Timothy Ludwig Ph.D.

I had been warmly welcomed to South Africa. We were there to work with a mining construction company who wanted to solve their safety challenge. The immensity of this challenge hit us on our day off while we dealt with our jet lag.

The most effective individual in your company may be the employee safety committee member who has gained not only your trust but has done the miraculous job of bringing together the often-bickering functions of your organization. They can bring together union and management like my dear friend Tim Meier at Marathon Refining.

The term "Safety Culture" has become like the term "Engagement" in popular management writings. There is no common agreement on the term. We are left with (mis)interpretations of terms like “Safety Culture”, which lead to haphazard attempts at changing organizations toward improvement.

We wish the world would be more like a kid’s show instead of a place of violence such we saw in the needless bombing during the Boston Marathon.  Wholesome, nurturing, recreational events shouldn’t be the stage for tragedies happening right in our neighborhoods.