ABSTRACT
If you read the introduction, you’ve figured out that a clear message of this book is that it is time for the safety profession to shift into new ways of thinking for the 21st century. This became clear to me while attending a recent professional development conference. It was the second day of the conference, and I was meeting with some peers after the sessions had ended. We compared notes, and although we had all attended different sessions, most of us could accurately guess what the main points of the others’ sessions had been. The regular buzz words floated back and forth between us, words like “transformational change.” The presenters talked about the value of safety, but few of them itemized the skills, abilities, or specific practices that are part of that value. There were no deep dives into engineering economics, or examinations of how to problem-solve at a line-employee level. Safety philosophy had, we concluded, grown stale. Even worse, many of the sessions were presented by people who wanted to sell us something.
