Episode #73: Making Safety Happen - Why Safety Must Be a Core Value, Not a Priority with Brian Fielkow
In this episode of US Manufacturing Today (powered by Veryable), host Matt Horine speaks with Brian Fielkow, author of Making Safety Happen, about leading safety as a leadership discipline and enterprise risk issue. Fielkow lays out why safety must function as a non‑negotiable core value that never competes with production pressure, and how boards and executives ultimately shape safety outcomes through the behaviors they reward, tolerate, or ignore. The conversation explores how fast‑growing operations can scale without sacrificing stability by balancing offense and defense, how frontline leaders drive real cultural change, and how applying Just Culture helps organizations distinguish honest mistakes from reckless choices while preserving accountability and trust.
Links
- Matt Horine on LinkedIn
- Veryable Is Revitalizing U.S. Manufacturing
- Sign Up on the Veryable Platform
- Brian's Website
- Brian on LinkedIn
- Making Safety Happen on Amazon
Timestamps
- 00:00 Podcast Intro
- 02:03 Safety as Core Value
- 04:39 Retiring the Word Accident
- 06:43 Boards Own Safety
- 11:51 Scaling Without Breaking
- 15:39 New Leader First 90 Days
- 18:33 Gold Letter Engagement
- 21:49 Safety Committees Done Right
- 23:45 Psychological Safety on Floor
- 26:48 Process Over Paperwork
- 30:56 Just Culture Accountability
- 35:14 Protecting Everyone On Site
- 38:37 30 Day First Step
- 41:56 Podcast Outro
Episode Transcript
Matt Horine: [00:00:00] Welcome back to U.S. Manufacturing Today, the podcast powered by Veryable, where we talk with the leaders, innovators, and change makers shaping the future of American industry, along with providing regular updates on the state of manufacturing, the changing policy landscape, and more.
My guest today has spent more than three decades leading and advising businesses in high-consequence industries, the kind of operations where the margin for error is thin and the stakes are very real.
He's not a safety professional by training. He's been a business owner and operator. He led a Houston-based trucking and logistics company, built it into one of the most respected [00:01:00] safety cultures in the industry, and before that, he spent years in an executive role at Waste Management, another business where operational risk is part of the daily reality on the ground.
Along the way, he became known nationally for a simple but demanding idea that safety isn't a department, a checklist, or a line item. It's a leadership discipline that, done right, becomes one of the strongest competitive advantages a company can have. He's advised companies across high-consequence industries, written and spoken widely on the subject, and his newest book, Making Safety Happen, distills that into a practical roadmap for leaders, covering mindset, leadership, employee engagement, process, and ultimately, accountability.
Today, we're going to talk about what it actually looks like to lead safety from the top down instead of delegating it, how you get an entire organization from the boardroom to the floor to own it together. Brian, welcome to US Manufacturing Today.
Brian: Well, thank you, Matt. It's great to be with you
Matt: We are very excited to have you on because this is a topic that, um, comes up every day in, in manufacturing and operations, [00:02:00] um, so a, a really important conversation.
And I wanna start up, or start with a, a line that shows up pretty early in your book and, you know, give you the chance to talk a little bit about the, the framework of it because I think it reframes the whole conversation. You argue that safety shouldn't be treated as a priority at all. It should be a core value.
And for a lot of operators listening right now, that might sound a little bit s- like semantics, but why isn't it?
Brian: Yeah. You know, normally, Matt, I don't get hu- get hung up on words, but this time I do because a lot of us say safety is a priority, but think about what priorities are. You could come in with, tomorrow morning with a list of 10 things to do. Those are your priorities. The phone rings, you've got a customer problem.
Well, guess what? That list just got reorganized. Priorities compete for each other. They can, they do, they should. That's just the joy of being in business. In contrast, core values, your company's core values should ne- [00:03:00] never change, and nothing should compete for your values. So if integrity is a value, hopefully we don't compromise it if, you know, if, if we're in a tight spot with a customer. That's where safety has to be. The idea being that I don't care what the production issue is, I don't care what the customer issue is, the pressure, nothing can compete for safety. It's not, it, it, it, it's not negotiable. Um, because if you allow safety to be fungible, um, a, a priority that something else can overtake, that means we're really busy today.
Production pressure is high, so let's bypass that rule. Let's bypass that process. Let's defer maintenance for a couple more weeks. That's what it looks like, and that's when people get in trouble. When, when they start to normalize the workaround, when they start to normalize the shortcut because we're busy and we don't have times to do things the way that we've otherwise defined, nothing can compete for that.
So that, that's why I keep harping [00:04:00] on that. Um, you know, if, i- if, if a company has a sign up that says, "Safety is a priority," but they act like it's a core value, I'm fine, right? It's when, it's when people's actions, uh, would indicate that safety is negotiable and competes, if you will, with production pressure and other things, that would raise a red flag
Matt: It's a really important framing because words do matter. Um, you know, it's, it's-- I think you used a lot there in that, you know, description. Um, sh- I immediately came to mind the idea of shortcuts, cutting corners. That's exactly what it is, um, just to achieve something else that you've prioritized higher than doing the process right.
I think one thing that really stood out to me when we first met, um, you had also made the case for retiring the word accident altogether. Um, what's actually at stake in that word choice? And I think it's, it's really important for, uh, for our audience to know that.
Brian: Yeah. I mean, I've always thought the word accident [00:05:00] implies whoops, you know, something not preventable, you know, not preventable. Like, you know, crap happens, you know? And what I think the word sometimes gives, gives us too much latitude, too much forgiveness. I'll call something a crash, an injury, an incident, um, because that's what it really is.
Um, I'm, I'm just worried that, that sometimes if we call things accidents, it sort of connotes, "Oh, that was out of our control. Too bad, you know, things happen." Um, you know, I spilled my, I spilled my coffee all over my car, right? That kind of thing. And this is more serious. So I, I, I try and use words that I think have a little bit less bias in them, and that more just describe what it was.
That was a crash. That was an injury
Matt: It g- it gives the gravity to the situation as well. I think that people are a little touchy sometimes about just not having that accountability piece
Brian: Yeah. It, it gives the gravity without catastrophizing. One mistake I think that we make, that a lot of companies make, is they can push the pendulum too far i- [00:06:00] in, in the safety world and everything is a catastrophe, right? Every paper cut is cut- treated the same way as every significant item. So I, I think that, you know, just having, having a scorecard, having kind of a, a language and, and, and an approach to this that kind of drives down the middle is more comfortable with me.
You, you can't, you can't have this forgiveness like, "Ah, it was nothing. It was just an accident." On the other hand, if you catastrophize it, you start to lose sight of what's really important compared to what's noise
Matt: Yeah. It's a really good, really good balance. It, uh, it makes a lot of sense. You know, you think about, like, safety environments and some things, there's been, you know, X amount of days since, you know, and, and people kind of look at the sign and, and think of it that way. But it's, you know, accidents are, are-- they do happen, but calling things exactly what they are develops that culture around it, which is, you know, what I really wanna get into, um, with you, uh, not, not just the book, but also your kind of lessons in leadership over, over a career, [00:07:00] um, you know, in these types of environments that you make the case that, that safety is fundamentally a boardroom issue, uh, an enterprise risk management issue, not something that gets handed down to a safety department or, um, you know, kind of delegated out that way.
Walk me through why you think so many boards get it wrong and what it actually looks like when a board gets it right.
Brian: I was taught years ago, um, and I think incorrectly so by the way, you know, that safety is behavior-based. In other words, that, you know, how an employee behaves dictates whether the outcomes will be safe or not. And sure, there's some truth to that, right? But the, the reality is that behavior is situational.
Behavior changes. And what does it change based on? It changes based on the environment in which the employee operates. What leaders, what boards, what C-suites prioritize, [00:08:00] what they recognize and reward monetarily or not monetarily, what they tolerate, what they look the other way on, that dictates how employees will behave because your employees fundamentally want to please you.
Your employees fundamentally want to do what, uh, uh, they want to adjust their behavior to what you as the leader define as being important. That's why it's a, a leadership, a, a board imperative, because the leaders create the environment in which everybody else operates. And if the environment is situational, if the environment is, you know, "I don't care what it takes, just get it done," if that means sh- you know, ignoring every rule, well, that's what you're gonna get. Specific to your question about the, the board, the board and the board's role with safety One of the b-- any board of director's primary goals, primary responsibilities ought to [00:09:00] be enterprise risk management, ERM. And I can't think of anything that fits in there more than safety. I mean, you've got customer risk, you've got financial risk, you've got employee risk, uh, cyber risk. I mean, think about all the risks that boards of directors are charged with managing. And I will argue that safety probably touches every one of those, and it's a fundamental enterprise risk. But in contrast, what I see too often is where safety's just delegated to the safety department. That's not what we deal with in the boardroom. Um, and I, and I think that's a mistake. I, I don't think that the-- your, your board and I don't think your, your C-suite has to do the job of the safety director.
That's not what I'm saying. But safety should be on every agenda, right? Safety at, at an executive level because it, it touches so many other things in your organization, like your ability to compete, like your insurance costs, like your litigation risk, [00:10:00] um, uh, like, like your, your reputation and goodwill. All of this touches safety. The best example I can give you, um, it, it's old now, but old is okay. Um, so I'm learning. Um, 1987, Paul O'Neill took over as the, uh, uh, CEO of Alcoa, and they weren't doing well financially. Their safety wasn't great. And in his first meeting with his shareholders, with Wall Street, with, with the analysts, he said, "If you wanna know how we're doing, how Alcoa is doing, look at our safety numbers." And people ran for the door. It's like, "This guy's crazy." It's like, "I wanna know about inventory, and I wanna know about margins and turns, et cetera, et cetera." But what he knew was that safety was at the foundation of operationally excellent organizations and profitable organizations, and if they couldn't get the safety part [00:11:00] right, nothing else fell in place. And if you look at the playbook that O'Neill ran, I think Alcoa's stock went up six or seven times under his 13-year tenure there. To me, that is the still the, the highest profile, um, best-articulated case study as to why this has to be a C and, and board-level undertaking
Matt: It's a great case study because, you know, you, you alluded to, um, inventory levels and financials and other things and how safety can impact all that. And, you know, Paul O'Neill probably really had his thumb on the pulse of that. Um, he went on to be Treasury Secretary. He's somebody who certainly understood markets and the economy and running a publicly traded company.
Um, so his recognizing that is a, is a really great example. Um, what's your advice to an operations leader that is scaling fast right now who hasn't yet built that safety as the core [00:12:00] value muscle that you, that you mentioned? Uh, because a phrase came to mind as you were talking through that last example, kind of the move fast and break things environment that we have for, you know, companies that are trying to start up or, you know, they're trying to grow at a faster pace than they have before.
Um, what would be your advice to an operations leader?
Brian: I, I, I still think you can move fast. I still think you can and should be entrepreneurial and growth-minded if that's your goal. Um, but what I've seen is leaders in that type of environment focus so much on playing offense and so little on playing defense that they get these nice wins, they grow, but they give it all back because they've done a bad job on, on risk management, on, on, on their defenses.
So to me, it's no different than a sports team. Uh, any, any, any sport, we'll use football as, as a good example, but any sport, you've gotta have really good offense and you gotta play defense. Otherwise you're gonna [00:13:00] score a lot of points, but you're gonna give up more. And so the advice I would give to that, that entrepreneur is keep doing what you're doing.
Keep building the business, keep swinging for the fences. I mean, that's, that produces adrenaline. Uh, surround... And, and by the way, if that's what you wanna do, then surround yourself with people who are better at playing defense. You know, br- br- bring in, bring in the best, um, defensive coordinator you can and let them do their job.
So you always play to your strength. Um, I'll, I'll never look at a company with any sort of judgment. I only look at them with admiration if they're trying to grow. But if they're struggling in this area, they're giving back a lot of their hard-fought gains because they, they haven't managed risk appropriately, that's, that's just a perfectly natural phase that a company has hit.
I hit that m- in the trucking company, in, in the logistics company. I absolutely hit that. Our first three years, [00:14:00] you give me a metric, after I bought it, you give me a metric, we were rock stars. I mean, growth, profitability, et cetera. But then that rock stardom came to a real fast end. We had this period of incidents. Uh, remember, we're not calling them accidents, they were crashes. And I could've said, "Well, we were doing so well for so long, that's why we, you know, we, you know, you know, stuff happens," that kind of thing. But, you know, I knew I'd be lying to myself. What happened is that, like if we were a b- a construction company, we'd be building a really nice roof on top of a cracked foundation.
I knew that what happened is that we grew too fast. We needed time to catch up, get our, get our processes in place, our people in place, and that's exactly what we did, and it, it paved the way for even faster, and I would call it more stable, more sustainable growth. Um, so they play hand in hand. But, but if you're leading a company [00:15:00] and, and you're growth-minded, again, that's great. You just can't disregard the importance of protecting that growth.
Matt: Well said. I think it's, it's not a one or the other type framework that a lot of people, you know, sometimes in those, those environments instinctively take where it's, you know, we don't need to do that, um, you know, because it's going to hinder, you know, how fast or the pace of play that we're, we're at. Um, and it's, you know, we're watching a wave of reindustrialization right now, new plants standing up, new leadership teams kind of inheriting operations, um, and risk they didn't necessarily build from scratch.
Is that, that's another scenario, right? Where somebody would have to step into, you know, some, an environment, um, you know, for the operations leader, if you're stepping into that environment, how can you make that change kind of from, you know, the get-go if, if it's not something that you've been part of
Brian: So you're walking into a new environment. May- maybe the risk... I mean, it, it could be a new risk for the company [00:16:00] because you've, you've m- did an acquisition of something new, or you're taking on a new line of work or a new customer that presents new risk, or it could be new to you because you're new to the job or you're new to the business. Either way, um, the first thing I would do, um, is I'd, I would be very quiet for 90 days and just study and learn. I'd be out in the field, I'd be out on the floor working, um, and I would be figuring out who are my subject matter experts. And when I say subject matter experts, I am not talking about the outside consultant. I'm talking about my subject matter experts inside, my frontline leaders, my frontline workers who know this business, know this job, know the, know the, the, the risks they face, and I'd be listening to them, and I'd be learning everything I can from them. Um- That I think is one of the things that we [00:17:00] often overlook is when we think about leaders, what do we think about?
We think about the people sitting in the boardroom. Those are your, those are your, the, they, they're your leaders maybe, but they're managers, they're executives, right? I can... They have authority, and I can give people authority. I can say, "Matt, you're now our CEO," and I think we would all understand as your CEO, here are the things that you're responsible for. I can't make you a leader. I mean, leadership is something you get by h- the respect you earn, um, by how you show up. And the people who I think can move your company, move the needle the fastest are your frontline leaders, your, your frontline employees who have won and commanded the respect of their peers. The more you can bring them into the process, the more you can help partner with them, uh, the, the more you can find out the right way to run the business. What are the, what are those hidden [00:18:00] risks that, that you want to address to, to, to prevent safety failures? We put together and we asked our drivers at JECHRA to elect a driver committee, and that was an absolute game changer for us.
An absolute game changer because what we basically did was we tore down that either physical or perceived silo that separates frontline employees from, um, from the office. And, and that silo is where commu- communications break down. And communications break down, that's when bad things happen
Matt: Yeah, that is a game changer, you know, that having that kind of buy-in, little bit of ownership, you know, that there's some roles and responsibilities can, can certainly change the game, which is a, a, a great, you know, anecdote from, or a great story, or one of the, the stories that I picked up from your book, um, is what you call the Gold Letter Group.
It was a peer ambassador program that started with something as simple as changing the [00:19:00] thread color on the uniform patch. Um, can you tell us that story and, and what it teaches about how real engagement actually gets built?
Brian: Yeah, I, I love that story, uh, Matt. I was giving a presentation to, um, a room full of stevedoring companies. So these are peop- these are, these are companies that work on the docks. And I was saying in the workshop portion of the presentation, I was saying, "You know, I'm sitting here and I know in my gut that I don't think we're capturing as many near misses.
We're not getting as much hazard reporting as I think we could. Um, and I would like to change that." And somebody raised their hand and said, "Well, we have the same problem." And, you know, on the docks, uh, hazards that aren't addressed can result in real bad things real fast. So they put together this gold letter group, and what they did is they, they selected employees who'd been there a while, who had demonstrated repeatedly that they knew the right way, um, [00:20:00] to do the work, that they had the respect of their coworkers. And so ultimately, what everybody else on the team knew is that you could go to anybody wearing a gold letter where their uniform was, you know, their, their, their name was in gold instead of white, and you could ask them anything you want without fear of retribution. If it needed to stay confidential, it would stay confidential as long as there was latitude to fix the issue. And what they said is after they put that group together, a couple things happened. And, and there was a little pay bump. I mean, it wasn't significant, but, but, you know, a little pay movement just as part of a thank you for taking on this additional responsibility. The near misses and the hazard reportings went through the roof because you gave your employees a safe way, not that anonymous suggestion box that nobody reads. Um, you, you gave your employees a safe way to report it. But what it did among the gold letter group is morale shot through the roof [00:21:00] because it told the employees in the gold letter group, "Man, these guys really trust me. This company really trusts me. I, I matter here." So you, so it created much greater ownership among the gold letter group, and it gave the rest of the team, um, a a safe place to report concerns, report hazards. Um, and the bottom line is y- you might like the idea, you might not, but for this company, it worked. It worked big time, and it translated right into their safety performance.
Matt: Yeah, that is something that is pretty transformative. It's giving that level of ownership or that kind of designation. I know, you know, there, there's several examples I can think of throughout my career where you have a, you know, it's not just a steering committee or something like that. It's, it's people who have kind of the buy-in and the, the acknowledgement from, you know, their leadership that they've been entrusted with something.
You--
Brian: Yeah. No, and for, for God's sakes, don't do a safety committee if you're not prepared to do it right. I mean, we're gonna do a safety committee, we have this big announcement, and then every month [00:22:00] the, the damn meeting gets canceled because we're too busy. I mean, if you're gonna do it, you commit to it. Um, it has executive support. We don't pull people out of the safety committee because, oh, we've got a production issue. It's like, it will wait an hour. Trust me, it will wait. If you're gonna put a safety committee together, it needs a charter, it needs... You need to kind of define what does success look like. Um, if the safety committee has, comes with actions and recommendations, either you implement them or you explain why, great idea, but this isn't the time.
You never let them just kinda go into cyberspace. So there are some things I think that you need to commit to before you do the committee, 'cause if you don't do it the right way, you're gonna form the committee, you're gonna have all this fanfare, it's gonna do nothing, it's gonna get canceled half the time because we're, quote unquote, "too busy."
You wind up doing more to kill morale than the, than, than what you originally set out for, was to go in the opposite direction
Matt: Well said. There's nothing worse than [00:23:00] a, you know, standing meeting or recurring meeting that everybody's trying to find their way out of. I think we've all been there. Um, and to do that with safety is pretty, um, irresponsible, I guess would be the, the best word for it.
Brian: Lencioni wrote a book, and the title of the book was Death by Meeting, and I don't think you even have to break the cover. That's all you need to know, right? Is I don't think we have as, as, as a culture, I don't think we have too many meetings. I think we have too many bad meetings. Um, and, and I think that, that, that principle is true for safety committees.
Done right, they can work magic for your company. Done wrong, they could actually do more harm than good
Matt: Yeah. No, it's, uh, you don't ever wanna put, you know, a solution in place for something, um, that ultimately distracts from the mission at hand. I think one of the big things that you also kind of lean on is the idea of psychological safety. Um, you know, and maybe as part of that Gold Letter group, but, you know, other examples as well.
Employees needing to feel safe raising a concern without fear of some kind of [00:24:00] blame, um, which is a lot of concerns around safety. You hear a lot of people worrying about, oh, have they done their job? How does a leader actually build that practically on a floor where production pressure is real, um, versus, you know, just kind of talking about it, um, and that psychological aspect to it?
Brian: I mean, if you really wanna dig into psychological safety, what I would recommend people do is with, you know, Google or chat, is, um, look up the work of Amy Edmondson. She's a professor at Harvard, and she to me is the standard-bearer of psychological safety. She's, she's written the book and, um, a lot of people operate in her shadow.
So I'm, I'm not gonna do her justice here. But it, it's sort of what you said, right? The idea is you're creating an environment where it's safe to speak up, where it's safe to report hazards, where it's safe to call a timeout because something appears unsafe. Whether it was or wasn't, we'll figure that out.
But if it looked unsafe, we appreciate you calling a timeout, in all cases, [00:25:00] without fear of retribution, right? It can't be like, "I can't believe you called that timeout. What a dumb decision," because that'll be the first and last time anybody does that. So i- in a psychologically safe company, employees know that they've got a voice, they know that that voice can be used, and they know that they can call a, a timeout.
And to your point about production pressure, it only works if safety, um, is a core value. Because if it's a priority, you're never gonna-- you're gonna say, "Oh, we're busy. Forget it. Keep your mouth shut." Again, that's when bad things happen. So i- psychological safety i- in the context that we're talking about only works if, if safety is the overall value in the company, where, okay, we're not gonna compromise it, um, otherwise production pressure will win every day. And our employees have to know that, um... I guess they've gotta know that the idea that safety and productivity compete with each other. What do you wanna be, safe or [00:26:00] productive? I don't know where that came from, but that myth is everywhere. It's safe and productive. I want both. If I'm a good leader, I'm gonna get both. Um, I may have bad days. I may have days when my production's not where it needs to be. I may have safety challenges. But if I play long ball and I have a safe and productive approach, that Paul O'Neill approach, I will win in the long run, notwithstanding s- short-term setbacks that w- we're all bound to encounter
Matt: Great point. Um, that the idea that they are competing ideas. Uh, it's, I think that you see kind of like the process, you know, excellence is doing your job and doing it well. I mean, that's just kind of like the old adage. Um, and, and a major component of that being safety. Um, which is an, you know, a good take on, you know, process and the process mindset.
You, you talk about an unconditional respect for process, and you draw, I believe in the book, you draw a hard line between process that actually works and the thick handbook that nobody reads, which, [00:27:00] you know, that's, um, we've all been there. Like, we've seen leaders who haven't, you know, pointed to the handbook or pointed to the safety process, and you're left kind of on your own.
What, what separates, you know, the two, um, and where do you see leaders most often fall into what you call the shortcut trap?
Brian: I think process, um, is everything. I mean, people, to me-- a lot of people will count and they'll measure safety success by injury counts. And, you know, to me, safety is less about the absence of injuries and more about the presence of systems and processes, system audits, job hazard recognitions. Now, if I see low injury numbers, that's a good thing.
But what I wanna know is why, why do those numbers exist? If those numbers exist because the processes are in place, the training's in place, the leadership's in place, that's worth a, a major victory lap. That's worth a celebration. But if they're in [00:28:00] place and we don't know why, and more random, then I have to ask, "Are we good or are we lucky?"
So, so to me, y-you, you wanna focus on process. And the problem with process in a lot of companies, that 600-page handbook that nobody reads that you referred to, is you've gotta look at your process manuals and ask this: "Are they reasonably understandable by the audience for whom they're intended?" So if your employee base, if their eng- if their language is primarily Spanish and everything's in English, are they really understandable? If your employee base reads at a seventh or eighth grade level, and your process manual is written at a collegiate level, I know that you don't have process. You've got words on paper. So you've gotta make sure that your process is understandable, not necessarily to you, but, but to the people f- you're, you expect to follow it. Um, the other thing is, we have this way in business of wildly overcomplicating [00:29:00] things. Um, and so I'm a, a fan of, you know, less is more. Give me a checklist, um, over that big process manual where possible. There's a wonderful book out there, it's kind of old now, it's probably, I don't know, 13, 14 years old, but it's called "The Checklist Manifesto." That book, I will point everybody in that direction that will listen to me. Um, it's by Dr. Atul Gawande, and it's about his experience running a network of operating rooms in New York. And let's just say that you had highly trained, highly educated doctors, all the process in the world, and there was still a lot of very avoidable injury on the operating table. And Dr. Gawande looked at other industries like aviation, where, you know, before every flight, what does the pilot do? After every flight, what does the pilot do? Checklist. They made it simple. Um, and so he put together, Gawande put together an operating room environment where [00:30:00] you did not operate before your pre-op checklist, and after the operation, you did your post-op checklist. And what that did is it dramatically drove error out of the system, as opposed to having the process manual, you know, 30 feet away that nobody's looked at in a year. Um, so the idea is whatever industry or whatever the, the, the, the parameters are of your business, um, especially as you bring in new employees who have to get assimilated quickly, um, you need to make sure that the process is accessible, understandable, digestible for that audience
Matt: I think that's, you know, the classic argument about disseminating information and making sure that it's received, not just communicated, um, was what came to mind. Like, check the box, you know, we have a safety policy on paper, then that's it. Um, it's, it's a really, really important point. Kind of leading into that culturally and, you know, process [00:31:00] and all that kind of builds up to accountability and resilience.
Um, you've talked about how even the best run companies will have things go wrong. The real test is what happens next. You've lived that firsthand at Jetco. I know we talked about that and, and you'd mentioned it. There was three, couple great years, um, then some, some safety failures that, uh, forced you to kind of rebuild your approach.
What did the experience teach you about the difference between kind of that blame accountability, uh, nature of, of safety versus, you know, kind of pivoting it into a more of a leadership function?
Brian: Yeah, Matt, when I, when I speak, I'll, I'll always put up a legal disclaimer that says, "By the way, a-anything I say here is not legal advice. Your lawyer will win."
And then what I'll do is I'll go right into my tirade on progressive discipline the way that we've been taught to practice it, you know, which is strike one might be a verbal warning, and strike two might be a written warning, and strike three might be a, you know, maybe a day of suspension.
Strike [00:32:00] four might be four days, whatever people do. And that, that strike-based, discipline-based, blame-based way of approaching your employees doesn't work. It destroys trust. What I advocate for is people kind of thinking about how they deal with adversity and dealing with their employees differently. It's called Just Culture. And at the, at the core, what Just Culture asks is this: do your homework, figure out what happened, and draw a conclusion as to whether this was an honest mistake or reckless behavior, deliberate intentional disregard. You s- you deal with both. You document both. But where you've concluded that somebody made an honest mistake, you don't sit across the table, you sit side by side, and you figure out what happened, and you f- you look for your gaps.
I mean, do I have a training gap? Did the employee just have a bad day? Do I have a [00:33:00] process gap? Are there systemic improvements we've gotta make? You're not gonna get that if the employee thinks, you know, y- you're gonna, they're gonna get written up and, or, or maybe fired. People are gonna quiet down. So when you conclude that, uh, that was an honest mistake, that's a better approach because what you're, you're all about, what you're looking for is helping the employee grow, helping the employee improve, preventing it from happening again by educating the rest of the workforce, getting to the bottom of what happened. The other problem with the strike-based punitive system is that, quite frankly, if, if I was held to that, I would've had to fire myself my first week on the job because I make a lot of mistakes. So we wind up holding our frontline employees to a standard that most of us can never meet, which is just patently unfair. Um, you know, now if I conclude that it was deliberate, reckless behavior, horseplay, excessive speeding, [00:34:00] that kind of thing, I may not wait for strike two. Strike one, one may be just plenty. You're telling me you don't wanna work here. Um, so I think that's really the key is, is it's it's easier just to have the strikes, but wh- when something looks fair, that doesn't necessarily mean it is fair.
I think it's much f- more fair to look at what, look at the inputs, look at what went into it, and then, and then a- a- adjust and, and, and decide what you're gonna do as a, as a leader based on that
Matt: Yeah, I think the traditional progressive discipline model, um, you know, i- is challengeable because people just think of it as kind of that escalating strike rule and, and maybe don't, you know, ultimately take it as seriously. I mean, it's, it's, you know, is that kind of at the heart of what's, you know, not healthy about it?
Brian: there's a lot of managers that will tend not to escalate and trigger the strikes because they know better. They don't wanna trigger strikes on good people. So ignoring it's not a good solution either. Instead, put a solution in place that works, [00:35:00] that promotes fairness, that promotes continuous learning, and promotes accountability from an individual standpoint and an organizational standpoint
Matt: Mm-hmm. That's, that's a really good way to, to break that down and, and take people out of that, that passive case. Um, you know, one thing that you raised when we first spoke, it really struck, stuck with me, um, you pushed back on the idea that, you know, Veryable's a, a marketplace for on-demand labor. Um, you know, sites have all kinds of people visiting throughout the day, vendors, customers, um, people who interact with the business at, at all, in all kinds of different ways.
And saying that they should be treated any differently from a safety standpoint than a, you know, a full-time employee or somebody that you're accountable for directly as a leader. It, it was a really good conversation because I think it kind of frames the overall safety culture, uh, in a way that, you know, raises the standards for everyone.
Um, so, you know, if you're running an operation right now and [00:36:00] you have, you know, on-demand operators from Veryable, or your customers visit the site, or you have, like, a general will call or those types of things, you know, how much does safety kind of play into protecting people who are on site? Or, um, you know, does that take a different approach, or is it the same thing across the board?
Brian: I'll never say anything is the same across the board, different companies, you know, different operations, but, but there are some principles that are the same. I mean, if a customer's coming in to inspect and, and they're focused on safety, you know, um, you can, you can tidy things up, right? You can make sure the yellow lines are bright and you, you can make sure that everybody's got their PP on, and that, that's all fine, that's all important. But, you know, it's really, is it ingrained, right? In other words, is it, is, is this something that's important to leadership and how can we find that out? And are employees owning it? Um, you know, like, when we would get... When we would have customers in and audit us, we would just say, "Talk to our [00:37:00] drivers," right?
"Here's our process, here's, here's, our manual, here's how we, how we do things. But talk to our drivers and, you know, ask them if you think this is... if, if they think this is woven in or not." I mean, uh, it, it, it's more organic, it's more conversational. Um, and, you know, if I'm gonna go look at a company, that's how I sort of wrote and, and organized Making Safety Happen is, first of all, what do the people think, right?
Change- how do- what do we believe about safety? Is- we talked before about values versus priorities, that kind of thing. Um, I look at leadership's role, right? Then, then I look at employee engagement. What are we doing to engage our employees around it? What do we, what do we reward? What do we recognize, monetary or not? Um, I look then at the clarity of process, and is it consistently followed and is it understandable, and are people trained to the process, and what does training look like? And then I, I, I... We, we were talking a few minutes ago about accountability and resilience. I [00:38:00] look at when things go wrong, are we just gonna say, "Oh, crap, something happened," or is there already a plan in place so that we're all trained on if things go wrong, here's what happens.
This is what it looks like every single time so that there's, there, there's muscle memory, um, for, for if and when things go wrong. Those are some of the things I look at at a real high level. The book will go in more detail, but, but I think that, that kinda can give me a whiff if I'm just going in, in and out briefly as to whether there's a healthy safety culture in place or not.
Matt: No, that's a really, really good way to, to look at the, at the process. And I, I think this is the part of the show where we, we kind of ask for free advice. Not legal advice, not anything you're on the hook for. I always like to preclude it with, this is not financial advice, this is not legal advice, uh, to your point.
You know, for a leader listening right now who wants to take one step in the next 30 days towards treating safety as a core value instead of just one of their priorities, [00:39:00] what would you tell them to do first?
Brian: Well, I guess it sort of depends on, on where, where you're at. But I would always look if, if you're saying, "Look, I think we can do better, but I can't get my, my arms around it," I would try and find the gaps. I would try and ask, "Do we all feel the same way and perceive the same things about safety?" Um, in the book I have what's called a gap analysis, a gap survey. I, I like to ask very candid questions about, you know, what, how I perceive it compared to how I think my manager perceives it. If there's a big disconnect, there's a gap. I'd want to s- I'd ask people, I a- we ask employees, "If you were CEO for the day and you could do one thing to raise the bar on safety, what would it be?"
You know? And, and I get great answers on that. So I would look for the gaps. I would, I would manage by walking around. I'd be finding my, my leaders, my frontline leaders throughout the organization, getting their input, right? Taking inventory from them. [00:40:00] Um, you know, unless there was something that was just staring me in the face and I, um, I, I knew what it was already, I would be searching that way. The other thing I would be doing is I would be asking, "What are my hidden risks?" Right? In other words, it's, it's obvious sometimes if you have an injury or an incident, you might say, "Well, was it a PPE issue, or was somebody speeding in their vehicle?" Or whatever it was. There's some obvious things. But to me, the hidden risks are generally where you're gonna find, um, uh, the issue.
So hidden risks might be we're rushing people to work, right? We're hiring them too fast. We're not training them. We're not bringing them in to give them what they need to succeed. Another hidden risk that, you know, you see all the time is undue production pressure. Um, I would always say production pressure is healthy.
I mean, I could've been the safest logistics company in the world by parking my trucks, but I'd also be out of business. So, so production pressure is fine,
but w- it [00:41:00] reaches a tipping point that becomes unhealthy. I'd be looking at that. I'd be looking at my equipment, deferred maintenance, right? I know I've got to replace that machine guard.
We're just too busy. No. No. We're gonna shut the machine down and we're gonna replace it, right? I, I don't... You- Kicking the can, kicking the can down on maintenance. Th- th- those are all things I would look at that sometimes don't pop right out when you're doing an investigation as to what happened, but those things... and and the book talks about all s- all sorts of different hidden risks. Those are the things lying beneath the surface that generally have a major contributing factor
Matt: No, that's-- So I think the one key thing out of the, you know, that tracks across the, the course of our conversation is that frontline leadership, asking questions, observing and seeing what they're doing versus sitting in a vacuum and trying to fill those gaps or find them yourself, um, it really is true.
It's-- This has been a great conversation, Brian. It's something that's extremely important. Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and get a copy [00:42:00] of your book, "Making Safety Happen"?
Brian: Making Safety Happen at any online retailer. So it's available in hardcover, e- ebook, like Kindle format, um, Apple Books, and, and it's also available as an audiobook. So you can buy it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple. Um, if you buy it, let me know what you think. Send me an email. If you want more information about me, my website is Brian Fielkow, B-R-I-A-N F-I-E-L-K-O-W.com. Shoot me an email, um, and keep the conversation going.
Matt: Absolutely. Well, this has been a great discussion. We really thank you for joining us today. And if you're listening, uh, please sh- make sure to get a copy of the book, "Making Safety Happen." Thank you for joining us, Brian.
Brian: Thank you
Matt: Thank you. To stay ahead of the curve and to help plan your strategy, please check out our website at Veryableops.com. And If you're on socials, give us a follow on LinkedIn, X, formerly Twitter, and Instagram. And if you're enjoying the podcast, please feel free to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and leave us a rating and don't forget to subscribe. Thank you again for joining us and learning more about how you can make your way.