Here’s where I found myself: riding high and feeling mean, one of just four people selected to lead the implementation of an exciting new process throughout a nearly one million square foot facility with close to a thousand employees. What an incredible opportunity for a kid who barely graduated hig...

Shortly after accepting a spot on the behavior-based safety process steering committee, I had the chance to sit in on and help with a small portion of the training for new observers; the same course I had squirmed through less than a year prior. I can’t pretend that I actually offered anything of va...

If I’m being completely honest, I didn’t like Terry Ward very much when I first met him. The limited interaction I had prior to his portion of the behavior-based safety observer training was adversarial at best and I thought his delivery as a trainer was incredibly annoying. Looking back, I know my ...

I grew up in a rural area, about ten miles outside the town the high school I graduated from was located. I used to joke during the hundreds of new hire orientation sessions I did over the years that my hometown only had two stop signs, and we rarely used those. The majority of the groups I was part...

Just a few months before accepting the position I started immediately after getting married, I interviewed for a role with responsibility for the behavior-based safety process that I had been involved with for a year or so prior on a volunteer basis. In addition to performing the observations that p...

I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve heard folks reference different individuals - in business, in politicks, or any other walk of life - as natural-born leaders. I think the most humorous anecdote I ever heard around that idea was when John Maxwell mentioned being asked if leaders are born or...

If you’ve been disciplined enough to consistently (and fanatically) follow the simple framework for instilling the core values you’ve defined into your organization’s culture, I have no doubt that your grass is at least starting to be incredibly green - to anyone on either side of the fence. And the...

Let’s consider Gino Wickman’s statement again: “Once they’re defined, you must hire, fire, review, reward, and recognize people based on these core values. This is how to build a thriving culture around them.” If we’re willing to take this to heart and consistently act on everything according to our...

Having detailed why a framework for building the foundation of our organizations around our core values is so important and now having three simple steps in laid out to serve as the framework - consistent communication, keeping our values visible all the time, and intentionally weaving them into eve...

Assuming you’ve taken to heart the idea of consistency trumping intensity and the importance of wearing our values on our sleeves, even if you don’t feel like you quite built either completely into your routine yet, we’re at a great place. Each are critical role pieces in the framework for laying a ...

I remember hearing a story about an old man who’s wife was in tears. He reluctantly asked what was wrong and she replied that he clearly didn’t love her any more because it had been years since he told her so. He scoffed and said, “I told you that I loved you when we got married. I’ll let you know i...

Let’s assume there’s a gap between the impact we want to make by living out our core values and the impact that’s actually being made through our team’s actions. Even if that gap is incredibly small, there’s always room for improvement - assuming we’ve done the work to solicit the kind of alliance f...