we explore the nuances of leadership that genuinely cares for employees. Craig's insights shed light on navigating the complexities of safety management, challenging the traditional norms and advocating for a collaborative environment where every worker's voice is heard and respected.
Listeners will gain a fresh perspective on the intersection of leadership, safety, and cultural change, as Craig discusses the common pitfalls of compliance-focused strategies and the empowering potential of personalized safety measures. From addressing imposter syndrome to leveraging personal stories as a means of fostering genuine connection in the workplace, this episode promises to inspire safety professionals and leaders alike to champion a safer, more supportive work environment. Don't miss this deep dive into the art of balancing discipline with freedom and the critical importance of proactive partnership in risk management.
Connect with Craig at:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-gauvreau-crsp-7469b142/
https://keep-safe.ca/
Make yourself a priority and get more done:
https://www.depthbuilder.com/do-the-damn-thing
Download a PDF copy of Becoming the Promise You are Intended to Be
https://www.depthbuilder.com/books
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Safety is not about rules and injury rates.
It's about making it personal.
There's no such thing as zerorisk, so you've got to manage it
to the point where you can dealwith it.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
The way I categorize it is there's the safety
professionals that arecompliance focused yeah, and
then there's the minority, thesuper tiny, teeny tiny number of
safety professionals that arepeople focused.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
If you're going to be compliance focused, you're
always going to be in thepassenger seat on influencing
the culture, because you'regoing to be the one getting
influenced, versus in thedriver's seat and influencing
the work environment as a safetyprofessional you have.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I believe you have the ultimate platform to
influence the business, toinfluence the leaders in their
way they think and the decisionsthat they make in supporting
the people, and you have adirect, no holds barred access
to every level of theorganization.
What is going on?
(01:02):
L&m family?
I'm a pretty fortunate guy andthat fortune I get to share with
the family here I'm getting tointroduce to you and learn more
about Mr Craig, internationalsafety superstar.
Okay, I connected with Craig onthe LinkedIn.
(01:24):
He posts a reallythought-provoking, straight-up,
real perspective about safetyand, more importantly, about
human beings, which is what, ofcourse, sparked me to say, hey,
I need to reach out to this manand see what we can do.
He's the founder of Keep SafeConsulting.
He served in the Canadian Army,so he's no slouch.
(01:44):
He's another baller we gotwe're lucky here, we got ballers
on the show all the time.
Studied at the University ofAlberta, published author.
He published Influence.
It's Leadership and Safety atthe Sharp End.
There it is, yes, and I gotquestions about that title
because I love it.
I think it kind of reminded meof the Depth Builder logo here
(02:08):
and if this is your first timehere, you are listening to the
Learnings and Missteps podcast,where you get to see how real
people just like you are sharingtheir gifts and talents to
leave this world better thanthey found it.
I'm Jesse and we are going toget to know Mr Craig.
(02:28):
Mr Craig, how are you doinggood?
Sir, I'm doing good.
So, before we hit record, youkind of spilled the beans.
You're in the hotels.
You're a road warrior travelingall over Canada, I'm assuming,
mostly.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Western Canada.
Lately it's been Alberta.
That's big enough, right.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
That's plenty big, I think.
Being from the States, it'shard for me to understand how
big it is, except now I've gotsuper cool friends in Canada.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Alberta's like.
It's like Canada's Texas, ahthere we go, it's all of oil and
gas and it's a big province.
I drove up here to FortSaskatchewan, north of Edmonton.
It's, I think, 680 kilometersfrom my home, so 300 miles.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Oh, that's a nice drive and you drove up that way.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Yeah, I drove this time I did my vehicle for the
job set Matt.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yeah yeah, I appreciate you making the time
to squeeze us in.
I got a softball of a question.
Craig Sure, how do you definesafety?
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Oh, that's a tough one.
That shouldn't be tough, right?
You're just managing riskInstead of saying, ah, no
injuries, that's a given, butsafety is just managing the risk
.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Yeah, that's it, really, that's it Okay.
So when we hear risk, my, mybrain says exposure, like people
exposing their bodies, theirlimbs, their eyes to damage, and
so safety is minimizing thatexposure.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
yeah exposure is part of it.
The longer you're exposed, yourchances of having something go
wrong right there it increasesthe risk.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Yeah, got it got, and so I mentioned that you served
in the Canadian Army.
I also know that you did somemountaineering.
Did you do that when you werein the Army?
In the Army?
Speaker 1 (04:15):
yeah, it's kind of how I got into the safety role.
I was a soldier, so I was inthe infantry.
When I left the Army I was asergeant an infantry sergeant
and the last couple of years inthe summers I was a
mountaineering instructor.
We got the Rockies right outour back door.
We did a lot of that.
And when I left the Army one ofthe things I started doing was
(04:36):
teaching high-angle rescue andconfined space entry rope,
technical rescue stuff in gasplants and refineries.
So I kind of got into thesafety field through training.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Okay, so and so what's mountaineering?
Because my simple mind says Icrawled up a mountain one day,
so I was doing mountaineering.
But it's probably not thatsimple.
There's some more complexitiesto it.
Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
We were doing rock face climbing and we did cut it
quite a few rescues of peoplethat got into bad positions
where they didn't know how toget out of.
So we did a lot of ice work andcrevasse rescue and stuff like
that.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Okay, so in the rescue, that wasn't like you
jumping on a walkie-talkie andcalling in a helicopter.
What all do you do as amountaineer when you're rescuing
somebody?
Because that sounds likeintense, amazing and also maybe
scary.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Oh, potentially scary .
Yeah, you're rappelling down ona rope line to somebody who's
either fallen or they're stuckon a mountain where they oh,
this is too hard now I don'tknow what to do, so rappel down
on ropes and then sometimes haulthem back up or keep going down
, lowering them down Crevasserescue, you're pulling them out
of there.
You've got two sheets of iceand they're in the middle here
(05:50):
and you're going down to getthem.
Yeah, that's quite a deal.
Yeah, I can only imagine it'sall technical stuff, if you
think of the movie Cliffhanger,that stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Yeah, okay With Stallone that was a good one.
Yeah, okay, with Stallone, thatwas a good one.
You were doing that in theCanadian Army and then you got
into training for confined spaceentry and rescue Yep Because of
the connection between theskill set you built in.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Mountaineer.
It was so transferable.
It was all knots and ropes andcarabiners and harnesses.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
You're exposed to height.
In a commercial setting itmight be a window washer on a
skyscraper.
You got to go get them becausehe's in a tough spot.
Yeah, oh man, I bet that guywasn't happy if he was stuck.
I've never been in it, okay.
So then my guess is this MrCraig, mr Young Teenage did not
decide he was going to be apublished author and run his own
safety consulting firm.
It just kind of happened.
(06:50):
Is that accurate?
Yeah, that's a fair statement.
Yep, yeah, okay.
So what was originally when youwere mapping out your life
through high school and posthigh school?
What was the plan?
What direction were you headed?
Speaker 1 (07:05):
I for some reason always had an interest in the
army, in the military.
My parents were both in the AirForce.
That's how they met, so therewas a bit of a connection there.
And I met my wife when I was inthe army and I was going to be
a lifer.
I was going to be a soldierright to the end, but then I
became a dad.
So that kind of changed thingsGot it.
I was in my late 20s almost 30,when I decided I was going to
(07:28):
make a change.
We had two little kids at thetime and I thought you know, my
kids didn't even like talking tome if they saw me packing away
my stuff.
Because, back then when I packedup my gear to go.
I was gone for months, ah.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah, yeah.
So they let you know like wedon't like it that you're
leaving us, like just go away,be gone, do it again yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
I thought I would try and make a change while I was
young enough to do it.
I tried a couple of things thatdidn't pan out, because I
assume the military is like thisanywhere you go in as a young
kid and it's a lifestyle, not ajob.
So, transitioning out, themilitary is really good at
bringing young people in,molding them, and they're not so
good at sending them the otherway, which, of course, is why we
have so many problems with ourvets both in the us and canada,
(08:14):
all over the world right yes,yes, yes, yes, like re-entry
into civilian life is not yeah.
So the first couple things youtry, it doesn't work out.
And then a guy I knew waslooking for an instructor for
high angle rescue.
He knew I was looking forsomething and that's kind of how
it connected, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
So what was that like ?
Getting out of the military?
Pretty structured, pretty clearchain of command, pretty clear
expectations.
I'm assuming I've never been inthe military coming into
civilian life.
Was that shocking?
Speaker 1 (08:49):
I was scared for sure , because not only do you have
all that structure, you'repretty protected too, right, you
know.
You know what you got to do,you know.
But I don't know if it wasshocking it was, it was
different.
You heard that phrase beat 50of the people, but just showing
up, well, you probably beat 80of them if you show up on time.
And, of course, in the army,hey, you better be on time,
(09:14):
right, yeah, yeah.
So, and I heard this the otherday and it was, it was brilliant
.
Do you know?
Jocko welling Willinkas?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
But before we go there we're going to do the L&M
family member shout out, andthis one goes to Mr Angel, who I
got to meet as a constructionmanagement student at UTSA, did
a little shindig over there withmy mentor and friend, mike
Hyman.
Angel says this he said thisevent helped me realize and
(09:54):
remember how important it is toallow others to critically think
for themselves rather thanclipping their wings, as you
said.
We can wonder why we are notsoaring with the eagles and
surrounded with turkeys when webecome the solutionizer, as a
leader that is always givingunsolicited advice and solutions
to every problem.
Angel, I'm glad that stuck withyou, because it was a problem I
(10:17):
had for most of my career nevergiving my people the space to
leverage their autonomy, theiragency and their critical
thinking, because I was alwaysgiving them answers.
So folks give Mr Angel a shoutout and also, when you get a
chance, leave a comment.
Leave a five-star review or athree-star review, whichever
(10:37):
makes most sense to you, butwhen you leave me the comments,
that's the ultimate, becausethen I get to shout you out and
I actually know that somebody islistening just besides me.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
So he had a phrase there where he said discipline
equals freedom, right, yep?
And I think that's a good wayto deal with when you come out
of the structure of the army,because the discipline gives you
the flexibility to do what youneed to do.
It allows you to try stuff andwe've done some stuff, so you
got a little bit of courage aswell.
You know, to try stuff youhaven't done.
(11:10):
I think that's a perfectfitting.
Discipline equals freedom, yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
And the phrase is a little counterintuitive, right?
Oh yeah, sometimes, disciplinebeing this rigid, how should say
caste situation, yeah, but it'sreally not no, no it's?
It sets the conditions to befree and grow and learn and
experiment and try.
Yeah, I wish I knew that backin my 20s.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Oh right, I'm glad I didn't have an ip iPhone in the
internet when I was 20.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
So, speaking of the iPhones in the internet, I
mentioned it at the introductionthat you and I connected via
LinkedIn.
What was that like?
What led you to begin postingand engaging on social media?
That's a good question.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, going back to that idea of discipline equals
freedom.
I was surprised I could get upand give a speech, presentation,
training, and when I went towrite my book I felt I had some
imposter syndrome.
Right, the only way to get overthat is to get doing it and do
more of it, because I know Ireally believe what I've been
(12:25):
posting, because it challengesthe status quo a little bit.
So it's one thing to get up infront of a group of people and
speak, but you start posting andputting it out there and it's
out there for the world to seeand it's out there forever.
But I was surprised.
I did not expect.
Where did that impostersyndrome come from?
Look over here, needle it.
Hey, what if they don't like it?
And so you just start postingand then you get some people
(12:49):
saying, hey, yeah, spot on,thanks for saying this and for
bringing it up, and that kind ofthing.
And so I want to, as Itransition, I do a lot of site
work, which is good.
There's a lot of safetyspeakers who aren't doing so
much site work and theydisconnected from their same.
With writers, they getdisconnected from the people
they're trying to influence.
Now I do, probably in mybusiness I do.
(13:12):
Probably 80 to 90% of mybusiness revenue is from doing
site work out in theseconstruction projects.
Currently my clientele is alloil field industrial
construction, is all oil fieldindustrial construction.
And what I'm hoping to do iswith the book and again, why I
publish so much on LinkedIn isto start doing leadership
workshops for the front line.
(13:32):
That's kind of my targetaudience.
That's why the subtitle in thebook is it's Leadership and
Safety at the Sharp End, becausewe've got there's some
excellent leadership workshopsand stuff out there.
But their target audience seemsto be middle management, upper
management and you know what.
And we often in industry and Ithink it's in all industries we
(13:53):
kind of set people up to fail.
When we take a guy or a girlwho's excellent at their craft,
hey, we're going to make thatthe supervisor Boom, we move
them up to the supervisor, givethem no training.
They fail dismally.
So I want to start doing someof that.
The book is written as a bit ofa hand guide, more than just a
lecture or anecdotes and stuff.
(14:14):
It's got stories in it but it'sgot exercises in it and so nice
.
My plan is to use that and dosome half day or one day
workshops and do some follow-up.
I think that's also a missinglink with people that take some
leadership workshops, especiallynew leaders there's no
follow-up afterwards.
Some coaching and that was, Ithink, one of the biggest things
I got out of the army was whenyou take a leadership course and
(14:35):
you move off to the back to theunit, there's always somebody
coaching you To continue thethread of that learning.
Yeah, exactly, so I'd like todo some of that and then keep
doing some job site work so youstay connected with the audience
you're trying to influence andthen move them along.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
So when you say site work, what does that look like?
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Right now it's up in the oil and gas installations.
I'm doing some work at a gasplant right now and they're
getting ready to drill into asalt cavern and do some cavern
storage.
So instead of having tanks upon the ground, they have these
salt caverns that are sealed andthey're down 2,000 meters into
the ground.
I was working up at anothersite further north where they
(15:19):
take sulfur, which is abyproduct of processing oil and
gas.
They make it so it's safe totransport.
It's all industrialconstruction, some of it's new
construction, some of it'smodifying an existing facility
and that kind of thing.
I go up and help out withhazard assessments.
If there's incidents, we doincident investigations see what
actually happened.
I do a lot of coaching.
(15:41):
Instead of doing safety rules,I work with the supervisors.
Rules is part of it, but I workwith the supervisors on how to
be leaders and make their worksite safe, so that you're not
just doing checkbox.
Yeah, we've got this.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
We've got that hazard assessment stuff, so what
surprises or awakenings have youhad?
Speaker 1 (16:09):
in working with leaders and helping them
understand their responsibilityor contributions to the safety
mindset.
I think some of the mostsuccessful work I've had doing
that is changing the mindset ofbeing in charge.
It's not that you're in charge,as you have people under your
charge that you have to takecare of and make sure they get
home.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
So what's the difference?
I love this.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
You're responsible for them.
One of the first things to dois I do a lot of talk.
I even have a chapter in thebook about saying stop saying
safety is number one, becauseit's not.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Oh, whoa, whoa, oh the horse.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
I get a lot of people going what?
And it's not that you don'twant anyone to get hurt, but the
company is doing some newconstruction on an existing
facility so they can make moremoney.
The contractors got the job sothey can make more money, and
the workers they do the job sothey can pay the rent and fill
the mortgage or the freezer.
(16:59):
And it's okay to say that we'rethere to make money.
You got to get past thisnonsense of saying safety is
number one, because as soon asyou say that and schedule's
pushed and something goes behind, and then we start eroding that
yes, and so I think I have someimpact, because a lot of safety
people won't say that right,right, oh yeah.
(17:19):
And when you're the safety guyand you're coming up and you say
, stop saying that.
One of the things I try to say alot is when you're a leader,
you can't talk your way tosomething you behaved your way
into.
So you've got to get out thereand you've got to connect.
You've got to see what thedrivers are with your workers
and see what's going on withtheir head.
Have they got a sick one athome?
Are they present?
Right, yep, right, yep.
(17:45):
So that's what I mean aboutwhen they're in your charge.
Your job is to take care ofthem.
You don't have to teach themhow to be a pipe fitter, a
welder, an electrician or aplumber.
They are already there.
They're the craftsmen.
Just get out of their way.
Let them get to it.
Break down the barriers so theycan get their work done right.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Yes, so I heard the heard one friend of mine say
here's the deal my teams installteams out there, the vehicles
on the road and they need to getto where we need to get.
My job as a manager and leaderon the job site is to make sure
they have all green lights.
I was like, dude, yes, clearthe road for them and let them
(18:21):
do it and make sure you'retaking care of them.
Yeah, and I think for me, likethat the idea, because I spent a
little bit of time as a safetyprofessional like super small
period of time and I askedmyself the question of, like,
what is safety?
How do I define safety?
Safety, how do I define safety?
(18:41):
And I could only come up withit's taking care of people,
being responsible for the peoplein my charge, to use your
language right, beingresponsible for them and to them
, to facilitate them doing whatthey needed to do and not
getting hurt or injured or anyyeah, like that's a given right.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
You want to make sure everyone gets home and not hurt
and there was some jingle intheir pocket.
But those are given Safety.
It's when you hear it.
It's often no, we've got rulesand stuff and we do for sure.
But it's not about that, it'sabout the people.
I had a bit of an epiphany.
I was probably an intermediatesafety person by now like
experience, wise and knowledgeand stuff about seven, eight
(19:25):
years into my career.
I've been doing it for god, 26years.
But uh, and I started to to notdrink the kool-aid.
I started questioning thingslike we would focus on injury
rates and I always used used towonder I don't think Bob the
(19:45):
Builder cares whether yourfrequency rate for your injury
is 0.1 for 100,000 man hours,but he probably cares about his
friend Joe who might get hurt.
So I stopped drinking theKool-Aid and a turning point for
me was this is going to soundcrazy, but I was at the company
who made five fatalities oneyear, right, oh my God.
(20:07):
These job sites were all reallyremote, like way out into
Northern Alberta, NorthernCanada, and they were all single
vehicle accidents they were.
These guys were driving to thework sites or from the work
sites on their way home and theywere all ejected out of the
vehicles.
They were single vehiclerollovers guys tossed out.
(20:27):
They either hit something orthe vehicle hit something when
it was rolling over them.
And three of them were marriedand a couple of them had kids.
So we were on this massivecampaign.
A lot of really hard work wentinto this.
We had presentations and wewere traveling with directors
and VPs of the companies.
It was a big oil and gasservice company.
(20:47):
As the safety guys we weredriving these guys around to the
different remote work sites andI was up in an area I think
it's called Tommy Lakes.
So if you picture Alberta andBritish Columbia on the border
and then the NorthwestTerritories up here, like we're
up right here, like a snowball'sa throw from the Arctic Circle.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
So we're I was just going to say that sounds really
cold.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Oh it was, it was wintertime, we were doing this,
and so I get up, we get up there.
We're supposed to give thispresentation.
Have you ever heard the phrasedeath by PowerPoint?
Oh yeah, you takepoint slidesand you print them and you're
going to review these with anindustrial work crew out on a
work site.
It's not going to go well yeah,like, yeah, whatever, man.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
So it's going to be good for my little camping fire
I was asked if I could do thepresentation.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
I'm outside the crew truck.
They had one of them suburbanone-time crew trucks and they
had a crew truck that would gofrom the work site to the camp,
the industrial camp.
They were staying in and it waslike an ugly winter road.
I wasn't supposed to be doingthe presentations, it was the
presidents and the vicepresidents and directors.
Oh yeah, but I get up there andthis guy says I hate public
(21:55):
speaking.
Can you do this?
I didn't even look at thepresentation because I wasn't
going to be speaking.
Right, right, I'm lookingthrough this PowerPoint.
I'm going through the slidesand thinking, oh, these suck,
this is terrible.
And so it's like death byPowerPoint on steroids.
Right, I happened to look to myright at the crew truck.
(22:16):
There's no one in the truck andthe seatbelts are all connected
, right, so they're clipped in.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Yeah, and nobody's in the truck.
Nobody's in the truck.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
So they can get in the truck and they can go where
they're going to go.
They don't have to listen to thedinger of the seatbelt warning
right, yeah, okay.
And they had an ugly winterroad.
There was a ravine on one sideand a hill on the other.
So I just I thought, oh, thisis not good.
I tossed the presentation in thetrash on my way into the
meeting and I asked the guys howmany of you guys wear your
seatbelt in the crew truck?
I said it's okay.
(22:48):
I said no one's going to be introuble when I drive from this
site down to 50 miles or 80kilometers to the next site.
You're going to do what you'regoing to do anyway, so no one's
going to be in trouble.
I said 15 of you guys aremarried, 11 of you got kids.
So I talked about these fiveguys whose family had to move on
.
I said so here's the deal.
When you're driving down thatroad back to camp and you slide
(23:11):
off the hill into the ravine,you're at minus 30 degrees.
You're probably going to die.
I said if you're okay withsomebody else raising your kids
and and sleeping with your wife,don't put your seatbelt on.
Oh, wow, yeah.
So that was an epiphany.
The reason I say it was anepiphany for me was I had a
(23:31):
couple guys go Craig, you're anasshole?
I said maybe, but that's thereality of it.
Yes, and he goes.
No, I said thanks for it.
I never looked at my safetythat way.
I always looked at as a ruleand management's telling us this
, doing that, and so that's whenI started thinking safety's not
about rules and injury rates.
It's about making it personal,like there's no such thing as
(23:54):
zero risk.
So you got to manage it to thepoint where you can deal with it
right yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
So I imagine when you like it was clear, like it
clicked.
You looked in the truck I said,oh, that's the largest
contributing factor.
Here's the reality, ifsomething like they take on the
risk.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
So it became very clearly like, oh duh, and then
you forget the PowerPoint.
They can use that paper forsomething else.
Powerpoint, they could use thatpaper for something else.
Here's what your decision couldcreate.
Are you okay with that?
Bam, two by four between theeyes.
So in the moment you're like,oh, this, I can really connect
with people on a human level.
(24:34):
And then it sounds like fromthat point you said, okay, from
here forward, this is how I'mgoing to do it Now.
Leading up to that, it was therisk assessments, the box
checking, the pre-test, safetyplans, whatever all of those
words out there.
Yeah, yeah, all the words, yeah, right.
So all your colleagues werestill in that same bucket.
(24:55):
What was that like?
Knowing that man, what I?
My perspective is totallydifferent than what we've been
taught, than what we've studied,than what the corporations are
completely bought into.
What was going through yourhead?
Did you see friction in?
Speaker 1 (25:13):
your future.
Yeah, yeah, my boss, at thetime, like I said, this was a
time when I wasn't so much anovice, I was kind of an
intermediate.
But you're right at that pointwhere you start to question
things like does this add value?
So I would ask questions likethey'd come up with an
initiative.
For example, I would say thingslike does this make it better
for the guy out on the tools?
(25:33):
Hmm, oh, you're being difficult.
No, no, I want to know.
Right, no-transcript.
(26:14):
These guys did good.
They didn't break nothing.
The ruts from the tires arelike up to my knees.
It's impressive that they coulddo this.
So they were busy when I, whenI got there, I introduced myself
to the supervisor and I said,well, I'll go do a couple of
things I got to do and maybe wecould talk to the crew afterward
.
It was funny, you remember, inthose situations where the mud's
picking up on your boots andyour boots are getting heavier
and heavier.
(26:35):
I was walking between the twobuildings and there was a cable
going from one to the other likea bonding cable, tried to step
over it and my boot hit it and Ithought, oh, here we go, I'm
gonna fall into the mud and thesafety guy's got a face full of
mud.
But when my boot hit the cableit came out of the connection.
So I thought, oh, oh.
(26:55):
So I I went around and checkedall the connections and I went
to the supervisor.
And this supervisor, he was yourquintessential tough, not oil
field or construction guy, likewhatever's in here is coming out
here and there's no filter andit's going to have a few
expletives.
So I asked him.
I said, hey, I can go and fixthe connections.
(27:17):
The bonding connections are allloose.
You guys are busy.
Oh, I'll tighten them.
And he looks at me like what I.
Actions are all loose, you guysare busy, I'll tighten them.
And he looks at me like what Isaid?
I can't find the wrench, so Ineed to.
I'll tighten them up, can youget?
Speaker 2 (27:28):
rid.
Yeah, you were asking him for awrench and he's like what the
hell?
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yeah.
And then I said look, when wehave the meeting with the crew,
let's talk about staticelectricity, because we just had
a fire on another site wherestatic electricity ignited the
rig tanks on a drilling rig.
The crew had put it out butstill it was static electricity
that started.
And I said you guys are pullingpipe out of the well, that's
important, right?
He goes oh, yeah, definitely.
(27:51):
So we talked to the crew andtalked about how static
electricity happens and talkedabout the importance of bonding,
like the guys had made theconnections, but they just
didn't tighten anything down.
And that supervisor says oh, Ihad to write a report.
If there's any deficienciesfrom an inspection, you would
put it on that.
And this guy he says can Iwrite on this?
(28:11):
I said, yeah, sure, so hewrites.
It was really.
It was humbling because he saysfinally a safety guy that can
come to this job site anytime hewrites that on the report.
And then I got thinking, oh, myboss is going to see that he
says to me.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Come on, Craig, we'll take you anytime.
And your boss didn't say you'redoing something wrong.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
It turns out, they kind of got cross-threaded
somehow a few times and he says.
I said, yeah, this ought to begood.
My boss ain't going to likethat.
He goes, your boss is afreaking asshole.
And sure enough, a couple ofweeks later he sees that and he
goes what's this?
I said hey, I don't know.
I told him what happened.
I said maybe you gotcross-threaded to this guy, I
(28:59):
don't know.
I said he actually says to meyou were just a pushover and you
didn't do your job out there.
I said you can look at it thatway, or you can look at it and
say maybe, just maybe one ofyour people had some impact
today.
And then I walked away.
I was a sergeant in the army,I'm not going to be intimidated
by this little right.
(29:21):
So anyway, the funny story is,as I was walking back clearly
annoyed, back to my office, anoperations manager that I'd
worked with in the past atanother company called me.
He was at a new drillingcompany, said they're looking
for a safety manager oh really.
And I walked back and gave myresignation, nice.
(29:42):
And then I became a safetymanager and I got to try a lot
of the stuff that I talk aboutas a leader.
And this one guy I worked withhe was a VP, he was the COO of
the company.
His name is Randy Hawkins.
This was one of my best bossesever worked for Wow.
(30:04):
So as the safety manager, Ireported to the COO and he said
to me I didn't know we could dosafety this way.
This is like excellent.
I thought we're onto somethinghere.
So one of the things that ledto me writing the book was I'd
give speeches and presentationsand stuff and a couple of guys
go man, you got to write some ofthis stuff down, craig.
And I wonder and so that wasthe beginning of maybe I should
(30:27):
look at doing a book, and howwould I write a like a book that
?
So it's really more of a bookabout leadership and influence
than it is a safety book.
It's got a safety theme to it,but that's all.
Safety is whatever's going to besuccessful for you as a leader,
no matter where you are in thefood chain, is going to make you
successful, influencing safety,because that's all you're doing
(30:48):
is you're influencing.
We don't need more rules.
There's lots of those and Ithink the mistake a lot of
people make in the safety fieldis they go to a tradesman, like
a builder or whatever he is, awelder, somebody who's been
around a long time, and we makethe mistake of trying to tell
them how to do their job andtheir craft.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Yeah, yeah, you know there's a whole bunch there.
I applaud you for having thecourage to do that.
And then I think the world justdoes that right.
You have this awakening and youhave a kind of awesome
experience on site.
You actually helped, like youdidn't leave a list of critiques
, you helped, got a good notefrom the site leader, pissed off
(31:31):
your boss, got a new job offer.
It all worked out.
Oh, it did, yeah.
But what I think is mostimportant is that you had the
courage to say no, I'm going todo it differently.
Yeah, right, so much so thatyou had the COO, like saying I
didn't know we could do safetythis way.
And in my head there's adistinct difference between
(31:54):
compliance, the way I categorizeit is.
There's the safetyprofessionals that are
compliance focused yeah, andthen there's the minority, the
like super tiny, teeny tinynumber of safety professionals
that are people focused.
How do we make it better forthe people?
How do we serve the peopleversus the compliance thing?
And so I got a question.
(32:16):
I took some.
I can't remember some trainingis a week long safety training,
because I was in a safety roleand I remember sitting in that
training.
It was about 20-some-odd people.
I was in Minnesota, kind ofclose to y'all, and it was
colder than I like.
I don't even know how cold itis up your way.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Well, I think Minnesota is like south of
Saskatchewan and Alberta, soyeah, we get a lot of the same
weather, yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah, so get a lot of the same weather.
Yeah, yeah, so it was cold andI remember sitting in there and
it was me and two othergentlemen.
We were like the outcasts.
We were the weirdos that wereasking questions about influence
and leadership, and themajority of the people in there
wanted to know what is the rule,what is the consequence?
(33:02):
Where is the page that I cancite this violation?
What's the maximum that we canlike super compliance, focus,
and me and the other two guyswe're talking about different
things, about collaborating withthe leadership and getting
involved hands-on with thetrades, and can you do this sort
of thing?
And I'm looking and the rest ofthe guys are like.
They're like could y'all pleasejust shut up Because we don't
(33:25):
care.
Anyways, fast forward.
I'm talking to the guys atlunch and whatever.
And I'm asking okay, so you'relike the head safety guy for
your company?
Yes, and these were alldifferent framing companies,
roofing companies, generalcontract like all construction,
almost all of them, with theexception of one.
One guy was there because hehad a pretty damn significant
(33:49):
handicap injury.
And the company said, hey, howabout you lead our safety goal?
Because you got a great storyand he did, like his whole
attitude change or whateverEverybody else.
Their boss said, hey, I wantyou to be the safety guy.
And they're like the headsafety person for the company.
And so in that moment, this isso.
Here's my question.
Like in that moment, what Ithought I saw was like my boss
(34:15):
when they recruited me.
They were explicit.
They said we want you to helpus transform our safety culture.
We want to have a morepeople-focused experience.
We want to be lesscompliance-driven and more
people-focused.
I said, hell, yeah, let's go.
Everybody, like those otherguys that were there.
(34:35):
Their boss said we need asafety guy because we got to do
something to improve ourinsurance rates and they picked
compliance focused people andput them in a safety role.
So, man, that's a long way toask the damn question.
I think, and I'm wondering whatyour thoughts are like there
(34:57):
are so many safety professionalsthat are 100% singularly
focused on filling in thepaperwork and checking the boxes
and guarding against liability,and I think it's because it's a
reflection of what their bossis, the decision makers within
the company.
I think it's a reflection oftheir view of what safety is and
(35:18):
can be.
What do you think?
Speaker 1 (35:20):
I think you're onto something there.
Compliance is an easilymeasurable thing.
The rules say this and this, orwe do this and this.
Bang Simple, but you're onlygoing to ever.
You'll never get beyondmediocre if you're focused on
compliance.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Say it again, Craig.
Say it again.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Because, if you think of standards, you got a company
that's failing.
They're down here and the rulesare bringing you to this level.
So you're going to complianceand you're going to get there,
but you're not going to sustainanything.
You're going to always bemediocre.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
You're still going to be hurting people.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
You're still going to have rules broken, because if
you're compliance focused,you're going to pencil, whip
stuff.
We did all this stuff, boom,let's go to work.
And so you're kind of playingthe short game versus the long
game.
There's always a culture, right.
But if you're going to becompliance focused, you're
always going to be in thepassenger seat on influencing
the culture, because you'regoing to be the one getting
(36:12):
influenced, versus in thedriver's seat and influencing
the work environment.
I hate I have to speak thislanguage but I don't like it.
There's culture, not safetyculture, right, because you're
not going to have a really goodsafety culture on one side with
a really bad work environment onthe other, or a culture right,
it's just going to be bad.
What's the other one?
(36:32):
Leader, oh, safety leadership,there's just leadership.
It's just going to be bad.
What's the other one?
Oh, safety leadership, there'sjust leadership.
It's not safety leadership,there's leadership.
But that's the terms we have inthe industry, so I use them.
But really, if you just take apeople-focused approach and make
sure we've got the guys set upto succeed and taken all the
barriers down so they can gettheir job done, then yeah, we're
(36:53):
going to make a difference.
But if you're compliancefocused, you're not going to
sustain anything.
You're going to get toomediocre.
You're going to stay there.
You might have a little pocketof excellence every now and
again, but you won't sustain it.
It'll fade back down.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
I love that.
If you're compliance focused,the best you can expect is
mediocre yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Because if you think of OH&S standards, whether
you're in Canada or the US,those rules in OH&S are written
because someone got hurt orkilled.
Yep, their minimum Yep.
So if you're only everachieving compliance, you're
just getting above an injuryright, you're going to be
mediocre and that's all you'regoing to achieve.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
It's going to be mediocre and that's all you're
going to achieve.
Is it going to be easy toachieve?
Yeah, not killing people.
Wow, that's an accomplishmentLike it's not.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Like we have.
Oh my goodness, so what's what?
One of the things that'shappened and this is where we
need to speak with leaders on isin in just about all industries
, we've gotten pretty good atreducing the injury rates and,
to some degree, the severity ofthe injuries.
Were you ever taught thattriangle where you have so many
injuries?
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Oh, yeah, yeah, or behaviors would lead to so many
things which would eventuallylead to fatality.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
If our injury rates are dropping and the severity is
dropping, then there should beless fatalities, right?
Sure, yeah, but there isn't.
In Canada, like in Alberta, forexample, we have the National
Day of Mourning every April.
In the States they call itWorkers Memorial Day.
It's on the same day, it's onthe 28th of April.
Yep, if you look at the numbers.
(38:25):
So in Alberta, where I'm at, weaverage 160 work fatality a
year and it's been like that for15 years.
Maybe 158, 166.
It's just like that for 15years.
Maybe 158, 166.
It's just like that.
Across canada, it's been 900 toa thousand workers a year for
15 years.
In the states, I believe, it's5 000.
Your population is what are you?
(38:49):
300 million people?
Like canada, we're only 40million people.
So, okay, but you can go to anyregion.
You can go to the uk, you cango to australia.
It's the same thing.
The number is going to bedifferent, but the change is not
right, so pretty flatline thenumber of deaths.
It's been flatlined, and so youwould think if that triangle is
actually true, we would havethat number should come down,
(39:11):
but there's a gap there somehow,and so we need to get better at
reducing the fatalities.
One of the things that'shappened recently this has never
happened before, at least onrecord is in Alberta
occupational cancer is now oneof the number one killers.
It's like asbestos and stufflike that.
So I got looking at that whenCanada was in Afghanistan with
(39:32):
the American military, we werethere what?
20 years, Something like that.
In the time that Canada wasthere, we lost 128 soldiers in
combat In combat In combat 128in 11 years.
We have 160 in construction.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
It's going to work every year.
So, craig, well, first L&Mfamily.
You don't have to be a safetyprofessional to appreciate what
Craig is talking about, becausehe's talking about.
You already said it right youtook not safety leadership, it's
leadership.
It's not safety culture, it'sculture.
If you're only focused oncompliance, the best you're
(40:08):
going to achieve is mediocre.
These are universal ideas thatare applicable to any industry,
any department.
You know it's interesting and Idon't know the answer, but I've
been in my career in thesespecialized roles safety guy,
lean guy, these different things.
I'm going to give the benefitof the doubt and the intent is
(40:31):
to provide a better experiencefor the men and women that are
out there doing the work.
However, what I got to see overand over again is managers kind
of behave.
There's this unwritten rulethat if there is a safety
professional, that means theydon't have to worry about safety
and, more specifically, theydon't have to have any of the
(40:53):
hard conversations related tosafety, because the safety
professional will do that, orthe QAQC person will do that, or
the lean person is going to dothat.
I worked with this was backwhen I was a foreman, I think,
maybe even early superintendent.
We had a safety professionaland that guy just oh man, he
would piss me off Like you'vebeen thinking about him.
(41:16):
Just really, because here's thething as a safety professional
you have, I believe you have theultimate platform to influence
the business, to influence theleaders in their way they think
and the decisions that they makein supporting the people, and
you have a direct, no holdsbarred access to every level of
(41:40):
the organization.
So it's like the role that, ifyou like me, if you're an
influence freak, that roleitself is the perfect role that
can be super, super leveraged.
The power that they have thatmaybe they're not aware of just
goes wasted so often.
Anyway, so I'll stop beating onthat.
(42:01):
But this guy, we had thisprocess called MISA Mentally
Installed Systems on Paper andso the idea is we'll peel our
drawings apart, look at the work, get all up into the weeds.
How are we going to execute it?
Is it going to be scaffolding?
What are we going to do?
Like just brainstorming?
How are we going to approachthe work If let's bring the
(42:22):
safety guy in and say hey man,there's this thing right here.
We're not exactly sure what thesafe is.
This is what we're thinking,but that's not going to work.
It's a stairwell, blah, blah,blah, blah, blah.
His response would be that'sy'all's job.
And yeah, just imagine thatevery time we reached out to him
(42:43):
to be as a resource to help usmitigate the risk or design
something to get as safe as wepossibly can, his answer was
always.
And his answer was alwaysthat's y'all's job.
Y'all are the professional.
But he would come back aroundand boy would he hammer us every
(43:03):
time oh, you're in violation,these are the things you're not
doing.
It's like, okay, what can we do?
Well, that's y'all's deal.
And I'm like what the hell areyou here?
Jeez, can you tell?
I'm having a flashback here andit was like and I've seen a
bunch of, he's just the worstexample, but I've seen so many
safety professionals.
(43:24):
The way they operate is theycome in after the fact and
critique you and make sure mylike, did you do?
Somebody got injured, okay, orthere was a near miss?
Let me see your pre-tax safetyplan.
Guess what that task wasn't onthe plan Violation, let me see.
It doesn't solve anything anddoesn't bust a grape in trying
(43:47):
to help us make the work better.
But by this point in theconversation there may be some
safety people that are likescrew these guys.
I'm confident that the L&Mfamily out there is going to
(44:10):
take some of these really simple, clear and I'm going to make
sure to clip out these punch inyour gut points because they're
that and again, they'reapplicable in leadership and
influence and serving people.
Period Doesn't matter whatdepartment, what industry,
they're universally applicable.
Safety is not about rules and injury rates.
It's about making it personal.
There's no such thing as zerorisk, so you've got to manage it
to the point where you can dealwith it.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
The way I categorize it is there's the safety
professionals that arecompliance focused yeah, and
then there's the minority, thesuper tiny, teeny tiny number of
safety professionals that arepeople focused.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
If you're going to be compliance focused, you're
always going to be in thepassenger seat on influencing
the culture, because you'regoing to be the one getting
influenced, versus in thedriver's seat and influencing
the work environment as a safetyprofessional you have.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I believe you have the ultimate platform to
influence the business, toinfluence the leaders in their
way they think and the decisionsthat they make in supporting
the people, and you have adirect, no holds barred access
to every level of theorganization.
What is going on?
(01:02):
L&m family?
I'm a pretty fortunate guy andthat fortune I get to share with
the family here I'm getting tointroduce to you and learn more
about Mr Craig, internationalsafety superstar.
Okay, I connected with Craig onthe LinkedIn.
(01:24):
He posts a reallythought-provoking, straight-up,
real perspective about safetyand, more importantly, about
human beings, which is what, ofcourse, sparked me to say, hey,
I need to reach out to this manand see what we can do.
He's the founder of Keep SafeConsulting.
He served in the Canadian Army,so he's no slouch.
(01:44):
He's another baller we gotwe're lucky here, we got ballers
on the show all the time.
Studied at the University ofAlberta, published author.
He published Influence.
It's Leadership and Safety atthe Sharp End.
There it is, yes, and I gotquestions about that title
because I love it.
I think it kind of reminded meof the Depth Builder logo here
(02:08):
and if this is your first timehere, you are listening to the
Learnings and Missteps podcast,where you get to see how real
people just like you are sharingtheir gifts and talents to
leave this world better thanthey found it.
I'm Jesse and we are going toget to know Mr Craig.
(02:28):
Mr Craig, how are you doinggood?
Sir, I'm doing good.
So, before we hit record, youkind of spilled the beans.
You're in the hotels.
You're a road warrior travelingall over Canada, I'm assuming,
mostly.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Western Canada.
Lately it's been Alberta.
That's big enough, right.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
That's plenty big, I think.
Being from the States, it'shard for me to understand how
big it is, except now I've gotsuper cool friends in Canada.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Alberta's like.
It's like Canada's Texas, ahthere we go, it's all of oil and
gas and it's a big province.
I drove up here to FortSaskatchewan, north of Edmonton.
It's, I think, 680 kilometersfrom my home, so 300 miles.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Oh, that's a nice drive and you drove up that way.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Yeah, I drove this time I did my vehicle for the
job set Matt.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yeah yeah, I appreciate you making the time
to squeeze us in.
I got a softball of a question.
Craig Sure, how do you definesafety?
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Oh, that's a tough one.
That shouldn't be tough, right?
You're just managing riskInstead of saying, ah, no
injuries, that's a given, butsafety is just managing the risk
.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Yeah, that's it, really, that's it Okay.
So when we hear risk, my, mybrain says exposure, like people
exposing their bodies, theirlimbs, their eyes to damage, and
so safety is minimizing thatexposure.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
yeah exposure is part of it.
The longer you're exposed, yourchances of having something go
wrong right there it increasesthe risk.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Yeah, got it got, and so I mentioned that you served
in the Canadian Army.
I also know that you did somemountaineering.
Did you do that when you werein the Army?
In the Army?
Speaker 1 (04:15):
yeah, it's kind of how I got into the safety role.
I was a soldier, so I was inthe infantry.
When I left the Army I was asergeant an infantry sergeant
and the last couple of years inthe summers I was a
mountaineering instructor.
We got the Rockies right outour back door.
We did a lot of that.
And when I left the Army one ofthe things I started doing was
(04:36):
teaching high-angle rescue andconfined space entry rope,
technical rescue stuff in gasplants and refineries.
So I kind of got into thesafety field through training.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Okay, so and so what's mountaineering?
Because my simple mind says Icrawled up a mountain one day,
so I was doing mountaineering.
But it's probably not thatsimple.
There's some more complexitiesto it.
Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
We were doing rock face climbing and we did cut it
quite a few rescues of peoplethat got into bad positions
where they didn't know how toget out of.
So we did a lot of ice work andcrevasse rescue and stuff like
that.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Okay, so in the rescue, that wasn't like you
jumping on a walkie-talkie andcalling in a helicopter.
What all do you do as amountaineer when you're rescuing
somebody?
Because that sounds likeintense, amazing and also maybe
scary.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Oh, potentially scary .
Yeah, you're rappelling down ona rope line to somebody who's
either fallen or they're stuckon a mountain where they oh,
this is too hard now I don'tknow what to do, so rappel down
on ropes and then sometimes haulthem back up or keep going down
, lowering them down Crevasserescue, you're pulling them out
of there.
You've got two sheets of iceand they're in the middle here
(05:50):
and you're going down to getthem.
Yeah, that's quite a deal.
Yeah, I can only imagine it'sall technical stuff, if you
think of the movie Cliffhanger,that stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Yeah, okay With Stallone that was a good one.
Yeah, okay, with Stallone, thatwas a good one.
You were doing that in theCanadian Army and then you got
into training for confined spaceentry and rescue Yep Because of
the connection between theskill set you built in.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Mountaineer.
It was so transferable.
It was all knots and ropes andcarabiners and harnesses.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
You're exposed to height.
In a commercial setting itmight be a window washer on a
skyscraper.
You got to go get them becausehe's in a tough spot.
Yeah, oh man, I bet that guywasn't happy if he was stuck.
I've never been in it, okay.
So then my guess is this MrCraig, mr Young Teenage did not
decide he was going to be apublished author and run his own
safety consulting firm.
It just kind of happened.
(06:50):
Is that accurate?
Yeah, that's a fair statement.
Yep, yeah, okay.
So what was originally when youwere mapping out your life
through high school and posthigh school?
What was the plan?
What direction were you headed?
Speaker 1 (07:05):
I for some reason always had an interest in the
army, in the military.
My parents were both in the AirForce.
That's how they met, so therewas a bit of a connection there.
And I met my wife when I was inthe army and I was going to be
a lifer.
I was going to be a soldierright to the end, but then I
became a dad.
So that kind of changed thingsGot it.
I was in my late 20s almost 30,when I decided I was going to
(07:28):
make a change.
We had two little kids at thetime and I thought you know, my
kids didn't even like talking tome if they saw me packing away
my stuff.
Because, back then when I packedup my gear to go.
I was gone for months, ah.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah, yeah.
So they let you know like wedon't like it that you're
leaving us, like just go away,be gone, do it again yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
I thought I would try and make a change while I was
young enough to do it.
I tried a couple of things thatdidn't pan out, because I
assume the military is like thisanywhere you go in as a young
kid and it's a lifestyle, not ajob.
So, transitioning out, themilitary is really good at
bringing young people in,molding them, and they're not so
good at sending them the otherway, which, of course, is why we
have so many problems with ourvets both in the us and canada,
(08:14):
all over the world right yes,yes, yes, yes, like re-entry
into civilian life is not yeah.
So the first couple things youtry, it doesn't work out.
And then a guy I knew waslooking for an instructor for
high angle rescue.
He knew I was looking forsomething and that's kind of how
it connected, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
So what was that like ?
Getting out of the military?
Pretty structured, pretty clearchain of command, pretty clear
expectations.
I'm assuming I've never been inthe military coming into
civilian life.
Was that shocking?
Speaker 1 (08:49):
I was scared for sure , because not only do you have
all that structure, you'repretty protected too, right, you
know.
You know what you got to do,you know.
But I don't know if it wasshocking it was, it was
different.
You heard that phrase beat 50of the people, but just showing
up, well, you probably beat 80of them if you show up on time.
And, of course, in the army,hey, you better be on time,
(09:14):
right, yeah, yeah.
So, and I heard this the otherday and it was, it was brilliant
.
Do you know?
Jocko welling Willinkas?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
But before we go there we're going to do the L&M
family member shout out, andthis one goes to Mr Angel, who I
got to meet as a constructionmanagement student at UTSA, did
a little shindig over there withmy mentor and friend, mike
Hyman.
Angel says this he said thisevent helped me realize and
(09:54):
remember how important it is toallow others to critically think
for themselves rather thanclipping their wings, as you
said.
We can wonder why we are notsoaring with the eagles and
surrounded with turkeys when webecome the solutionizer, as a
leader that is always givingunsolicited advice and solutions
to every problem.
Angel, I'm glad that stuck withyou, because it was a problem I
(10:17):
had for most of my career nevergiving my people the space to
leverage their autonomy, theiragency and their critical
thinking, because I was alwaysgiving them answers.
So folks give Mr Angel a shoutout and also, when you get a
chance, leave a comment.
Leave a five-star review or athree-star review, whichever
(10:37):
makes most sense to you, butwhen you leave me the comments,
that's the ultimate, becausethen I get to shout you out and
I actually know that somebody islistening just besides me.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
So he had a phrase there where he said discipline
equals freedom, right, yep?
And I think that's a good wayto deal with when you come out
of the structure of the army,because the discipline gives you
the flexibility to do what youneed to do.
It allows you to try stuff andwe've done some stuff, so you
got a little bit of courage aswell.
You know, to try stuff youhaven't done.
(11:10):
I think that's a perfectfitting.
Discipline equals freedom, yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
And the phrase is a little counterintuitive, right?
Oh yeah, sometimes, disciplinebeing this rigid, how should say
caste situation, yeah, but it'sreally not no, no it's?
It sets the conditions to befree and grow and learn and
experiment and try.
Yeah, I wish I knew that backin my 20s.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Oh right, I'm glad I didn't have an ip iPhone in the
internet when I was 20.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
So, speaking of the iPhones in the internet, I
mentioned it at the introductionthat you and I connected via
LinkedIn.
What was that like?
What led you to begin postingand engaging on social media?
That's a good question.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, going back to that idea of discipline equals
freedom.
I was surprised I could get upand give a speech, presentation,
training, and when I went towrite my book I felt I had some
imposter syndrome.
Right, the only way to get overthat is to get doing it and do
more of it, because I know Ireally believe what I've been
(12:25):
posting, because it challengesthe status quo a little bit.
So it's one thing to get up infront of a group of people and
speak, but you start posting andputting it out there and it's
out there for the world to seeand it's out there forever.
But I was surprised.
I did not expect.
Where did that impostersyndrome come from?
Look over here, needle it.
Hey, what if they don't like it?
And so you just start postingand then you get some people
(12:49):
saying, hey, yeah, spot on,thanks for saying this and for
bringing it up, and that kind ofthing.
And so I want to, as Itransition, I do a lot of site
work, which is good.
There's a lot of safetyspeakers who aren't doing so
much site work and theydisconnected from their same.
With writers, they getdisconnected from the people
they're trying to influence.
Now I do, probably in mybusiness I do.
(13:12):
Probably 80 to 90% of mybusiness revenue is from doing
site work out in theseconstruction projects.
Currently my clientele is alloil field industrial
construction, is all oil fieldindustrial construction.
And what I'm hoping to do iswith the book and again, why I
publish so much on LinkedIn isto start doing leadership
workshops for the front line.
(13:32):
That's kind of my targetaudience.
That's why the subtitle in thebook is it's Leadership and
Safety at the Sharp End, becausewe've got there's some
excellent leadership workshopsand stuff out there.
But their target audience seemsto be middle management, upper
management and you know what.
And we often in industry and Ithink it's in all industries we
(13:53):
kind of set people up to fail.
When we take a guy or a girlwho's excellent at their craft,
hey, we're going to make thatthe supervisor Boom, we move
them up to the supervisor, givethem no training.
They fail dismally.
So I want to start doing someof that.
The book is written as a bit ofa hand guide, more than just a
lecture or anecdotes and stuff.
(14:14):
It's got stories in it but it'sgot exercises in it and so nice
.
My plan is to use that and dosome half day or one day
workshops and do some follow-up.
I think that's also a missinglink with people that take some
leadership workshops, especiallynew leaders there's no
follow-up afterwards.
Some coaching and that was, Ithink, one of the biggest things
I got out of the army was whenyou take a leadership course and
(14:35):
you move off to the back to theunit, there's always somebody
coaching you To continue thethread of that learning.
Yeah, exactly, so I'd like todo some of that and then keep
doing some job site work so youstay connected with the audience
you're trying to influence andthen move them along.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
So when you say site work, what does that look like?
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Right now it's up in the oil and gas installations.
I'm doing some work at a gasplant right now and they're
getting ready to drill into asalt cavern and do some cavern
storage.
So instead of having tanks upon the ground, they have these
salt caverns that are sealed andthey're down 2,000 meters into
the ground.
I was working up at anothersite further north where they
(15:19):
take sulfur, which is abyproduct of processing oil and
gas.
They make it so it's safe totransport.
It's all industrialconstruction, some of it's new
construction, some of it'smodifying an existing facility
and that kind of thing.
I go up and help out withhazard assessments.
If there's incidents, we doincident investigations see what
actually happened.
I do a lot of coaching.
(15:41):
Instead of doing safety rules,I work with the supervisors.
Rules is part of it, but I workwith the supervisors on how to
be leaders and make their worksite safe, so that you're not
just doing checkbox.
Yeah, we've got this.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
We've got that hazard assessment stuff, so what
surprises or awakenings have youhad?
Speaker 1 (16:09):
in working with leaders and helping them
understand their responsibilityor contributions to the safety
mindset.
I think some of the mostsuccessful work I've had doing
that is changing the mindset ofbeing in charge.
It's not that you're in charge,as you have people under your
charge that you have to takecare of and make sure they get
home.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
So what's the difference?
I love this.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
You're responsible for them.
One of the first things to dois I do a lot of talk.
I even have a chapter in thebook about saying stop saying
safety is number one, becauseit's not.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Oh, whoa, whoa, oh the horse.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
I get a lot of people going what?
And it's not that you don'twant anyone to get hurt, but the
company is doing some newconstruction on an existing
facility so they can make moremoney.
The contractors got the job sothey can make more money, and
the workers they do the job sothey can pay the rent and fill
the mortgage or the freezer.
(16:59):
And it's okay to say that we'rethere to make money.
You got to get past thisnonsense of saying safety is
number one, because as soon asyou say that and schedule's
pushed and something goes behind, and then we start eroding that
yes, and so I think I have someimpact, because a lot of safety
people won't say that right,right, oh yeah.
(17:19):
And when you're the safety guyand you're coming up and you say
, stop saying that.
One of the things I try to say alot is when you're a leader,
you can't talk your way tosomething you behaved your way
into.
So you've got to get out thereand you've got to connect.
You've got to see what thedrivers are with your workers
and see what's going on withtheir head.
Have they got a sick one athome?
Are they present?
Right, yep, right, yep.
(17:45):
So that's what I mean aboutwhen they're in your charge.
Your job is to take care ofthem.
You don't have to teach themhow to be a pipe fitter, a
welder, an electrician or aplumber.
They are already there.
They're the craftsmen.
Just get out of their way.
Let them get to it.
Break down the barriers so theycan get their work done right.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Yes, so I heard the heard one friend of mine say
here's the deal my teams installteams out there, the vehicles
on the road and they need to getto where we need to get.
My job as a manager and leaderon the job site is to make sure
they have all green lights.
I was like, dude, yes, clearthe road for them and let them
(18:21):
do it and make sure you'retaking care of them.
Yeah, and I think for me, likethat the idea, because I spent a
little bit of time as a safetyprofessional like super small
period of time and I askedmyself the question of, like,
what is safety?
How do I define safety?
Safety, how do I define safety?
(18:41):
And I could only come up withit's taking care of people,
being responsible for the peoplein my charge, to use your
language right, beingresponsible for them and to them
, to facilitate them doing whatthey needed to do and not
getting hurt or injured or anyyeah, like that's a given right.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
You want to make sure everyone gets home and not hurt
and there was some jingle intheir pocket.
But those are given Safety.
It's when you hear it.
It's often no, we've got rulesand stuff and we do for sure.
But it's not about that, it'sabout the people.
I had a bit of an epiphany.
I was probably an intermediatesafety person by now like
experience, wise and knowledgeand stuff about seven, eight
(19:25):
years into my career.
I've been doing it for god, 26years.
But uh, and I started to to notdrink the kool-aid.
I started questioning thingslike we would focus on injury
rates and I always used used towonder I don't think Bob the
(19:45):
Builder cares whether yourfrequency rate for your injury
is 0.1 for 100,000 man hours,but he probably cares about his
friend Joe who might get hurt.
So I stopped drinking theKool-Aid and a turning point for
me was this is going to soundcrazy, but I was at the company
who made five fatalities oneyear, right, oh my God.
(20:07):
These job sites were all reallyremote, like way out into
Northern Alberta, NorthernCanada, and they were all single
vehicle accidents they were.
These guys were driving to thework sites or from the work
sites on their way home and theywere all ejected out of the
vehicles.
They were single vehiclerollovers guys tossed out.
(20:27):
They either hit something orthe vehicle hit something when
it was rolling over them.
And three of them were marriedand a couple of them had kids.
So we were on this massivecampaign.
A lot of really hard work wentinto this.
We had presentations and wewere traveling with directors
and VPs of the companies.
It was a big oil and gasservice company.
(20:47):
As the safety guys we weredriving these guys around to the
different remote work sites andI was up in an area I think
it's called Tommy Lakes.
So if you picture Alberta andBritish Columbia on the border
and then the NorthwestTerritories up here, like we're
up right here, like a snowball'sa throw from the Arctic Circle.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
So we're I was just going to say that sounds really
cold.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Oh it was, it was wintertime, we were doing this,
and so I get up, we get up there.
We're supposed to give thispresentation.
Have you ever heard the phrasedeath by PowerPoint?
Oh yeah, you takepoint slidesand you print them and you're
going to review these with anindustrial work crew out on a
work site.
It's not going to go well yeah,like, yeah, whatever, man.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
So it's going to be good for my little camping fire
I was asked if I could do thepresentation.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
I'm outside the crew truck.
They had one of them suburbanone-time crew trucks and they
had a crew truck that would gofrom the work site to the camp,
the industrial camp.
They were staying in and it waslike an ugly winter road.
I wasn't supposed to be doingthe presentations, it was the
presidents and the vicepresidents and directors.
Oh yeah, but I get up there andthis guy says I hate public
(21:55):
speaking.
Can you do this?
I didn't even look at thepresentation because I wasn't
going to be speaking.
Right, right, I'm lookingthrough this PowerPoint.
I'm going through the slidesand thinking, oh, these suck,
this is terrible.
And so it's like death byPowerPoint on steroids.
Right, I happened to look to myright at the crew truck.
(22:16):
There's no one in the truck andthe seatbelts are all connected
, right, so they're clipped in.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Yeah, and nobody's in the truck.
Nobody's in the truck.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
So they can get in the truck and they can go where
they're going to go.
They don't have to listen to thedinger of the seatbelt warning
right, yeah, okay.
And they had an ugly winterroad.
There was a ravine on one sideand a hill on the other.
So I just I thought, oh, thisis not good.
I tossed the presentation in thetrash on my way into the
meeting and I asked the guys howmany of you guys wear your
seatbelt in the crew truck?
I said it's okay.
(22:48):
I said no one's going to be introuble when I drive from this
site down to 50 miles or 80kilometers to the next site.
You're going to do what you'regoing to do anyway, so no one's
going to be in trouble.
I said 15 of you guys aremarried, 11 of you got kids.
So I talked about these fiveguys whose family had to move on
.
I said so here's the deal.
When you're driving down thatroad back to camp and you slide
(23:11):
off the hill into the ravine,you're at minus 30 degrees.
You're probably going to die.
I said if you're okay withsomebody else raising your kids
and and sleeping with your wife,don't put your seatbelt on.
Oh, wow, yeah.
So that was an epiphany.
The reason I say it was anepiphany for me was I had a
(23:31):
couple guys go Craig, you're anasshole?
I said maybe, but that's thereality of it.
Yes, and he goes.
No, I said thanks for it.
I never looked at my safetythat way.
I always looked at as a ruleand management's telling us this
, doing that, and so that's whenI started thinking safety's not
about rules and injury rates.
It's about making it personal,like there's no such thing as
(23:54):
zero risk.
So you got to manage it to thepoint where you can deal with it
right yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
So I imagine when you like it was clear, like it
clicked.
You looked in the truck I said,oh, that's the largest
contributing factor.
Here's the reality, ifsomething like they take on the
risk.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
So it became very clearly like, oh duh, and then
you forget the PowerPoint.
They can use that paper forsomething else.
Powerpoint, they could use thatpaper for something else.
Here's what your decision couldcreate.
Are you okay with that?
Bam, two by four between theeyes.
So in the moment you're like,oh, this, I can really connect
with people on a human level.
(24:34):
And then it sounds like fromthat point you said, okay, from
here forward, this is how I'mgoing to do it Now.
Leading up to that, it was therisk assessments, the box
checking, the pre-test, safetyplans, whatever all of those
words out there.
Yeah, yeah, all the words, yeah, right.
So all your colleagues werestill in that same bucket.
(24:55):
What was that like?
Knowing that man, what I?
My perspective is totallydifferent than what we've been
taught, than what we've studied,than what the corporations are
completely bought into.
What was going through yourhead?
Did you see friction in?
Speaker 1 (25:13):
your future.
Yeah, yeah, my boss, at thetime, like I said, this was a
time when I wasn't so much anovice, I was kind of an
intermediate.
But you're right at that pointwhere you start to question
things like does this add value?
So I would ask questions likethey'd come up with an
initiative.
For example, I would say thingslike does this make it better
for the guy out on the tools?
(25:33):
Hmm, oh, you're being difficult.
No, no, I want to know.
Right, no-transcript.
(26:14):
These guys did good.
They didn't break nothing.
The ruts from the tires arelike up to my knees.
It's impressive that they coulddo this.
So they were busy when I, whenI got there, I introduced myself
to the supervisor and I said,well, I'll go do a couple of
things I got to do and maybe wecould talk to the crew afterward
.
It was funny, you remember, inthose situations where the mud's
picking up on your boots andyour boots are getting heavier
and heavier.
(26:35):
I was walking between the twobuildings and there was a cable
going from one to the other likea bonding cable, tried to step
over it and my boot hit it and Ithought, oh, here we go, I'm
gonna fall into the mud and thesafety guy's got a face full of
mud.
But when my boot hit the cableit came out of the connection.
So I thought, oh, oh.
(26:55):
So I I went around and checkedall the connections and I went
to the supervisor.
And this supervisor, he was yourquintessential tough, not oil
field or construction guy, likewhatever's in here is coming out
here and there's no filter andit's going to have a few
expletives.
So I asked him.
I said, hey, I can go and fixthe connections.
(27:17):
The bonding connections are allloose.
You guys are busy.
Oh, I'll tighten them.
And he looks at me like what I.
Actions are all loose, you guysare busy, I'll tighten them.
And he looks at me like what Isaid?
I can't find the wrench, so Ineed to.
I'll tighten them up, can youget?
Speaker 2 (27:28):
rid.
Yeah, you were asking him for awrench and he's like what the
hell?
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yeah.
And then I said look, when wehave the meeting with the crew,
let's talk about staticelectricity, because we just had
a fire on another site wherestatic electricity ignited the
rig tanks on a drilling rig.
The crew had put it out butstill it was static electricity
that started.
And I said you guys are pullingpipe out of the well, that's
important, right?
He goes oh, yeah, definitely.
(27:51):
So we talked to the crew andtalked about how static
electricity happens and talkedabout the importance of bonding,
like the guys had made theconnections, but they just
didn't tighten anything down.
And that supervisor says oh, Ihad to write a report.
If there's any deficienciesfrom an inspection, you would
put it on that.
And this guy he says can Iwrite on this?
(28:11):
I said, yeah, sure, so hewrites.
It was really.
It was humbling because he saysfinally a safety guy that can
come to this job site anytime hewrites that on the report.
And then I got thinking, oh, myboss is going to see that he
says to me.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Come on, Craig, we'll take you anytime.
And your boss didn't say you'redoing something wrong.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
It turns out, they kind of got cross-threaded
somehow a few times and he says.
I said, yeah, this ought to begood.
My boss ain't going to likethat.
He goes, your boss is afreaking asshole.
And sure enough, a couple ofweeks later he sees that and he
goes what's this?
I said hey, I don't know.
I told him what happened.
I said maybe you gotcross-threaded to this guy, I
(28:59):
don't know.
I said he actually says to meyou were just a pushover and you
didn't do your job out there.
I said you can look at it thatway, or you can look at it and
say maybe, just maybe one ofyour people had some impact
today.
And then I walked away.
I was a sergeant in the army,I'm not going to be intimidated
by this little right.
(29:21):
So anyway, the funny story is,as I was walking back clearly
annoyed, back to my office, anoperations manager that I'd
worked with in the past atanother company called me.
He was at a new drillingcompany, said they're looking
for a safety manager oh really.
And I walked back and gave myresignation, nice.
(29:42):
And then I became a safetymanager and I got to try a lot
of the stuff that I talk aboutas a leader.
And this one guy I worked withhe was a VP, he was the COO of
the company.
His name is Randy Hawkins.
This was one of my best bossesever worked for Wow.
(30:04):
So as the safety manager, Ireported to the COO and he said
to me I didn't know we could dosafety this way.
This is like excellent.
I thought we're onto somethinghere.
So one of the things that ledto me writing the book was I'd
give speeches and presentationsand stuff and a couple of guys
go man, you got to write some ofthis stuff down, craig.
And I wonder and so that wasthe beginning of maybe I should
(30:27):
look at doing a book, and howwould I write a like a book that
?
So it's really more of a bookabout leadership and influence
than it is a safety book.
It's got a safety theme to it,but that's all.
Safety is whatever's going to besuccessful for you as a leader,
no matter where you are in thefood chain, is going to make you
successful, influencing safety,because that's all you're doing
(30:48):
is you're influencing.
We don't need more rules.
There's lots of those and Ithink the mistake a lot of
people make in the safety fieldis they go to a tradesman, like
a builder or whatever he is, awelder, somebody who's been
around a long time, and we makethe mistake of trying to tell
them how to do their job andtheir craft.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Yeah, yeah, you know there's a whole bunch there.
I applaud you for having thecourage to do that.
And then I think the world justdoes that right.
You have this awakening and youhave a kind of awesome
experience on site.
You actually helped, like youdidn't leave a list of critiques
, you helped, got a good notefrom the site leader, pissed off
(31:31):
your boss, got a new job offer.
It all worked out.
Oh, it did, yeah.
But what I think is mostimportant is that you had the
courage to say no, I'm going todo it differently.
Yeah, right, so much so thatyou had the COO, like saying I
didn't know we could do safetythis way.
And in my head there's adistinct difference between
(31:54):
compliance, the way I categorizeit is.
There's the safetyprofessionals that are
compliance focused yeah, andthen there's the minority, the
like super tiny, teeny tinynumber of safety professionals
that are people focused.
How do we make it better forthe people?
How do we serve the peopleversus the compliance thing?
And so I got a question.
(32:16):
I took some.
I can't remember some trainingis a week long safety training,
because I was in a safety roleand I remember sitting in that
training.
It was about 20-some-odd people.
I was in Minnesota, kind ofclose to y'all, and it was
colder than I like.
I don't even know how cold itis up your way.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Well, I think Minnesota is like south of
Saskatchewan and Alberta, soyeah, we get a lot of the same
weather, yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah, so get a lot of the same weather.
Yeah, yeah, so it was cold andI remember sitting in there and
it was me and two othergentlemen.
We were like the outcasts.
We were the weirdos that wereasking questions about influence
and leadership, and themajority of the people in there
wanted to know what is the rule,what is the consequence?
(33:02):
Where is the page that I cancite this violation?
What's the maximum that we canlike super compliance, focus,
and me and the other two guyswe're talking about different
things, about collaborating withthe leadership and getting
involved hands-on with thetrades, and can you do this sort
of thing?
And I'm looking and the rest ofthe guys are like.
They're like could y'all pleasejust shut up Because we don't
(33:25):
care.
Anyways, fast forward.
I'm talking to the guys atlunch and whatever.
And I'm asking okay, so you'relike the head safety guy for
your company?
Yes, and these were alldifferent framing companies,
roofing companies, generalcontract like all construction,
almost all of them, with theexception of one.
One guy was there because hehad a pretty damn significant
(33:49):
handicap injury.
And the company said, hey, howabout you lead our safety goal?
Because you got a great storyand he did, like his whole
attitude change or whateverEverybody else.
Their boss said, hey, I wantyou to be the safety guy.
And they're like the headsafety person for the company.
And so in that moment, this isso.
Here's my question.
Like in that moment, what Ithought I saw was like my boss
(34:15):
when they recruited me.
They were explicit.
They said we want you to helpus transform our safety culture.
We want to have a morepeople-focused experience.
We want to be lesscompliance-driven and more
people-focused.
I said, hell, yeah, let's go.
Everybody, like those otherguys that were there.
(34:35):
Their boss said we need asafety guy because we got to do
something to improve ourinsurance rates and they picked
compliance focused people andput them in a safety role.
So, man, that's a long way toask the damn question.
I think, and I'm wondering whatyour thoughts are like there
(34:57):
are so many safety professionalsthat are 100% singularly
focused on filling in thepaperwork and checking the boxes
and guarding against liability,and I think it's because it's a
reflection of what their bossis, the decision makers within
the company.
I think it's a reflection oftheir view of what safety is and
(35:18):
can be.
What do you think?
Speaker 1 (35:20):
I think you're onto something there.
Compliance is an easilymeasurable thing.
The rules say this and this, orwe do this and this.
Bang Simple, but you're onlygoing to ever.
You'll never get beyondmediocre if you're focused on
compliance.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Say it again, Craig.
Say it again.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Because, if you think of standards, you got a company
that's failing.
They're down here and the rulesare bringing you to this level.
So you're going to complianceand you're going to get there,
but you're not going to sustainanything.
You're going to always bemediocre.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
You're still going to be hurting people.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
You're still going to have rules broken, because if
you're compliance focused,you're going to pencil, whip
stuff.
We did all this stuff, boom,let's go to work.
And so you're kind of playingthe short game versus the long
game.
There's always a culture, right.
But if you're going to becompliance focused, you're
always going to be in thepassenger seat on influencing
the culture, because you'regoing to be the one getting
(36:12):
influenced, versus in thedriver's seat and influencing
the work environment.
I hate I have to speak thislanguage but I don't like it.
There's culture, not safetyculture, right, because you're
not going to have a really goodsafety culture on one side with
a really bad work environment onthe other, or a culture right,
it's just going to be bad.
What's the other one?
(36:32):
Leader, oh, safety leadership,there's just leadership.
It's just going to be bad.
What's the other one?
Oh, safety leadership, there'sjust leadership.
It's not safety leadership,there's leadership.
But that's the terms we have inthe industry, so I use them.
But really, if you just take apeople-focused approach and make
sure we've got the guys set upto succeed and taken all the
barriers down so they can gettheir job done, then yeah, we're
(36:53):
going to make a difference.
But if you're compliancefocused, you're not going to
sustain anything.
You're going to get toomediocre.
You're going to stay there.
You might have a little pocketof excellence every now and
again, but you won't sustain it.
It'll fade back down.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
I love that.
If you're compliance focused,the best you can expect is
mediocre yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Because if you think of OH&S standards, whether
you're in Canada or the US,those rules in OH&S are written
because someone got hurt orkilled.
Yep, their minimum Yep.
So if you're only everachieving compliance, you're
just getting above an injuryright, you're going to be
mediocre and that's all you'regoing to achieve.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
It's going to be mediocre and that's all you're
going to achieve.
Is it going to be easy toachieve?
Yeah, not killing people.
Wow, that's an accomplishmentLike it's not.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Like we have.
Oh my goodness, so what's what?
One of the things that'shappened and this is where we
need to speak with leaders on isin in just about all industries
, we've gotten pretty good atreducing the injury rates and,
to some degree, the severity ofthe injuries.
Were you ever taught thattriangle where you have so many
injuries?
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Oh, yeah, yeah, or behaviors would lead to so many
things which would eventuallylead to fatality.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
If our injury rates are dropping and the severity is
dropping, then there should beless fatalities, right?
Sure, yeah, but there isn't.
In Canada, like in Alberta, forexample, we have the National
Day of Mourning every April.
In the States they call itWorkers Memorial Day.
It's on the same day, it's onthe 28th of April.
Yep, if you look at the numbers.
(38:25):
So in Alberta, where I'm at, weaverage 160 work fatality a
year and it's been like that for15 years.
Maybe 158, 166.
It's just like that for 15years.
Maybe 158, 166.
It's just like that.
Across canada, it's been 900 toa thousand workers a year for
15 years.
In the states, I believe, it's5 000.
Your population is what are you?
(38:49):
300 million people?
Like canada, we're only 40million people.
So, okay, but you can go to anyregion.
You can go to the uk, you cango to australia.
It's the same thing.
The number is going to bedifferent, but the change is not
right, so pretty flatline thenumber of deaths.
It's been flatlined, and so youwould think if that triangle is
actually true, we would havethat number should come down,
(39:11):
but there's a gap there somehow,and so we need to get better at
reducing the fatalities.
One of the things that'shappened recently this has never
happened before, at least onrecord is in Alberta
occupational cancer is now oneof the number one killers.
It's like asbestos and stufflike that.
So I got looking at that whenCanada was in Afghanistan with
(39:32):
the American military, we werethere what?
20 years, Something like that.
In the time that Canada wasthere, we lost 128 soldiers in
combat In combat In combat 128in 11 years.
We have 160 in construction.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
It's going to work every year.
So, craig, well, first L&Mfamily.
You don't have to be a safetyprofessional to appreciate what
Craig is talking about, becausehe's talking about.
You already said it right youtook not safety leadership, it's
leadership.
It's not safety culture, it'sculture.
If you're only focused oncompliance, the best you're
(40:08):
going to achieve is mediocre.
These are universal ideas thatare applicable to any industry,
any department.
You know it's interesting and Idon't know the answer, but I've
been in my career in thesespecialized roles safety guy,
lean guy, these different things.
I'm going to give the benefitof the doubt and the intent is
(40:31):
to provide a better experiencefor the men and women that are
out there doing the work.
However, what I got to see overand over again is managers kind
of behave.
There's this unwritten rulethat if there is a safety
professional, that means theydon't have to worry about safety
and, more specifically, theydon't have to have any of the
(40:53):
hard conversations related tosafety, because the safety
professional will do that, orthe QAQC person will do that, or
the lean person is going to dothat.
I worked with this was backwhen I was a foreman, I think,
maybe even early superintendent.
We had a safety professionaland that guy just oh man, he
would piss me off Like you'vebeen thinking about him.
(41:16):
Just really, because here's thething as a safety professional
you have, I believe you have theultimate platform to influence
the business, to influence theleaders in their way they think
and the decisions that they makein supporting the people, and
you have a direct, no holdsbarred access to every level of
(41:40):
the organization.
So it's like the role that, ifyou like me, if you're an
influence freak, that roleitself is the perfect role that
can be super, super leveraged.
The power that they have thatmaybe they're not aware of just
goes wasted so often.
Anyway, so I'll stop beating onthat.
(42:01):
But this guy, we had thisprocess called MISA Mentally
Installed Systems on Paper andso the idea is we'll peel our
drawings apart, look at the work, get all up into the weeds.
How are we going to execute it?
Is it going to be scaffolding?
What are we going to do?
Like just brainstorming?
How are we going to approachthe work If let's bring the
(42:22):
safety guy in and say hey man,there's this thing right here.
We're not exactly sure what thesafe is.
This is what we're thinking,but that's not going to work.
It's a stairwell, blah, blah,blah, blah, blah.
His response would be that'sy'all's job.
And yeah, just imagine thatevery time we reached out to him
(42:43):
to be as a resource to help usmitigate the risk or design
something to get as safe as wepossibly can, his answer was
always.
And his answer was alwaysthat's y'all's job.
Y'all are the professional.
But he would come back aroundand boy would he hammer us every
(43:03):
time oh, you're in violation,these are the things you're not
doing.
It's like, okay, what can we do?
Well, that's y'all's deal.
And I'm like what the hell areyou here?
Jeez, can you tell?
I'm having a flashback here andit was like and I've seen a
bunch of, he's just the worstexample, but I've seen so many
safety professionals.
(43:24):
The way they operate is theycome in after the fact and
critique you and make sure mylike, did you do?
Somebody got injured, okay, orthere was a near miss?
Let me see your pre-tax safetyplan.
Guess what that task wasn't onthe plan Violation, let me see.
It doesn't solve anything anddoesn't bust a grape in trying
(43:47):
to help us make the work better.
But by this point in theconversation there may be some
safety people that are likescrew these guys.
I'm confident that the L&Mfamily out there is going to
(44:10):
take some of these really simple, clear and I'm going to make
sure to clip out these punch inyour gut points because they're
that and again, they'reapplicable in leadership and
influence and serving people.
Period Doesn't matter whatdepartment, what industry,
they're universally applicable.
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