It was 117 degrees in the shade, and I found myself in the Nevada desert “Badlands,” about an hour north of Vegas. I was asked to come and help Fluor Construction kick-off a new behavior based recognition process with the thousand plus union construction workers at the Moapa Co-Gen project. (more…)

“I work for a large railroad, and we have BBS from one of the top ‘big name’ BBS consultants. I am an agreement employee and have coordinated the process for over two years. It has flat-lined, and we are now looking to go back and motivate our teams–or try to. I am not convinced the ‘same ‘ole materials’ will do the trick. I’m looking for fresh ideas. I am afraid we have too many so-called experts within who don’t understand the design of BBS, but I am only one voice. I know I don’t have all the answers, but I understand I know just enough to get me into problems. Management has invested big $$$, and they did put up some good numbers—which, in my opinion, were more the result of luck than the BBS process. Now they want to move in and manage in hopes of a repeat. We made all the classic mistakes–didn’t get union buy-in, no management involvement starting up, etc. They put the process in our ‘rank & file’ hands, which was a big mistake. I am afraid we are on a crash course……

…Can you help us Bill?”  –anonymous BBS coordinator

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Here’s the short scoop on what was covered in part 1…

I’m on a plane to Kuwait. Super high tech military dudes in the business class sleeper pods where I have managed to parlay my dwindling frequent flyer miles to get a pod of my own.

They’re doing top-secret stuff – “If we tell you we’ll have to kill you”…

And me? I’m just talking about Green Beans & Ice Cream… it’s all good. 🙂

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My long journey started at 6am, driving past the deer in my neighborhood munching the grass with it’s early morning dew on it. I was headed for a long trip to the Middle East (with a stop to see clients in Atlanta before the jump).

As usual, there was no food on the regional planes, and by nightfall I’d had almost nothing to eat. I was getting hungry…

“Chicken or Beef?” asked the stewardess, as the plane slid through the midnight air towards Dubai.

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It was about 2:30 p.m. and I had just finished a speaking assignment for the Tarheel Safety Chapter in Charlotte, North Carolina. They are a lively group of safety professionals who asked me to come and speak about behavior change, which I did. While there I learned a lot about some changes coming down the pipeline from OSHA, from my new BFF, Bob, with OSHA (more on that later).

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