Luck Is Not A Plan – Safety Speaker Tips

Luck Is Not A Plan – Safety Speaker Insights

As a safety speaker, I have the opportunity to hear some great insights by other safety speakers and leaders. One corporate leader speaking before me used the slogan, “Luck is not a plan.” Their insight was very powerful for several reasons. First, they had recently experienced an incident which could have resulted in major injuries and potential loss of life. In fact, no one was injured but not because of their safety policies or procedures; it was circumstance or luck.

The real wisdom is being grateful things worked out as well as they did and to use that close call as an opportunity to plan and design so it wouldn’t happen again with possibly worse results. The secret is to make the search for the solution as intense as it would have been had the worst happened. The intensity and resolve to prevent any further occurrence must be at the level required by the potential for injury, not the actual result.

Close Calls

This is also a useful way to utilize close calls. As a safety speaker with over 400 clients, I have seen many forms of close call reporting. Some people call them “near misses” but I can’t help but remember George Carlin’s line, “Look Martha those two planes nearly missed!” as they watched them collide and crash to the ground. A near miss is a  HIT!

Many people use close call reporting to alert the safety team as to potential areas which need to be addressed. It serves as a warning as to where improvements must be made. I have heard safety speakers point out it lets you know when many people are not following existing safety policies or procedures. I believe each close call must be taken very seriously. First, in appreciating the person who reported it and second, in the action and follow up.

The danger is taking a lucky situation or close call and not taking it seriously. Even more dangerous is if the close call or deviation becomes normalized. As a space enthusiast, I am reminded of the Challenger incident of January 28th, 1986. The failure of the O-ring that caused the loss of the spacecraft and crew had happened many times before without catastrophic results. Instead of taking these close calls and treating them as seriously as they did the actual Challenger Disaster, they saw them as evidence there was no real problem because nothing bad happened. They normalized the deviation and it finally caught up with them. Sadly, this is a story told in various ways by many safety speakers.

“I Saw Bob Do That a Thousand Times…”

How often has an injury occurred at your site and afterwards you hear several people chime in, “Yeah, that’s almost happened to me,” or “I’ve seen them do that before and nothing happened.” All of those “almost happened” events are actually close calls that didn’t get reported or in this case, they were reported verbally but too late to do the injured person any good.

Close Calls are either a blessing or just luck depending on how you look at life. To not take advantage of one is a real shame.

When leaders take lucky breaks or close calls seriously it is a great measure of their safety commitment. Every close call or lucky incident should keep leaders up at night until a solution is created. Ignoring it will only ensure that some time in the future, luck will not be with you and someone will suffer the consequences. Also, any leader who failed to plan will live with the nightmare they could have prevented the injury. As a safety speaker I have interviewed leaders and employees who will tell you that pain never goes away.

Luck isn’t a plan but it can certainly be used to prevent future injuries.

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Until next week,
I’ll be, “Watching Out For Everyone’s Safety™”
John
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