Recently, I had the pleasure of working with one of my international clients at several locations. This is in thanks to Paul A. for putting his trust in me throughout my career. Paul and I met in Omaha, NE, in the late 90s and formed a professional and personal friendship as he is ALL ABOUT SAFETY guiding business decisions. We worked for a man I have mentioned numerous times, Dale F, who was an unbelievable safety leader. He was the Plant Manager, and “Paul” was the Engineering/Maintenance Manager. We built one hell of a process safety management system at Great Lakes Chemical. Unfortunately, GLCC decided to close the Omaha facility, and we all went our separate ways. It was tough to leave Dale and Paul, but having grown up in Western TN, I was not a fan of Memphis, and that was the opportunity offered to me, so I chose to leave GLCC for General Electric Plastics in AL. However, we all remained close and always tried to come back together in all our future assignments with different organizations. When I decided to begin consulting in 2004, these two men filled up my year, and I have never looked back, doing work for them still today. My decision to slow down and begin planning for retirement was heavily based on these two men coming of age to retire. It is just a special time around them, as I still learn so much in their presence. I always leave their facilities energized with a fresh perspective that safety is alive and well in some organizations. This leads me to my recent time with Paul. I was doing some ER planning and training and process safety engineering work at two of his high-risk facilities. At the end of my time, he invited me to a town hall with their CEO, Chairman of the Board, and their 50 largest customers. After dinner, there was an open floor for questions, and the first question asked by one of the customers was,
“What motivates you the most as a CEO?”
Remember, this was a quality town hall with their 50 biggest customers, so I am sure they wanted to hear something like “Quality is our #1 motivator”. But no, he immediately went into how the safety of their employees drives every decision within the organization and how that responsibility starts with him and the Chairman, who was smiling and nodding his head, as were all 12 of the executives sitting on the stage. Paul made eye contact and smiled as if to say… “see, I told you this would make a nice home for you in your final years.”
The CEO and Chairman stood up and took over the stage as the topic excited them. They went into how the organization’s SMS was stolen from their QMS, but they have learned “the hard way” that an event that causes undesired consequences impacts everything, including quality. They discussed the resource challenges in finding solid employees who want a career that they can train and develop into world-class chemical operators, techs, supervisors, and engineers. This challenge not only impacts safety, but quality also suffers, and keeping those workers safe and happy in their roles and duties means fewer events, which transpire into fewer quality issues.
“Quality follows safety, and Safety impacts Quality. You can not separate these two critical functions. A failure in one management system means we have a failure in the other, and neither can be acceptable to a business that espouses making safety or quality an essential objective in how we run our business.”
They went on to discuss how Quality and Safety are measured. I was so excited to hear them using some key catchphrases and their ability to explain the pros and cons of these metrics. They sounded like seasoned safety pros up there.
Afterward, I spent an hour with these two men, and I was awe-struck. They were very down to earth, and all they wanted to talk about was safety, specifically process safety and, more specifically, my PHAs and PSM expectations. Apparently, a few of my recommendations made up the ladder to them for budgeting approval, and they asked where these recommendations were coming from, and I was thrown under the bus, but it was not like that. My “crazy safety expectations” did not get me in trouble, it got me tons of repeat business and an hour-long meeting with a CEO and COB to discuss my future with their company. No, I am not leaving SAFTENG again as I did for Union Pacific Railroad in 2022, but it is nice to know I have plenty of work for the next 1.5 years working with this company and their “Journey to Safety Excellence.” The four of us could not be more in line with what safety should look like, sound like, and feel like. Paul and I and his team of Plant Managers and executive team will begin my “mapping exercise” to establish where they are now, where they want to go, and how long they want to take to get there.
So exciting to see this level of commitment to safety excellence from the very top of such a huge and global organization. And just an FYI, the CEO is not an American, and the COB and most of the BOD are.
