Not all senior executives care about safety with the passion exhibited by CEOs who are great safety leaders. Senior executives who rise through non-operations channels often have little knowledge or experience with even the most basic core concepts of leading edge safety management. More importantly, they may not recognize the disastrous outcomes that are possible, or they may have homespun theories about why accidents occur, how they are prevented, and their own role in prevention.
Unfortunately, most delegate and dismiss safety to the people who report to them. This all-to-common practice will not bring about the kind of high-reliability performance needed in high-hazard industries.
Addressing the leadership inadequacies exemplified by the BP Gulf oil spill catastrophe requires a new vision of safety from senior executives in industry and public officials in government, new standards and oversight, and rigorous enforcement. The highest performing organizations in high-hazard industries use existing methodologies from the human sciences to assure high levels of safe and reliable operation.
But these organizations are the exception more than the rule.
Some senior leaders understand and act on safety management issues; most do not. It is critically important for the organization’s CEO and senior executive leadership team to grasp and accept the necessity of possessing leading edge safety methodologies. There are three levels of understanding exhibited by senior executive leaders concerning the central role played by safety in their businesses:
1) Those who don’t get it at all;
2) Those who get it thoroughly and act accordingly;
3) Those who think they get it but in reality do not,
yet nevertheless try to convey that they are among the converted.
The most difficult and damaging leaders exist in this third category, and it is at least as common as the other types. In “get it but don’t” cases the situation looks like this: “our CEO says the right things about safety, but we aren’t always sure she really means it. And some of our senior leaders don’t care about safety really but give lip service to it. Our middle level leaders are all over the map on safety, but it is exceptional to find a great safety leader.”