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Workplace Safety Culture

The Vulcan Mind Meld – Achieving a common, excellent safety culture

By Mike Williamsen Ph.D., CSP
Thought Leadership
March 21, 2016

The basics of safety like PPE, JSA, OSHA, etc. are good fundamentals. However, achieving true safety excellence must include both the basics and go beyond them. The old Star Trek adventure series had the ideal solution; a Vulcan Mind Meld that transferred total knowledge from one person to another. But somehow this fantasy solution is just not available to those of us who have to live and operate in the current world of reality.

We seem to be more in an Enterprise Resource Planning world where a mile wide and an inch deep is just not good enough. We must build systems, procedures and practices with intensity; an intensity that deals with error-proofing and delivering excellence in all that our machines and people do on a daily basis. We must develop, prove and live the safety culture which can meld the minds and actions of our people and families into living a culture of correct. This goes into the hard work of reality and beyond science fiction and hope for the best.

What can achieve this mind meld safety culture? I think it takes a pit bull mentality with respect to safety; one that is relentless, untiring, totally engaged, focused on just the next thing and all the while doing the basics very well. I guess this would be called something like a Pit Bull Vulcan Mind Meld safety culture.

Originally posted at http://safetycultureworld.blogspot.com/

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“The Doc” Mike Williamsen is a nationally recognized workplace safety consultant with more than 25 years of safety and business change management experience. His background includes serving in Engineering, Operations, and Safety Manager positions for companies such as Frito-Lay, Inc., and General Dynamics. Mike has applied high-impact safety principles to Fortune 500 companies such as General Dynamics, Baxter Healthcare, ATCO Electric, Rohm and Haas Co., and BASF. He received his academic degrees from the University of California, Berkeley (B.S.), California State University, Hayward (MBA) and Columbia Southern University, Orange Coast, Alabama (Ph.D., Business).

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