Earlier I shared a quote from Hippocrates in 450 B.C. and in that post, I mentioned that management’s reliance on incident rates is a sickness. That got me a lot of texts and a few phone calls. So I figured I would explain what I meant by that.
Reliance on lagging indicators to measure the presence of safety by the measure of fewer consequences from accidents is NOT how any other business function gets measured. Management can NOT control the injury rates, but they most certainly can control the SMS/Safety Process that influences those rates. So the whole idea is to provide a safe path that management can follow AND measure which will lead them to their chosen end goal.
But when this is presented to a management team that is immature in their safety thinking, it is much like dealing with an addict. Go ask the addict if they need help. What is the most common response? “I don’t need help – I’ve got everything under control”. This is very much what management will say when presented with an alternative metric system, one they can actually control vs. trying to control the injury rate.
For an addict to desire change, they have to hit “rock bottom”. An organization is the same. The problem is, every addict and organization has very different “rock bottoms”. Some will seem to be “bottomless pits”, meaning they will spiral out of control for many years, suffering horrific consequences but still able to convince themselves that…
