Safety Wars
Cultural Pushback Strategies Faced by Safety Professionals Part 1
March 25, 2021
Cultural Pushback Strategies Faced by Safety Professionals (and other people too!) Part 1. The original article is https://www.safetywars.com/safety-wars-blog/2020/10/Pushback-Faced-by-Safety-Professionals
[00:00:00] :  Okay, this is this show is brought to you by Safety FM. The following program is rated for mature audiences. It may contain adult language, adult situations and frank safety discussions. The names in certain details have been changed to protect the safe and the unsafe. But believe me, every item in here is true. Mhm cultural pushback strategies faced by safety professionals today on safety wars. Ultimately, in any discussion with the younger safety professionals and managers, the question comes up as to how do I manage a workforce that seems to be 100% against safety? How do I engage my workforce and try to change corporate culture? Often when I'm getting so much pushback by the corporate culture? The corporate culture refuses to change, and we have a horrible one. When it comes to safety, I always refer people back to rules for radicals via Saul Alinsky. It turns out that well, no one ever reads them or follows it up, so I tend to teach it myself. I offer no solutions. You've got to find out what those are for yourself, but I do identify some behaviors and some stories that I have on each one of these. Yeah, Who is Saul Alinsky? He was a community organizer in Chicago that witnessed the violence in the late 19 sixties at the Democratic National Convention. He went to add to the crowd and said, Look, you're doing it all wrong and to affect change, You don't do it by violence of my organization. Hard work and struggle. When I began reading these rules, I noticed that these rules are some of what we have to deal with that safety professionals. We're trying to change corporate culture. A lot of times we're trying to change it to a safer one, more productive one one where everybody works together, the best they can, of course. Okay, so I also realized that it was being used by us, not only against us, but by us against the workforce. This ends up in a situation where everybody hates each other. So I spent a couple of years thinking about this stuff and presented it as a one half hour filler through A has a lot of refresher course for young managers over at New Jersey City University who asked about how to manage safety when you're dealing with the workforce that seems to be 100% against them and was one of the few mic drop moments that I have had in my career. I've also presented this to several organizations, so if you are easily triggered, this might not be the discussion for you. By the way, we should not use the word enemy when dealing with our co workers. But it's in with the original text, and I want it to be true to the original text rule Number one Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have. As a safety professional, you're hired to help a company with a problem or issue. You may be there for a long term. Short term. You may be coming in as a consultant doesn't matter what it is if you are lucky. The company has a well established program and a fully self actualized team. If you're not lucky, it seems like I was not very lucky. You are probably being brought in to manage a problem that is best handled by human resources. You realize that the company needs some type of cultural change. So how does this rule manifest itself this could be as simple as I have worked here for a very long time. Jim and I am a insert your favorite relationship or association Could be brother, father, son, daughter, mother doesn't matter. Then it's followed up with something along the lines of Leave me alone and don't rock the boat or I'll make trouble. This can be done overtly, or it can be implied often. This is the reason why a company hires you to manage their problems. The end result is that you cannot do your job effectively and you lose it. The problems, staff or team keep stairs and what happens. Ultimately, people continue to get hurt or get injured or die. At some places you don't do your job, you get frustrated, you get angry, you get better and everything else and you go on to your next assignment, repeating the same issues again and again and again. You find out that the folks who gave you this idea and made this threat to you don't rock the boat are not well respected in the organization to begin with, and they basically lied and intimidated you. So what do you do? You try to identify these situations early and handle them early before they get out of hand. Number two. Number three go together. Number two is never go outside expertise of your people or yourself. For that matter. And number three, whenever possible, go outside of the expertise of the enemy so you can see how these two to go together. So never go outside the expertise to your people, provide expertise and my advice about what you know, tread carefully into areas you have no expertise in. It's better off. And you say, Hey, look, I'm not sure on that. Let me double check and always double check. If you're not sure. Triple check. Get someone who does have the expertise. The worst thing that you can be in, among others, Right? One of the worst is you might be told that you are wrong and the worst way, and it destroys your credibility. They won't listen to you ever again, but that's what what you gotta do whenever possible, go outside the expertise and the enemy. One strategy that people try to undermine you with is to find out what your strengths and weaknesses are. They probe what those are, then they concentrate on what you know. This often becomes an old fashioned game of distraction. A good example of this is what I run into all the time, but I got a little bit wiser for it. Over the years you're auditing one trade. You mentioned that air is a problem. There might be a problem, or it may be a major problem that they really don't want to address because it's going to take time to fix. And you're told, Why are you worrying about this? You should be worrying about whatever is going on upstairs. They're doing some type of real activity. Maybe it's a forklift operation or another operation where someone's working very unsafely. So you go upstairs when you find out there is nobody up there. Now this is not happening, and they just send you on a wild goose chase for a good laugh. Google South Park. The tribe, aka Defense or South Park, Chef Aid or Truvada Defense. You'll find a huge number of articles on the strategy online, and it's made it into pop culture. What is the Chewbacca defense had refers to making a legal argument, the aim of which is to deliberately distract and confuse the jury with the use of a red herring. Sometimes these traps are unavoidable, but you need to be aware of it and our next broadcasts. We're going to continue with this theme of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals and Rules for Radicals, Part two. For Safety Wars. This is Jim proposal. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the host and its guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within this podcast are only examples. It should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available, as they are based only on very limited and dated open source information. Assumptions made within this analysis are not reflective of the position of the company. No part of this podcast may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the creator of the podcast, Jay Allen. Mhm