Applying strategic thinking to safety

It’s easy for safety professionals to keep their gaze on the trees rather than the forest. There are plenty of pressing daily problems to solve and it becomes easy to push strategic thinking to the back burner.

For those who want to get their eyes back on the forest, a recent online article by Paul J. H. Schoemaker, entitled “6 Habits of True Strategic Thinkers,” is helpful. It targets company leaders but is equally applicable for HSE pros. Here are some excerpts:

“We need strategic leaders!” is a pretty constant refrain at every company, large and small. One reason the job is so tough: no one really understands what it entails. It’s hard to be a strategic leader if you don’t know what strategic leaders are supposed to do.

Anticipate
To anticipate well, you must:
• Look for game-changing information at the periphery of your industry
• Search beyond the current boundaries of your business
• Build wide external networks to help you scan the horizon better

Think Critically
Critical thinkers question everything. To master this skill you must force yourself to:
• Reframe problems to get to the bottom of things, in terms of root causes
• Challenge current beliefs and mindsets, including your own
• Uncover hypocrisy, manipulation, and bias in organizational decisions

Interpret
To get good at this, you have to:
• Seek patterns in multiple sources of data
• Encourage others to do the same
• Question prevailing assumptions and test multiple hypotheses simultaneously

DecideMany leaders fall prey to “analysis paralysis.” You have to develop processes and enforce them, so that you arrive at a “good enough” position. To do that well, you have to:
• Carefully frame the decision to get to the crux of the matter
• Balance speed, rigor, quality and agility. Leave perfection to higher powers
• Take a stand even with incomplete information and amid diverse views

Align
A strategic leader must foster open dialogue, build trust and engage key stakeholders, especially when views diverge. To pull that off, you need to:
• Understand what drives other people’s agendas, including what remains hidden
• Bring tough issues to the surface, even when it’s uncomfortable
• Assess risk tolerance and follow through to build the necessary support

Learn
Here’s what you need to do:
• Encourage and exemplify honest, rigorous debriefs to extract lessons
• Shift course quickly if you realize you’re off track
• Celebrate both success and (well-intentioned) failures that provide insight

In light of the above, you may wish to consider questions directly impacting our profession:

• While continuing to work on OSHA recordable injuries, are you working on:
o Safety 24-7?
o Exposures that could result in a serious or fatal injury?

• While managing compliance programs, are you thinking about:
o How to pull them together in a system? (see ANSI Z10)
o Creating processes for top management to lead and delegate?

• Are you thinking about how safety can link with:
o Lean manufacturing processes?
o Long term strategies like sustainable growth and corporate social responsibility?

Strategic HSE thinkers will have these – and other strategic — issues forefront in their minds.