Competitive advantage in the marketplace no longer lies with managing and beating competition; rather, it lies with creating and capturing new value with the customer, resulting in secured loyalty. Too often, attempts to improve safety include language such as “safety first,” “safe production,” and “safety mindset.” The focus is on making safety a priority, a value, an integral responsibility. The perception, real or not, is that safety must compete with production. This is outdated thinking.
When our goal is to beat the competition, we will fail because our competition (i.e., production), the drivers of business revenue and profit, are at the heart of business strategy. We must have a strategy to support, rather than conflict with, business strategy. Business strategy eats safety strategy all day long.