The science of behavior has much to teach us about how to improve performance and create a more engaged culture.  One of the key teachings from the science is that precise application of positive reinforcement is required to achieve exemplary performance, or what we call discretionary effort.  In most organizations, there is not enough positive reinforcement to ensure that behaviors occur at the right frequency, with high fidelity, and without hesitation.  While increasing the amount of positive reinforcement for critical behaviors sounds relatively simple, actually making it happen ..

Elon Musk may not be a safety professional, but he has hit on some critical elements of safety culture and safety leadership that many leaders (and some safety professionals) don’t understand.  An article by Fred Lambert on the web-based news site Electrek describes Musk’s reaction to injury rates at Tesla’s Fremont factory...

My teenage kids are constantly taking selfies. Despite my general distaste for the practice, there are some positive side effects. It occurs to me that my kids have more accurate self-images than I did at their age. They know what they look like, from every angle, because they are constantly looking at pictures of themselves (selfies and pictures taken by their friends). It’s a form of constant self-assessment. This realization got me thinking about safety culture self-assessments. Are safety selfies helpful?..

I have often said, “The best job you will ever have is one where you know at the end of every day how well you have done.”  The students at Morningside Academy can wholeheartedly agree that this statement holds true, but, most people reading this blog probably cannot...

I just finished reading an ISHN article on safety incentives and the value of a gift card reward system to promote safety. To say that I didn't like it is an understatement. It reminds me of the many a "quick and dirty" programs that I have seen organizations buy into, that give the illusion of being effective, but don't really improve safe behavior at work. I suggest that most reward programs in safety today are dangerous!..

“What gets measured,  gets done.” If this saying is true, then why are so many people overweight? I have been recording my weight daily for over 35 years and as I am writing this, I am 4.5 pounds over my goal.  Although that might not seem like much, the last time I was at my goal weight was 1999!  During the last 35 years, I have been as much as 16 pounds overweight.  If what gets measured, gets done, then why have I not been able to be at my goal for 18 years.  The reason is that measurement doesn’t change behavior. Consequences do...

Is it possible that the walls really do have eyes? Even Santa understands that rewards should not be given unless they are earned, so he has created the elf on the shelf—a person whose job it is to fly back to the North Pole nightly to let Santa know whether a child has been naughty or nice. Even young children know Santa can’t be everywhere, but when they see an elf move mysteriously from place to place in the house, making sure that the child’s behavior is good, it gives more credence to the notion that maybe, just maybe, he does know what children are doing...