How do you get people to become committed to safety, to do the right thing in the moment of choice? Is it by increasing the number of safety cops?

“I’ll be honest with you Bill… we’ve got some serious cultural problems. It’s really weird when I walk through the manufacturing plant with our HSE Manager. You can see people scurrying to put their safety glasses and PPE on as they see us approach, only to remove it once we are safely “out of range,” Ann, a safety professional lamented to me. “I feel like a safety cop” she concluded.

Does this scenario sound familiar to you? I’m sure it does.

It plays out exactly the same way, billions of times a day, as people modify their behavior when the boss, the safety manager, or the local police officer comes into view.

After pondering her problem for a few moments, I told Ann that the behavior she was reporting to me was perfectly logical, and completely predictable.

“How can that be?” she asked me.

“If you’ll tell me how your incentive system works, I’ll bet we can figure it out together” I replied.

Ann went on to explain that the incentive program she inherited was a classic lagging indicator incentive system. It rewarded $50 cash every month that there was no OSHA recordable injury (red flag!) and another $50 cash every month that there was no safety rule violation observed by Ann’s HSE manager during plant safety audits.

Even more interesting was the fact that the goal was obtained less than 50% of the time…so on average, every month one of the two goals would not be met (that means that every month their management system punished every employee at least one time). How’s that for a morale booster?

“Our goal was to get employees to look out for each other and correct unsafe behavior in the moment of choice when nobody else was looking.”

But sadly, their program failed, as punishment based safety programs always do. Why?

Well, first off, the reward for having no recordable injury produced what we all know it produces: injury hiding. It’s not rocket science.

Next, the incentive to get workers to look out for each other and correct unsafe behaviors totally backfired as employees learned to simply alert each other that the “Safety Cop” was coming so they could quickly put on PPE until the Safety Cop was gone, and thereby not lose their $50 bonus. Apparently the employees became more interested in “spotting the safety cop” than in focusing on improving safety. In the world of human behavior, you get what you reward folks.

As Deming says, Ann’s plant had a “perfect design to produce the results” they got—injury hiding and a safety cop culture. They made every mistake possible in their misguided attempts at behavior change.

To help us understand how to solve Ann’s problem, I’d like to talk about today’s workforce, and what I call the “three flavors of employee engagement”. Employee engagement has been identified by Gallup and Towers Perrin as a key driver of your company’s profitability and human performance. Sadly, only 15% of workers score as being “actively engaged” (the equivalent of Commitment, below).

When it comes to engagement, every company has just three kinds of workers: Non-Compliant, Compliant, and Committed.

Non-Compliant: “I will not follow your safety and quality rules, because I am convinced the only way to get high production is to take risks and shortcuts.”

Committed: “I will follow the safety and quality procedures in the moment of choice, when nobody is watching. This is who I am…”

What do you want your culture to be?

The answer is obvious. We want every single employee to be committed.

Realistically, with turnover, downsizing, and the stressful demands of doing more with less, we are always going to have a segment of our workforce who are not committed to safety. The message they’ve gotten from the leadership team is that production is more important than safety. (Why and how that occurs is fascinating, and I’ll comment about that in a future article “He did WHAT??? Decoding Mixed Messages from Management About Safety.”)

So, the million dollar question is this: “How do you get your Non-Compliant and Compliant employees to move to being Committed to safety, “in the moment of choice, when nobody is watching”?

The method of choice for over 95% of companies today is the same one that Ann’s plant uses. I call it “Leave Alone/ZAP!”. It is the default method of management around the world today, and almost every safety manager and supervisor has used it, usually without being aware they are doing it.

Have you ever walked past a group of employees doing everything safely (and said nothing to them) but you went immediately to the first employee doing something wrong and said something? If you answer “yes,” then you have engaged in Leave Alone/Zap.

Does this management method work? Yes it does, for a very, very short time.

You can watch it work today as you drive home, when you will probably be driving about 10 miles an hour over the speed limit, along with everyone else in the pack of cars. At this point, you are all non-compliant, until you see the police officer pointing his radar gun at you.

What do you (and everyone else) do so as to avoid being “Zapped” with a speeding ticket? You hit the brakes. You (and the entire pack of cars) have just graduated to being compliant with the rules that the police want you to follow, at least for a while.

How long does this shift in behavior last? About 30 seconds, when you breathe a sigh of relief as the police officer disappears from your rearview mirror. Whew!

Now what do you do? For most of us, we hit the gas pedal and speed back up, and once again, we become non-compliant.

From this short example, it is clear that punishment, negative reinforcement and “leave alone/Zap” management systems fail to produce commitment, and they fail to change worker behavior “in the moment of choice, when nobody is watching.”

There are a lot of problems with Ann’s poorly developed incentive system, but the biggest is that it relies on Leave Alone/Zap. This is precisely why she is getting the “safety cop” behavior shift outlined in her quote at the beginning of this story.

So how do you get people to become committed to safety, to do the right thing in the moment of choice?

Is it by increasing the number of safety cops? And having more frequent Zaps? Many managers think so, but they are sadly misguided. More punishment and negative reinforcement will get you more compliance, but it won’t get you commitment.

You can’t punish a team into winning the Super Bowl.

Getting your workforce to be Committed to safety is winning the Super Bowl.

To truly get commitment requires something that is rarely delivered by today’s managers and leaders: Positive Reinforcement.

Let me be clear. I am not talking about steak dinners and handing out giftcards and t-shirts for lagging indicators.

That’s not positive reinforcement. In fact, those types of reinforcement actually erode commitment and encourage non-compliance. In short, they breed mediocrity.

How well are our best behavior based safety cultures doing at delivering the positive reinforcement that people crave and need?

The answer will surprise you (just as it shocked me). Stay tuned for my next story…”The Power of Positive Reinforcement”.

It was 1981, and I was in Danville, Virginia. I followed Tom, the safety director through the dark old textile mill, walking on heart of pine floors that had probably seen over a hundred years of workers come and go. The smell of machine oil mixed with the warm smell of cotton. The textile machines hummed away, spinning out yard after yard of fabric.

I watched the workers busily monitoring the machines to keep them running at peak efficiency, and I noted that many of them had T-Shirts emblazoned with a slogan… “Zero Injuries-Our Goal”

On the walls in every break room, the same “Zero Injuries” slogan was repeated on posters, coffee mugs, you name it.

I was impressed with the passion in this culture to reach zero injuries, so I asked Tom about his plant’s safety record.

“Well, Bill, I’ll be honest—we’ve made huge gains in safety over the last 5 years, but now, it seems that reaching zero is impossible. The closer we get to zero, the harder it becomes to show improvement. We’ve started to plateau or “flat line” and my concern is that we’ll do a “hockey stick” and trend back up”, Tom admitted.

With over 1500 employees, Tom’s plant routinely celebrated million hour milestones, fed people steak dinners, and the like. But they still had a steady stream of injuries that wouldn’t go away.

Tom’s problem is like that of many other cultures. They have chased the goal of Zero Injuries year after year, only to find it to be more elusive than the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

At that moment, I looked Tom dead in the eye and told him that part of his problem was that he was chasing the wrong goal. I told Tom what I’ve told thousands of safety leaders around the world for over thirty years:

Zero Injuries is NOT your Goal

“Huh??? What did you say Bill?”

If you’re thinking this, it’s completely normal. Usually I get a degree of “shock and awe” when I say this to audiences. They’re not quite sure I’m in my right mind.

But I am completely serious. Zero injuries should NOT be your goal.

Until leaders understand that there is a level of safety beyond zero, they will be stuck on the dreaded “hockey stick plateau” in their safety performance.

Why is it that chasing Zero Injuries eventually produces this plateau?

To get at this answer, we need to look into the world of quality improvement, and in particular I want to consider the work of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Statistical Process Control and general-all-around-quality-guru.

For those of you who don’t know who Deming is, I’ll give you the short version.

After World War II, Dr. Deming approached the US Automakers and told them if they would listen to his somewhat radical theories on quality improvement they could revolutionize quality and make vehicles that would last longer and build more loyal customers.

There was just one problem with Deming’s idea: The big 3 US automakers were actually delighted when something went wrong on a car (so long as it was out of warranty.) If enough things failed on a car, then the customer would bring it to the dealership and they would trade it for a new one. This strategy even had a name… “planned obsolescence”.

Planned obsolescence is why, as a little boy, just six years old, I remember admiring the beautiful chrome “Cadillac” emblems inside my dad’s 1969 Cadillac Sedan DeVille. About two years after Dad bought his new Caddy, right on schedule, those emblems would fall off. This “defect” provided a pretty big NIC for my Dad (a negative, immediate, & certain consequence).

I’m not sure what else went wrong on Dad’s car, but soon enough, he headed for the dealership to swap for a new car (a very big PIC for both him and me!)

“Planned Obsolescence” had sold another car again. Strange as it may seem, this strategy of building poor quality into a product was a PFC (positive, future, certain) consequence for the major US Automakers in the fifties and sixties.

As you might imagine, Deming’s words of wisdom fell on deaf ears at the Big 3.

So that’s why he went to Japan.

Here, as is often the case, one man’s NIC is another man’s PIC.

The Japanese (who were looking for ways to grab US market share) listened to Deming and they designed quality into their products, making them better, cheaper, and more fuel efficient than their US competition.

Needless to say, the Japanese taught US manufacturers a vital lesson in quality versus planned obsolescence. About PICS versus NICS in product design and market share.

In a nutshell, here’s how Deming gave the Japanese the winning hand in quality…

When a factory produces a part that is defective and fails to meet specifications, then the part must be either scrapped or re-worked, or worse yet, it ships to the customer creating an unhappy customer, who eventually stops buying the product. Any of these options is expensive and wasteful.

Deming taught that quality should be measured at every step in the process. Rather than get the car fully assembled, and counting defects at the tail end, every step in the assembly process needed to have statistical analysis to see if the process was in control, or out of control. Hence the name “Statistical Process Control”.

Deming and other quality leaders have revolutionized manufacturing methods today. Measuring quality now involves hundreds and sometimes thousands of interim checks to be sure quality standards are met at each and every part of the product’s birth cycle.

So how does all this relate to safety?

I remember being at Boeing, with a talented group of leaders, and I told them I had a crazy idea for them….

Instead of spending so much money on quality assurance personnel and quality testing for their aircraft, I suggested they might fire their whole quality department and save a lot of money.

In its place, put up posters and hand out T-Shirts that say “Zero Defects Our Goal”. Tell the employees to “Build a good quality plane!”.

And lastly, measure quality by the number of customer complaints they get on each aircraft.

Can Boeing run their company this way?

What do you think?

Can you run your company this way?

Not a chance.

Everyone agrees that it would be impossible to run a company this way–Quality is something that must be integrated with production every step of the way.

But that is exactly how we run safety today in most companies.

We put up posters that say “Zero Injuries Is Our Goal” and we tell the employees to “Be Safe Now! You hear?”

Next, we count the “safety defects” after they have occurred… e.g. how many recordable injuries were there last month? What is our incidence rate? Did we have any fatalities? Did we get our safety award bonus?

Accidents are simply another kind of defect—a deviation from the standard of perfection. And, like quality, these defects must be detected and eliminated at the moment they first appear.

My good friend Kenny Sawyer says that companies with injuries “rehearse those injuries thousands of times until they get them right.” What Kenny meant is that there are often many “early warning” behavioral indicators that tell us an injury is going to happen. All too often, these at-risk behaviors are ignored due to the perceived importance of production and profits.

In light of all this, I would like to suggest a better slogan for your next company T-Shirt and poster campaign:

“Our New Goal: Zero Unsafe Behaviors & Conditions”

Will you ever fully achieve this goal? Maybe. Maybe not.

But if you chase zero unsafe behaviors you will finally get to zero injuries, or darn near close. You will instill in your culture the idea that it’s not “ok” to “rehearse for a fatality”.

So later today, why don’t you go tear down all those old “Zero Injury” signs and posters you have displayed. Put up new ones with my slogan above. You don’t owe me any money for using it. If it saves just one life, that will be more than payment enough for me.

The article maintains that companies are only joining VPPPA as a way to get off OSHA’s radar screen, to escape OSHA compliance visits and audits.

The writer concludes that the answer is bigger penalties and fines for companies who violate safety rules and questions whether VPP is effective at improving safety performance.  Perhaps the old saying to “walk softly and carry a big stick” should be applied to create a tougher, meaner OSHA.

What do you think? 

I decided to “Ask the Experts” how they feel about VPP.  So I reached out to a few of the safety professionals I’ve come to know and respect over the last 30 years, and some of them were kind enough to give me their input on the question of VPP and its effectiveness as a tool to enhance worker safety.  Before I share that, I’d like to tell you a few stories to help put this issue in perspective.

As a lifelong student of human behavior, I learned early on that there are primarily two levers we can pull to change someone’s behavior:

 Pleasure & Pain

We are either motivated to do what we do because we are running towards a pleasant outcome—or because we are running away from a painful one.

There are still a few die-hard managers who believe that pain, punishment, and fear are the best ways to change people’s behavior. They are wrong.

No matter how big the Grizzly Bear is that is chasing you, one day you will get tired of running. You will stop. And you will give that Grizzly the fight of his life, even if it means the end of yours. The Grizzly bear may “win” the fight, but he’ll lose the battle. You aren’t running anymore. Your performance has dropped to zero. 

If you are running toward pleasure, however, you will run faster and longer. I’ll tell you a little story about shocking rats to prove my point in a little bit.

Before I do, let’s debunk one of the primary tenets from the iwatchnews.org story about OSHA and VPP.  They maintain that the main reason companies join VPPPA is to escape fines and inspections by OSHA.

This is ludicrous.

If you aren’t a member of VPPPA, your odds of having a visit from your friendly OSHA inspector are about 1 in 100,000.  Those are long odds. In fact, according to google, your chances of hitting a hole in one in golf are way, way better than getting a visit from OSHA.

My point is that the potential of an OSHA audit is future and uncertain with very low probability.  We know from behavioral science that future and uncertain consequences do not really motivate behavior change.

Bottom line: The threat of an OSHA inspection doesn’t change company behavior until an inspection has occurred and fines have resulted. Now, the threat becomes very certain, and moves closer to being “immediate”.

Suppose your company joins VPPPA….does that mean you are off the OSHA radar screen?

Guess what…now your chances of being inspected by someone from OSHA change from uncertain and future to GUARANTEED. You are assured to get a visit from OSHA. That is CERTAIN, and pretty close to immediate.

So, the notion that companies join VPPPA to escape OSHA visits just doesn’t hold up to reality. 

Punishment or Praise?

 Science has proven that both positive and punishing consequences produce behavior change.

 The fundamental question in this debate seems to be, “what works best?” Should OSHA increase penalties and fines and step up the punishment (e.g. should the Grizzly Bear growl louder and take bigger bites?) 

 Or, should OSHA continue to use VPP to partner with companies, and will that produce the result we all want?—“Nobody gets hurt.”

 If a reward for working a period of time without an injury can cause injury hiding, then being punished for having injuries can also lead to injury hiding.

Incentive programs, you see, have become a convenient scapegoat (hey…this sounds like another blog I’ve read J) —a consultants “trashcan diagnosis” for why injury hiding occurs.   Incentives have also provided many behavioral consultants with something to bash in their presentations at various conferences. 

The problem with an OSHA that only knows how to crack down and punish companies is that this will produce many companies who only do the minimum to comply with OSHA rules, and who invest all their resources in avoiding the next OSHA Zap. 

This article was recently published in the September 2011 issue of Occupational Health and Safety magazine.

I was thrilled! I had just heard OSHA’s Dr. David Michaels speak about the concerns around under-reporting of injuries caused by “old school” lagging indicator incentive programs.

Finally! For the longest time I’d been waiting for OSHA to shine a light on an age old problem. Back in 1981, I began talking with safety professionals about how rewarding people for working a month or a million hours without reporting an injury (the way everyone did it back then) would produce only one real behavior change: the hiding of injuries.

Here we are, thirty years later. Has anything changed? Have leaders begun to get the message and switch to a proactive, leading indicator approach? What do you think?

After hearing Dr. Michaels’ excellent webinar presentation warning against the use of incentives that cause injury hiding, one safety director lamented, “I hear Dr. Michaels telling us what not to do. But I haven’t heard him tell us what to do.

Before I give you my thirty year perspective on where we are heading with the use of incentives to change behavior, I would like to call your attention to a hidden, unseen cause of injury hiding, one that is even more powerful at producing under-reporting than the lagging indicator incentive programs still in use today. I call it the “Smoking Gun.” And it has been largely ignored by the behavioral consultant community.

Incentive programs, you see, have become a convenient scapegoat -a consultants “trashcan diagnosis.” for why injury hiding occurs. Incentives have also provided many behavioral consultants with something to bash in their presentations at various conferences.

I was reminded of this at the Chicago ASSE PDC this past summer. During my presentation, one safety manager came up to thank me for my session “Green Beans & Ice Cream: The Recipe for Behavior Change”.

She then took out her copy of the guide to sessions and she pointed out that there were 5 presentations (mostly delivered by behavioral consultants) about how wrong and bad safety incentives are.

There were hardly any sessions to be found on how to use them correctly and how to integrate rewards and recognition into an overall safety behavior change strategy. I felt glad to be one of the exceptions to the rule.

In fact, even the ASSE keynote speaker Mr. Pink (who is a great speaker) spoke at length about the use of incentives to motivate workers. While I agree with many of the things Pink says, there are some areas that concern me.

For example, Mr. Pink’s new book teaches that rewarding people for doing something well (with a pay raise or bonus for instance) will rob them of their internal desire to repeat the same task in the future. I will address this idea in a future blog, and we will explore it from behavioral science to see if the research supports this view.

In the meantime, until I write that blog, I suggest you find your boss’s copy of this book and hide it. Otherwise he might decide that all that hard work you did this year shouldn’t be rewarded with a raise. ☺

Where was I? Oh yeah, I remember now. The narrow minded CEO and the Smoking Gun….

Here’s the way the story came to me, from the plant Safety Manager.

It seems that the plant had just finished the year with an injury reduction of 32%. They’d had only five recordable injuries for almost 500 workers. That’s pretty good in my book. (I’ve seen a lot worse.)

Apparently their CEO didn’t feel that the plant was safe enough. Plus, it was the start of the second Great Depression and everyone was nervous about their jobs. This CEO flew in on his jet to address all the workers. Production was stopped. It must have been important. You could have heard a pin drop on the floor as the CEO began his speech.

In his 1 minute speech, the CEO made these points crystal clear to his 500 workers….

“1. The economy has tanked, and we will be closing some plants and eliminating some jobs.

2. Your plant has had 5 recordable injuries and over 463 near miss reports.

3. That’s 468 too many unsafe events.

4. I’m worried about the future of this plant.”

Then, he boarded his corporate jet and flew off into the CEO sunset.

The impact on the plant safety record was immediate and striking.

Not a single recordable injury was reported for the next year.

And they didn’t have a single near miss reported either. (Loss of discretionary effort)

I can imagine the CEO reading the safety reports from this plant some months later, smiling to himself and thinking… “There….I fixed that plant’s safety problem.” Or so he thought.

But what did this CEO really fix? Did he really manage in one sixty second speech to change the behavior of so many people?

Actually…he did.

He changed the behavior of what his people reported.

But he failed to change the unsafe behavior of his people. Employees now hid injuries, not because of an incentive program (since the company didn’t even have one) but because of the fear of punishment.

To be honest, this company did have an invisible safety incentive program…the “smoking gun” if you will:

“If you hide injuries you get to keep your job.”

Does the same fear exist in your culture?

Behavioral science has proven countless times that both positive and punishing consequences affect our behavior.

The aforementioned CEO delivered a punishing blow to his people’s morale, engagement, and team spirit.

The safety director who told me this story lamented that over many years, he had built up the safety culture with painstaking effort…”like filling up a bucket one drop of water at a time.”

And then his CEO kicked the bucket over, erasing years of hard work and trust building.

So it goes….

If a reward for working a period of time without an injury can cause injury hiding, then being punished for having injuries can also lead to injury hiding.

Another encounter I had with the “Smoking Gun” of injury hiding was in a plant where punishment was the primary tool used to drive safe behavior.

I learned about this when I interviewed a group of employees at a chemical plant. The plant had no formal or informal incentive systems in place, and they reported only 3 recordable injuries per year, along with millions of hours without a single lost time injury.

During the focus group interviews, the employees told me that they hid injuries on a routine basis.

“Why?” I said.

“Because about 2 years ago one of our co-workers hurt himself and it was discovered that he wasn’t wearing his PPE…. So they made him conduct safety meetings with all employees where he had to tell them that he had been hurt by being ‘stupid’ and not wearing his PPE. We all felt sorry for the poor guy. The intended message from management was that not wearing PPE was ‘dumb.’ But that’s not what we all heard.”

“So what was the real ‘takeaway’ message for everybody on the shop floor?” I asked.

“That if you get hurt, they’ll punish you and make a fool out of you by requiring you to tell everybody in the plant how stupid you are—now, none of us report our injuries, cause we don’t want to be humiliated like that guy was.” And so the interview concluded.

As this example clearly proves, the introduction of punishment into the system produced exactly what it always does: a reduction of the behavior it follows. Even worse, you get compliance behavior. They follow safety rules only when the safety cop is there, but not when he is gone. In this case, the worker reported his injury and got punished for it. Now, nobody else will report injuries either.

W. Edwards Deming said it better than I ever could: “Every system is perfectly designed to produce the results that it gets.”

If you have injury hiding, then you have it because of the consequences built into your management systems.

Another root cause of injury hiding is the way we measure safety performance. Every company today is judged “safe” or “unsafe” based on lagging indicators like TRIR and Lost time injury rates.

Insurance costs go up or down largely based on these numbers, and so do regulatory oversight, fines and penalties.

Until the management systems are changed to focus on leading indicators and not lagging ones, the inevitable result will be more punishment from senior leaders, more injuries that are hidden and covered up, and lingering risk that cannot be detected and corrected-all the while safety incentive programs continue to be the “convenient scapegoat” for why injury hiding occurs.

Clearly there is injury hiding at the chemical plant I mentioned earlier, but you can’t blame incentive programs for it, because they don’t have one.

They have substituted a far more damaging consequence in its place—that of punishing people who report injuries by embarrassing them in front of all their peers.

Is there a better way to measure and improve safety performance other than the current lagging indicator system of TRIR and other injury metrics?

You bet there is.

I have gone around the world speaking to leaders everywhere. In Greece, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Australia and the USA, I always see the same (yawn) safety signs and posters:

“Zero Injuries is Our Goal”

I’ll tell you the same thing I have told all those leaders. It’s what I’ve being saying for 30 years now.

Zero Injuries is NOT your Goal.

Until leaders understand that there is a level of safety beyond zero, they will be stuck and plateaued in safety performance. And if you think punishment will get you there I’ve got news for you.

You can’t punish a team into winning the Superbowl.

Getting your culture to move “beyond zero” is winning the Superbowl folks. If you have used punishment to get your culture where it is, remember that “what got you here won’t get you there.”

I guess it’s time for me to wrap up this blog. For the last thirty years, I’ve been one of those lone voices crying in the wilderness about the need for more R+ and less punishment in the workplace. I’ve argued against lagging indicator rewards systems and for proactive, behavior based recognition. My passion has always been reinforcing behavior positively, on the spot, and reaching the worker’s heart.

Has anything really changed in my thirty years on the watch?

I’ll let you be the judge.

I know many great safety professionals who are as passionate as I am about people, safety and the Power of Positive Reinforcement. I hope that you are one of them.

I’ve also met my share of “punishers” who wear the Safety Cop badge believing they are effective change agents. They achieve short term behavior change in their people. When they are there, behavior changes, however they fail to achieve the ultimate goal: Personal, interdependent commitment to safety, in the moment of choice, when nobody is watching.

I also know that many of you struggle with outdated lagging indicator incentive programs that do cause people to hide injuries. Often these systems are imposed from somewhere high above, and are written into the compensation system, where they become almost unchangeable.

My advice to you: Never quit. Don’t give up. Keep fighting and pushing until your senior leadership team gets the message. It’s your only way to move beyond zero.

Want to know more? Please call us in the USA at 803 600 8325 or

SKYPE: billsimsjr email:bill.sims@billsims.net Web site: www.billsims.com

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The smell of jet fuel was thick in the air as Delta hurtled me into the night sky. The last embers of the evening sunset graced the Georgia pine trees with a warm orange glow sparkling on their green needles…..it reminded me of a flickering campfire.

For this trip, I was sitting near the massive Rolls Royce engines, fascinated by how the exhaust distorted the pine trees and the ground slightly. If you looked thru it, things were soft and fuzzy, much like a Monet painting, and yet just outside the jet blast all was normal, sharp, and clear.

This flight wasn’t in business class…and there were no secret dudes going to the middle east here…this one was hard core…. I was slammed in the middle aisle seat of economy class between two guys who by their massive size had both missed a great career in the NFL…

Send oxygen please….

It would be a 12-hour flight.

I had never been to Alaska, but one of my father’s dearest friends had entertained me with his stories of the Great Wilderness as a boy…Marvin’s eyes would light up when he spoke of his time in Ketchikan, Alaska back in the 50’s. I had always dreamed of going there…

So when I got a call from Ann (one of the board members of the Alaska ASSE chapter) inviting me to speak at their conference, I wondered, “Is it my turn to have an adventure like Marvin’s?”

“Guys who come up here never want to leave…” Ann said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Well, it’s about a third of the size of the continental USA with only about 600,000 people, and it’s basically wild; hunting, fishing, you name it…”

Ann’s pitch was magic. Of course, it was a Monday morning when we talked…that didn’t hurt her case at all….

Hook, line, sinker. I was sold. I scrubbed my other appointments, and my wife Margie and I were on the next plane westward-bound.

Fast forward.

Long, boring, endless flight in the big silver tube in the sky.

Thanks, Steve Jobs for my iPod…battery died…great.

Are we there yet?

We finally land at the Ted Stevens Airport and there it is.

A really big,

really scary,

12-foot polar bear. Legend has it that it ate a few folks and then faced the double barrel of Alaskan Justice.

Looking at the creature on its hind legs, even in its taxidermic state, is amazing. I figure a picture is in order and hand my phone to Margie so she can “shoot” me by the bear. (She’s always wanted to do that. ;) )

I was awed to be in the presence of such raw power and felt that perhaps I was making a mistake to act as if I had the skill to defeat such an awesome foe. 

But then, hey, it was only a picture, right? Shake it off bill. You’re just tired and a little paranoid.

There wasn’t really any danger…yet.

We drive about an hour to our hotel, far enough away from the airport to make us city slickers feel like the adventure has begun.

Early the next morning, we head for a fishing trip with our new friends Pat, Lynn, Patty, a dog named Duke, and a boat named Sea-Duction.

As we drive up the narrow two-lane road to Seward, Alaska, I can see why people love this place.

Mountains like the Rockies–snow capped, jagged, but touching the ocean. Wrapping around those mountains are iridescent blue glacial rivers, carrying their centuries-old ice and rock.

This, of course, I planned for. But the big surprise was that the whole Kenai Peninsula is an Arctic Rain Forest.

So, guess what!

Below the snow caps you get lush, verdant greenery. Bears like that stuff. Big old bears. Bigger than the guys I rode up with on the plane.

Margie and I are doing fine following Pat & Lynn in their GM Tahoe. We pass a sign telling us that we are about to reach “Turnagain Pass.”

We’re in our rented Suburban with a full tank of gas, and I’m feeling fine until all of a sudden, we go IFR.

For those of you who aren’t into pilot jargon, in a short stretch of about 20 seconds we ascended into the mountains, and the temperature dropped about 30 degrees.

Instantly.

I couldn’t see a thing.

I rolled down the window and stuck my head out to see what was ahead of me while Margie found the right buttons to press to defog us inside.

For a split second, I was 15 and back in my Jeep driving thru the North Carolina Smoky mountains with all the windows zipped down.

As the windshield slowly began to clear, it reminded me how swiftly things go from being “safe” to being “unsafe.”

As we leave the dock at Seward, we gaze at the gorgeous mountains, ocean, glaciers, and even some mountain goats.

Our charter boat captain tells me that the ocean water is about 34 degrees, “so if you go over, we have less than three minutes to get you out, Bill.”

Got it boss.

No sweat. I’m hanging tight on the Sea-Duction Boat.

The day is golden. Only problem is Margie catches 5 fish to my 1.

Oh well…

As I cast my bait in the water hoping for a big King Salmon, I gaze up at the mountain goats standing on the rocky crags above me.

Scapegoats…

I’m trying to remember what a scapegoat really is. Bottom line, it’s something that is innocent but gets blamed for something it didn’t do.

It was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

After 25 years of studying, I’m convinced that incentive systems have become the proverbial “scapegoat.”

Whenever there is a report of injury hiding or under-reporting, consultants have rushed in with a battle cry of “kill the incentives” and, whether right or wrong, they have eviscerated the use thereof.

As I bob my hook up and down in the frigid Alaskan waters, I receive a phone call that further convinces me…

A safety manager calls me and says “Bill we are one of ten plants in our division. We are the worst of the ten….with worst being relative. We’ve been five years with no lost time injuries and only five recordable injuries this year. But we are always ‘low man on the totem pole’ in our monthly conference calls with corporate. My plant manager and I are feeling the heat…..”

So their CEO shows up and gets everyone together for an in-plant “all hands” meeting.

His speech?

Less than 60 seconds…and here are the salient points…

 -“The economy is bad and we may have to close plants and layoff people” (that’s Negative, Future, Uncertain).*
-“Your plant is the worst and most unsafe of our ten plants” (Negative, Immediate, Certain).*
-”I’m worried about this plant” (Negative, Immediate, Certain).*

And then, the CEO gets back on his corporate jet.

“How’s that working for you?” I ask the safety guy.

He tells me they haven’t had a recordable since the CEO got back on his jet to go home.

Nor have they had a Near Miss Report. Or a safety suggestion.

Maybe I should have named this blog “Hunker Down”.

Do you think the 60 second CEO pep talk changed the behaviors of the 500 plus workers?

Nope. Nada.

He simply introduced a new consequence into the game.

FEAR.

And while this site has absolutely ZERO in the way of incentive systems there are all kinds of injury hiding going on.

Because the CEO created one big fat NIC to stop injury reporting*.

Now, if OSHA comes to investigate this plant, will they find an incentive system causing the injury hiding?  No, there is not one, however many consultants will rally around the flag of “injury hiding” and condemn incentives as the easy target, the scapegoat.

Where is the smoking gun?

The CEO and his NICS….Negative Immediate Certain consequences (to use Aubrey Daniel’s term)

Do punishing consequences like these go beyond the company mentioned above?

Oh yeah….

Sub-contractors work for major companies and they teach supervisors to stitch up workers in the field so it won’t be a recordable and thus won’t taint their record, and thus won’t stop them from getting a new contract.

“Take one for the team…”

So, can downward pressure for results from senior leadership create injury hiding? Yes.

Can downward pressure from OSHA cause the same. Yes. Osha, without knowing it, can create a system that causes injury hiding.

Another safety director told me that his new plant manager had a different approach to safety…..punishment and mandatory termination for any safety violations.

This of course, led to an immediate drop in all injury reports, along with the “early warning” indicators of near miss/near hit reports.

Of course, this Plant Manager will probably retire in the next three years and he won’t be there when the next fatality comes knocking. It will be off “his watch” and then he will be convinced that the new plant manager wasn’t “tough enough” to keep people safe.

Sorry to break it to you guys, but you can’t punish a team into winning the Superbowl…

Tune in soon for the continuation of my Alaskan adventure!

 *Thanks to Aubrey Daniels for these terms!

I was rapidly trying to organize my thoughts, since I knew that in the next 4 hours we’d assemble more than 1000 workers inside a temporary warehouse to feed them lunch, hand them a special gift, and speak with them about how important safety was on this and every construction project.

It was then and there that Jerry “Big Dawg” Westbrook walked into my world. At first, I thought the local Hell’s Angel gang had taken a wrong turn and wound up on our jobsite.  But Jerry’s big hearty handshake told me in a moment all I needed to know about the Dawg.

He was a fun-loving straight shooter, passionate about other people and their safety.

With Jerry’s help we fed everyone barbecue, gave them their gifts, announced the new process, touched their hearts a bit, and got their buy-in for safety.

Over the next 3 years working with the Dawg, Rocky Smith, and Brian Spraker (Moapa Site Safety Leader), I grew to have a profound respect for this team….they ran an extremely safe project and the results spoke for themselves (I believe their project broke records for Nevada construction workplace safety)

Rocky Smith remembers the Dawg fondly at the Moapa site.

“I was coming in on the night shift and saw Jerry helping an employee who had a heart attack with the AED. Jerry asked me to help roll him over to get him ready for the helicopter ride to the hospital. As Jerry rolled our patient over to face me, the man got sick and threw up on my boots.  Jerry just laughed and said he’d seen it all coming and that’s why he’d picked me to help him. …And I’ll never forget how our friend Keith found this bakery in Vegas with donuts the size of a dinner plate. He’d always show up with a dozen every week. Jerry would start out by saying, “I’ll only have one.” And by the second donut he would just grin at us and say “What? I only had two.”

Rocky concludes by saying…“Jerry was a special guy, with a heart of gold that touched all of us….”

One construction worker’s comment on the Moapa project said it all…. “Fluor is serious about safety. They brought a real behavior change process to this project. The other Vegas contractors just hand us a ball cap…”

Then, as it always happens in construction, I lost track of these good friends. The projects wound up, and everyone moved on. Brian went to Africa. Rocky went to Trinidad.

And the Dawg?

The Dawg dropped off my radar….until one day some years later….when his voice roared thru my cellphone…

“Hey Bill, it’s your old buddy the Dawg!”

“Jerry, how you been man???”

“Meaner than ever. Hey, I’m here working in Vegas on the City Center Project.  We need your system here. Can you come see us and see if we can sell MGM management on the idea?”

I was on the next plane to Vegas. When I arrived, Jerry introduced me to a wonderful lady named Lisa who was every bit as passionate about safety as the Dawg.

While the three of us fought tirelessly to get MGM leadership to implement a process like the one at Moapa, sadly, they were unwilling or unable to do so.

Thru each and every one of the twelve fatalities at the City Center project and other projects on the strip, the Dawg and Lisa redoubled their efforts to get a behavioral process approved.

The Dawg didn’t care who heard him or what he said. He would bark until leadership heard his message about safety.

His motto: To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.

Jerry wasn’t afraid of criticism and it’s pretty safe to say that doing, saying, or being nothing just wasn’t for him.

One day some months later, Jerry called me and told me he’d lost 32 pounds and stopped smoking. He had been diagnosed with cancer. I spent a long time chatting with him about life and what matters most.

Then, bouncing back like he always did, the Dawg was his old self. Fussing and ranting about people not taking safety seriously like they should.

I was glad to hear the Dawg bark again, cause I knew he must be feeling better…and sure enough, his doctors had told him he was in remission.

….

“Bill it’s Lisa and I’ve got some really bad news. Jerry’s cancer returned and he’s in a coma in the hospital. I’m heading down to check on him.”  A little voice in my head had wondered why the Dawg had been quiet lately. I had hoped he was just working hard, but my darkest fears were soon to be realized.

According to his family, Jerry’s last few days were spent in ICU where he barked out orders to “Put your fall protection on! Check the scaffolding!” along with many other safety reminders.

Before I could make it to Vegas the text came in from Lisa….“You know what they say Bill…all good Dawgs go to heaven.”

To me, Jerry Westbrook was a safety manager’s safety manager. About a month before he passed away,  I was able to interview the Dawg and recorded his story about the Moapa project with his permission….if you would like to hear the Dawg’s Last Bark, please visit the link below. I think it’s the way he would want to be remembered…

And the next time you have to stand up for safety and growl or even bark a little bit, just remember that the Dawg would be proud of you.

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

 If I had a nickel for every email like this I’ve received over the years, I’d be starring in my own permanent Corona Beer commercial.

Over my 25+ year history I’ve seen thousands of big-name, consultant-driven BBS systems thrive, strive, and then die.   I’ve learned there are a couple of signs that tell you when your BBS program is sucking wind….

 ……do any of these sound familiar to you?

 If you have observers who pencil whip and fake the observational data…… you may have BBS on Life Support…

 If your BBS process started with lots of passion and fire but now it’s like shoveling out the barn to get participation…… you may have BBS on Life Support…

 If you ask permission to do an observation of an employee and he tells you NO…… you may have BBS on Life Support…

 If you have a hard time getting people to do observations…… you may have BBS on Life Support…

 If you collect tons of data but never process, analyze, or communicate it back to your workers…….. you may have BBS on Life Support…

 If you are struggling as a BBS coordinator to find ways that will positively reinforce achievements and you are sick and tired of t-shirts and bbq dinners…..you may have BBS on Life Support…

 If your company just downsized half the workforce and you just lost your BBS coordinator…. you may have BBS on Life Support…

 If your performance has flat-lined…… you may have BBS on Life Support…

 If you have BBS on Life Support, it’s time to put the FUN back in your process!

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.

And after meeting lots of new friends in Kuwait, I’m in Bahrain, the country north of Saudi…

So now it’s my turn to deliver my keynote speech after the Prince of Bahrain.

I had 60 minutes to speak when I left South Carolina. When the Prince finishes the introduction (beautiful speech, but it was all Arabic to me! ) I’m down to 30 minutes. Try tweaking your 58 powerpoint slides in 4 minutes folks. Lots of fun.

 Ok. Green Beans are done. Delivered. And now it is time for questions.

The room is crowded with a group of Arabian folks wearing their regal Arab robes, the Thob, as well as a sprinkled mix of Americans, Brits, Aussies, and many other expats in their usual jeans/t-shirt garb.

“Yes sir, I have a question,” says a young man….

“Mr. Sims, what would you say about a company that hires private police officers to monitor its employees driving habits in their personal vehicles in their own time? It even goes so far as to fine them for speeding and penalize them and reduce their pay bonuses.”

I swallowed hard. 700 pairs of eyes focused on me to see my response.

“What company do you work for?” I asked him.

“I’d rather not say.” He replied, and the whole room laughed at once.

So, now you see how all the way in Bahrain, on the tip of Saudi Arabia, I came to find myself between the rock and the hard place.

If I sided with the company, the audience would not like my message. And if I sided with the audience, the company would be sure never to do business with me…..

All at once I had become, the Deer in the Headlights……

Think fast Bill!

I knew that it was now or never…………..

I knew that my hopes of helping companies to change behavior in the GCC would depend on how I answered this next question.

One shot.

That’s all you got kid….

(picture Han Solo in the background)…..

I decided that it wasn’t my place to tell the audience what was “right” or “wrong”. They needed the facts. They had to choose it for themselves.

So I did what my mom does: Tell a story that has a few turns and twists and winds up with a totally unexpected conclusion!

 I decided to talk about…. boys and their cars.

 I had dreamed for years about owning a Porsche but as a teenage guy in the 80’s – not gonna happen.

You could maybe afford a Camaro muscle car from the 60’s…..they were cheap and plentiful, (unlike now, where they are treasured collectors items).

Or if you were Henry Hester, whose dad was rich, you got a Jeep with a Nitrous Oxide kit and a 4 barrel carburetor kit. We installed it on his car as an auto mechanics class project.

For fun behind our High School, we’d go watch Henry pop wheelies and jump coke bottles. Since he had four wheel drive he’d jump them going forward. Then, for real fun, he’d jump them going backward. Cool stuff in South Carolina. Summer days were long and we needed things to do….

From what I heard, sometimes Henry would go to the sand hills of South Carolina and he’d jump dunes running 90 miles per hour in his Jeep. No roll cage. No seat belts.  

Far and away beyond my world was the Porsche 928.

First ever V8 front engine car. Big. Bad. Fast. $55,000. Far more than a kid from South Carolina could ever hope to own.

At age 19 there was a unique “Wrinkle in Time” (read the book!) where the US dollar had unprecedented strength in the world. It was 1982.

“Hey Bill, it’s Marv,” said my second brother and friend from Summerville, South Carolina.

“I found some lady named Caroline who’s from Summerville and she says she can get us a used Porsche for about $15,000…the dollar’s strong now and you have to pull the trigger fast….”

Wow.

396 horsepower. No American emission controls. Genuine Porsche. Can you say PIC*?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

On the other hand… $15,000. Is this a scam? How do you buy this thing? NICS* But at 19, who thinks about NICS?

“Sounds good Marv….you go first.” I said. He was 18.  But already a much better negotiator than I can ever hope to be….

“I’m thinking I’ll watch you…” he said with a smile, a charming laugh, and a daring note in his voice.

So I called the bank and they said sure they’d let me borrow $17,000 (oh yeah, Caroline forgot to tell me there were a few transportation costs).

Net net. Bank loans me money. I wire $17,000 over to Germany and pray that I get a car. Nobody co-signed for this. It was my baby.

I guess I am hardwired for risk. Right or wrong, it runs through my veins.

Three months later me and Marv are in Jacksonville……

A dark chocolate Porsche floats off the transport boat. It’s a moment in time I’ll never forget.

Seats are checkered flags. Literally oozing…. “I’m a Porsche.”

If you watch Transformers and catch the bond between boy and machine (the yellow “Bumblebee” Camaro) you will begin to glimpse this moment….

Driving back home…

We are on I-95. The speed limit is still 55 mph… everywhere in America.

But after all, this is a Porsche….I floor the gas pedal… what a rush!!!!!

Bam! Wake up fast bill!

Hey Earth to bill you have 700 people wanting some intelligent answer and you’re stuck in the 80’s…

So I tell the young man in the audience…..

“It’s not for me to decide what is wrong or right in your culture. Only you and your leaders can do that. But I can ask a few questions that may help you find the right road. Is that ok?”

“Yes.” (Whew. First step of negotiation has been accomplished!)

“So, yesterday in Bahrain I was passed on the highway by a 14 year old driving 142 mph in a Mustang GT….(wow I should’ve never sold my Porsche!) …. so would you say that you guys have a problem with unsafe driving behaviors?”

“Yep”

(For the record the GCC has 2 or 3 times the driving fatalities of western countries. And according to the insurance companies, if you’re going to crash they’d rather you die. Because fixing broken people costs way more than burying dead ones. Sorry for the harsh analysis… but this is how the insurance industry views it.)

“Ok, so, you guys have 2 to 3 times more people dying and being injured from unsafe driving behaviors. Are you happy with that? Do you want that to continue or not?

“We want to change it!”

“So, if you’re 14 and you drive a Mustang GT at 142 mph what do the police here do to you?” I asked.

“Zero. Nothing. Nada.”

“So, the government doesn’t set any real consequences for unsafe behavior?”

“Right”.

“When I was 19 I managed to own a Porsche 928 for about 9 months before I had to sell it and settle down and get married. I got more than a few speeding tickets. And here’s what I learned in that short amount of time. If you speed it will cost you money in fines and eventually your driver’s license.  While I didn’t like it, punishment taught me to stop that behavior, at least for a little while!”

“So, your employer has to pick up the broken human pieces for those who are bleeding by the road. These are real, powerful, NICS for them. So, I think they are addressing the problem in the only way they know how… punishment. Would you agree with me?”

“Yes.” he said, and there was only a glance and a half smile to tell me I had connected with this bright young man…..and then he faded into the audience.

“Now, what I would rather see is a system to positively reinforce people for the right behavior since punishment only works short term….”

“If you want me to talk more about that please raise your hand ….”

699 of 700 hands go up……

And then the Prince of Bahrain tells me my 30 minutes is up…

Dang.

I hate it when that happens.

I never got to make my point. But maybe it was better that way. A few people told me that they admired me for how I took the question, and how I helped the audience to find their own answer…

I felt good but realized there was more ground to cover here…..the question I never got to answer is “How could we use positive reinforcement to change driving behaviors long term ….?”

Maybe next time!

*Thanks to Aubrey Daniels!

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.

With a guilty smile I  asked, “Can I have both?”

She smiled back and said, “Perfect.”

You see, normally I go coach to prove I’m still tough when I make those 26 hour global flights, but this time I splurged and cashed in some of my frequent flyer miles (shhh! don’t tell Margie!) and made my way into the Delta Business Class Elite, on my way to Kuwait, and other parts of the Middle East.

I had heard I’d be treated well, and Delta even promised I would have a lie-flat bed in exchange for all those miles I gave back to them; I had saved them for probably 20 years or more.

My back jumped for joy at the thought of actually sleeping on a plane. I thought what a great use of my Delta Skymiles it would be!

Hey, if I was paying for it, why not have chicken AND beef? I mean, it sure beat the beer and peanuts I was used to. Getting two dinners at once was a pretty big PIC for me (thanks again Aubrey!), and as I sipped my cold beer (and still nibbled on peanuts) I started to tune into the guys around me.

Here we were, kind of like space travelers in some sci-fi movie, in our little cocoons, talking, traveling, about to go into suspended animation until we reached Andromeda or  Dubai or somewhere. 

The guy in Cocoon 1 in front of me was in high speed data systems, working for a government contractor. The guy in Cocoon 4 to the left of me was in communications…working for a government contractor. 

“So where are you guys going and what are you doing there?”, I asked.

“Iraq. Data system work. That’s about all I can say!” said the Dude in Cocoon 1.

“Afghanistan. Comm link systems. Beyond that, it’s classified.” Said the Dude in Cocoon 4.

“Hey man I’m cool with that…”

I was wondering when I could get more peanuts.

I was really impressed to be with some heavy hitting guys who were my age and traveling to do some pretty neat techie stuff in a pretty exciting place. They were chatting about how they’d get reimbursed for their $10,000 tickets by their companies and then they stopped….

“How about you Bill, what do you do?” they asked.

“Err, Umm, well, you see, I’ve been asked to speak in Bahrain and Kuwait about my upcoming book …. “Green Beans & Ice Cream: The Recipe for Behavior Change.” I responded somewhat nervously, a bit unsure as to their reaction.

They got quiet for a minute…..

I figured it was time to break out the Power of the Pen and handed them all a green bean pen.

Then I told them the story of Green Beans & Ice Cream and they broke into big smiles……and asked if I could spare a few extra Green bean pens for their kids, which I gladly did……I hope those pens made it home with their daddies to their loved ones….

………….……man am I tired…I’m in Dubai….and it’s everything they say. Vegas on steroids. Wow.

I spent 4 hours with my cell service tech support before leaving the USA and “Yes Mr. Sims your cell phone will work just fine out of the country.”

And so now it’s time to call my family and tell them I’m safe and sound on the other side of the pond.

One problem. The phone says SOS. Out of Service. Dead.

Bummer.

Maybe I’ll fix it at my next flight’s gate. Off I go….

So I get off my flight at gate 118, and learn that I’m late for my connecting flight to Kuwait, which leaves from gate 323.

I haul my 2 rolling bags behind me and start looking for gate 323. Yep, they have 500 gates or more in Dubai’s Airport. It’s huge.

Hartsfield airport should be jealous….

After about 21 gates I ask someone “Where’s the train?”.

“That will be in phase 3 sir….until then, no train. You have to walk, sir.”

(Now I know why they are skinny here.)  

Off I go.

By gate 318 I’m really tired. Walking 2 miles on hard leather dress shoes is tough. But my aching feet had no clue what was coming next.  As I huffed and puffed to the gate the agent said, “Sorry sir, the gate has changed to gate 119.”

This  was clearly not my day. 2 miles back. Sorry feet.  After 23 hours of flight. Well, I hear walking breaks up the blood clots your legs get on the plane so maybe this is a good thing? Look on the bright side, feet, ok?

I go back thru the maze of duty free shops and feel like I’m in Groundhog Day. More of the same.

Now I’m at my gate.

30 minutes to departure. Checked in. Everything is cool.

So I whip out my blue tooth headset and pair it to my notebook and find free wi-fi in the airport, and use SKYPE to call home. ET phone home! 

I call the secret, special cell service IT number that a buddy gave me which goes deep into their Command Center and I find a really great tech support person and beg them to help me get my phone working.

They do. It works. Cool. Why didn’t I call you guys the first time, I wonder?

Now I’m in Kuwait and my good friend Brian meets me. We head out to his Toyota and the cold, wet winter I left at home is replaced by hot, sultry desert air. Off we head to the Kuwait Hilton on the Arab Gulf (nice place). I really appreciate him getting me to my hotel and oh YES THEY HAVE STARBUCKS HERE!!!

I have four hours to sleep and then I’m up and ready for meetings with companies and many people. But first, there is breakfast. So I’m eating my oatmeal and the waiter asks if I want juice.

“Yes please, apple” I say.

“Red or Green, sir?”

Huh? I never had to pick the color of apple juice in my entire life. Usually it was just Mott’s, that clear, translucent stuff that we get in the plastic bottle.

“Sir?”

The silence was unbearable. I felt really stupid. In Kuwait, and can’t even order apple juice. 

And in a moment of sheer genius I remember my chicken/beef solution….

“How about both?” said  I, with a slight smile to the waiter.

“Certainly sir.” And he vanished.

A few seconds later I heard the grrrr and hum of a juicer machine. And then my smiling waiter dropped down freshly juiced apple juice. One glass of red apple juice. One of green.

That was neat.  I gave my waiter a Green Bean pen and moved on.

Lots of meetings and lots of people and lots of presentations on Behavior Change. I had fun. I think they did too.

The next day, my three new friends Srikanth, Ashok and Mohammed take me to tour Kuwait City. They are from India, and they take me for Indian food. I let them order for me, since I was clueless. Man was that good … sure beat the food on the plane!

Then we pull up to one of their observation towers…really, really big towers, with the restaurant/elevator/souvenir package. Neat place. Big black hummer with Kuwaiti SWAT teams doing a training exercise which had them rappelling down the tower and climbing up it. Pretty cool. Inside, pictures show me where Saddam Hussein tried to destroy the tower to break the will of the people, but I guess the tower won, as did the people…..

……… ”That will be $472 sir.” Said the airport check in guy.

“Huh? What’s that for?” I asked.

“Your bags sir, they are over the weight limit, so we need $472, cash.” He replied.

Since they didn’t take credit cards I had to scrape together the money from my wallet to pay for the bags I was taking on to Bahrain. Not a good thing. Now I was down to $20 cash. And I had a week to go in the Middle East….credit cards are good at most places, but you never know…

Now I’m at the Gulf Hotel in Bahrain (http://www.gulfhotelbahrain.com/), a neat hotel that dates back to 1929.

That’s where the meeting is. I meet my dear friend and coach Jitu and give him a hug. Then I collapse on the bed. I’ve been averaging 4 hours of sleep a night and tomorrow I begin teaching a course on Green Beans & Ice Cream: The Recipe for Behavior Change.

I’m up early the next morning…body still seriously jetlagged, and so I read my 178 emails from America & the rest of the world. By 6am I’m showered and shaved and ready for breakfast. As Jitu and I meet briefly he tells me that he had to work through the night without any sleep to help the conference go off smoothly. Man Jitu, I wish I had your energy! Jitu is the real Energizer Bunny. He just keeps going and going and going….

As my class begins to fill up I am busy hooking up my computer, projector, speakers etc., and cramming to get everything done by the 8am start time. Then someone taps me on my shoulder and I look up, and there is Faiz, my dear friend who is like a brother to me!

On my first visit to the Middle East, a few years ago, Faiz was the first person I met . He took care of me like I was a little Cocker Spaniel puppy. Bought my dinner. Bought gifts for my family (just like my other friend Abdullah). I was so touched at their kindness and generosity. Plus, Faiz took me to the coolest restaurant ever, Bubbles by the Red Sea (yep, the one that Moses parted). Now, food is the fastest way to my heart, and Faiz must have figured this out cause once I had a good meal in me, I was in love with the Middle East….and still want to go back to Bubbles.

Where was I? Oh yes, so here is my good friend Faiz in my class and instantly I feel right at home…I crank up and start doing “Green Beans & Ice Cream” and the class is engaged, and involved. I have people from Britain, US, India, Saudi, Kuwait and more. It’s a tiny little melting pot…

Now, some places in the Middle East are a “dry county” but Bahrain is not one of those. So I head to Sherlock’s Pub in the bottom of the hotel, and who do I meet but my good friend Dr. Bill Pomfret. I’ve known Bill for over 20 years and he is a fantastic guy who learned from the likes of Dan Peterson and many of the great safety gurus. I buy Bill a cold beer and we reminisce about old times. He tells me a story of how he used positive reinforcement with an employee from India and how it made national headlines.

Hey Bill, how bout write that story up and share it with us ok? My fingers are tired of typing and you’ll tell the story better than I could!

By the second day of my course I’m learning something. I have WAY TOO MUCH STUFF to cover in 2 days. The folks in my class are asking questions, posing riddles, and arguing with me. Yep, that’s right, in this culture, they like to argue with the teacher.

Well, it’s a good thing that my mother was one of 14 kids. Her family were masters of argument. In fact, the Rains family is somewhat legendary for being on the wrong side of the law during Prohibition in the South and the Depression. My mom’s dad used to say he could win one side of the argument with you and then take your side and win that one, too! Believe me, pappy could do just that…

My Rains genes must have kicked in with three of my students, Ahmed, Abdullah and Mo. These three guys were really clever and firmly believed that people ought to be safe because “it was good for them, because it was the right thing to do.” I also admire them because they were so engaged and passionate in the class.

They argued passionately that managers should not have to reinforce good behavior—the worker should do it because it is the best thing for them.

These guys were smoking serious cognitive wacky weed theory. Kind of like that stuff that Alfie Kohn and Daniel Pink put out. I needed some Skinner shock therapy…and I needed it fast.

I could hear Pappy’s voice in my head saying “Use the force son…”

I decided to come out swinging.

“Ok, guys, I’ll agree with you that in a perfect world every worker should be entirely self motivated. That would be perfect because then people would be self-managed, and they would operate much like computers. Managers would just sit back and do nothing. That’s pretty much the way you’ve operated your company for a number of years. How is that working out for you?”

“Not very well, Bill” they replied honestly.

I continued on with the course, feeling better about getting buy in from the group that people really did need external positive reinforcement—and that a simple “Thanks!” goes a long way.

On the last day I decided it was time to evaluate myself.

“Ok guys, you’ve honored me with 2 days of your time, and a fair amount of your company’s training budget. I want to thank you for that and I want to ask you to grade me. During these past days, I have argued passionately that people need and deserve positive reinforcement and praise to help them perform better.”

And some of you have argued just as passionately that people should do it because it’s good for them….because safety is it’s own reward.

Now I would like to know how many of you feel that positive reinforcement has value and plan to use it with your team?”  27 out of 30 hands go up.

“That’s great!  Now how many of you still believe that people should do things because it’s for their own good?” I asked.

The other 3 hands went up timidly. My 3 favorite students who had argued against external reinforcement.

“Ok, so to sum up my progress here folks, 27 of you are believers in R+, and 3 of you aren’t. Now, I know you’ve paid your money and invested your 2 days with me in this course and I want to thank you for that. And no doubt you are all eager to get your CEU’s and receive your certificates of course completion. And I am delighted to provide 27 of you with that external praise and reinforcement.  Cause clearly, there are 3 of you who won’t need a certificate, or any CEU’s. ….after all, you attended this course because it was for your own good….right?”

My three favorite students broke into laughter and grinned sheepishly. I decided to give them their CEU’s and Course certificates. My point had been made.  It was time to move on….

……Now, it’s the next morning, and I’m to be introduced by a member of the Royal family….and guess what? He needs 30 minutes of my 60 minute slot. I don’t know about you, but I’m not in the habit of telling royalty “No”. Sure thing boss, you go for it.

Which left me with the unenviable task of re-working my entire presentation feverishly while the Prince spoke. Sure enough, it’s show time and I begin with ‘Green Beans & Ice Cream’, and we are rocking and rolling.

Until it was time for questions.

At the end, we had time only for one question, a young man who stood up and said,

“Mr. Sims, what would you say about a company that hires private police officers to monitor it’s employees driving habits in their personal vehicles in their own time? It even goes so far as to fine them for speeding and penalize them and reduce their pay bonuses?”

I swallowed hard. 700 pairs of eyes focused on me to see my response.

“What company do you work for?” I asked him.

“I’d rather not say.” He replied, and the whole room laughed at once.

So, now you see how all the way in Bahrain, on the tip of Saudi Arabia, I came to find myself between the rock and the hard place.

If I sided with the company, the audience would not like my message. And if I sided with the audience, the company would be sure never to do business with me…..

All at once I had become, the Deer in the Headlights.

Watch for my next blog to learn what went down next….

After the meeting, I packed up my computer and projector and put them in the trunk of my car, sliding into the front seat. As I’ve done a million times before, I put the key in the switch and turned it to the right, convinced in my mind that I was about to hear that good old V8 rumble to life, one of my top ten favorite PICs in life. (Thanks again, Aubrey, for that helpful acronym!)

However, while I had the A and B parts down perfectly for this task (antecedent and behavior) good old Mr. C (consequence) showed up in a totally unexpected form: NOTHING HAPPENED.

“Dang!” I said. “Dead battery.”

Even a shade tree mechanic like me can figure that one out. Next, I did a root cause analysis in my brain to determine why and how this had happened.

Oh yeah, I remember now, I spent an hour in my car before giving my speech and plugged my notebook into my cigarette lighter to juice it up so I could finish a live Webinar that I had promised to do with another company from the parking lot outside the Tarheel meeting.

Technology is so cool. I had my own little WiFi  bubble right there in the parking lot. I was feeling like the incredible techno-guy.

Who’d have thought my notebook could suck that much juice out of a car battery that fast?

Guess what?

It can.

It did.

I morphed quickly from incredible techno-guy to a pathetic “girlie man.”

My first call was to the roadside assistance number to see how fast they could get someone to jump-start my car. Then a little voice in my head said “Bill, remember you put some battery cables in the trunk for emergencies like this one.”

BAM! Hey there they are, in that orange case. Now, all I need is a kind, helpful person with a good battery to help me boost my engine!

I looked two spaces over and saw a guy pulling out of his parking space and two ladies chatting by their car as well. By the looks of things, he was a repairman just finishing his lunch break. I summoned up my courage and walked over to him. I had to act now, or never.

“Scuse me sir,” I said, “but I’ve got a dead battery . . . would you mind giving me a boost? I have my cables ready . . .” (I showed him the orange cables.) The look on his face went from apprehension to a half smile and he rolled down his window and we shook hands.

Then this kind knight pulled his truck up to my car and we connected up the cables, using the appropriate safety technique I had learned at the ripe old age of 17 from Mr. Jones, a teacher who had also described to me what it was like to have a car battery explode on you. That mental image stuck with me— a very good antecedent.

In short order, my V8 sprang back to life, its deep throaty growl as good as ever! Not bad for a ride that has been running against the wind for over 94,368 miles. (Hey, come to think of it, I’ve been doing the same thing!) As Han Solo told Luke, “It ain’t the years kid, it’s the miles.”

I felt very grateful to the Repair Guy. I wanted to DO SOMETHING, to give something back to him.

And that’s where I went wrong.

I shook the man’s hand and gave him $5 cash. It was my last $5, and it was all I could think of at the time, and I was so grateful to him, that I figured it was better than nothing.

The smile that had appeared on his face after helping me became ever so slightly muted, an imperceptible change that no one saw but me.

“No, no, I don’t need any money,” he said.

I realized immediately that I’d make a mistake in offering him the money. I hadn’t thought through the impact of this “reinforcer” on this particular individual.

But, this whole sequence (just like so many fleeting interactions we have with others) went down in under 38 seconds, so maybe it was easy to make a mistake.  I had made one nonetheless.

I was in trouble, but I didn’t want to totally blow this moment.

And then I remembered my dad and “The Power of the Pen.”

As a little guy, my dad would sometimes surprise me and take me out of elementary school to go with him to see clients. These were fun trips where I learned many things about sales methods and techniques. I watched my dad in awe as he spoke with CEO’S and business leaders, helping them develop recognition solutions.

For a second, I flashed back to being on the old Delta plane with my dad on one of those trips. I recalled with fondness the stewardesses and pilots who ”back in the day” dressed up and looked so professional. I could see the stewardess smiling at me and handing me my own plastic captain’s wings lapel badge which I proudly pinned to my suit jacket.(Weren’t the 70s cool?)

I remembered my dad smiling back at her and thanking her for showing kindness to his son. Then my dad reached into his bag and pulled out a Parker Pen in a nice gift box, inscribed with the words, “Thanks for making a difference.”

He told the stewardess how much he appreciated her kindness to me and that this gift was for her, because she had made a difference to him. She beamed and took the pen to show all the other flight attendants. She even moved me and dad up to first class! Wow! I decided right then and there that I had to figure out what was behind Dad and the Power of the Pen.

Okay. The memory came and went in a split second, and there was this guy,with that smile slowly fading away after my goof with the five dollar bill.

I smiled back again at him and said, “Hey, wait a second.” And then  began hurriedly digging through my bag to see if I had any Green Bean pens left from my presentation. (Many of you know that I love green beans and give away pens shaped like that very vegetable at my sessions.)

There it was. One last green bean pen was left in the bottom of my bag. I handed it to the man and again thanked him for his kindness, seeing his smile brighten back up, and he even asked me what kind of work I do (so I explained that we are behavior change consultants). We parted as friends and I had a good feeling in my heart.

I called the Roadside Assistance guy to tell him there was no need to come.

As I drove down I-77 south of Charlotte I began to analyze what had just happened, and as near as I can figure it, here it is:

• I asked the repair guy to help me, which he did.
• I felt obligated from my heart to thank him and to accompany it with a gift of some sort
• In the two seconds I took to choose a gift, I chose the only one I had at the time, which was money.
• He rejected it and was a bit offended that I offered it.
• He warmly accepted the small green bean pen, which was novel, different,and a souvenir of that moment.
• When I presented both the cash award and the pen, I expressed heartfelt appreciation. But he didn’t want the cash, while he was cool with the pen.

Hmmm . . . what do we learn here? A lot, I think.

Here are a few takeaways.

1.  On the surface, it would appear that the man simply preferred a little plastic pen to $5. The easy conclusion would be that logo gifts are a better award than cash.

Many consultants, managers, and committee members make this mistake day-in and day-out. They purchase more and more logo stuff as handout items for employees: these may include caps, key chains, and mugs with a logo doled out to employees in honor of all sorts of achievements. Many companies have a whole warehouse full of these items.

While logo gifts can occasionally have real impact on our behavior (remember dad and the Power of the Pen?), research by the Incentive Federation shows that logo’d items are the LEAST EFFECTIVE reward/behavior change tool we know of (see my last blog “I’m Confused” for more on that).

The most effective reinforcers from our research and that of others are social reinforcers (my smile, handshake, and thanking the man) and according to the Federation study, AND giving a person a gift such as an Ipod or other type award that they truly want and need are also effective. Cash and gift cards are also judged more effective than logo gifts as reinforcers.

Several speakers at BSN passionately argue for the use of logo’d or symbolic gifts. One prominent behavioral consultant told me “If a person doesn’t want a baseball cap, it’s because he doesn’t want that logo. You need to put a different logo on it and he will want it.”

Huh?

What if he already has 18 ball caps in his closet and just doesn’t need another one?

While logo gifts have their place, sadly, it is impossible to choose a logo gift that everyone will find reinforcing and/or useful.

2.  Why did the repair guy refuse my $5 but accept the pen?

Our behavior is continually being reinforced by consequences that are either external (extrinsic) and/or internal (intrinsic or self-reinforcing).

There is a lot of controversy in the world of psychology between the cognitive psychologists  and the behaviorists. Some have even tried to fuse the two schools of thought together which is a noble task, but for many people, this effort can make the water even muddier, as you try to mesh two very complex models. (See my blog “THE GREAT DEBATE” for more on this.)

In a nutshell, the cognitive guys believe intrinsic or “self-motivation” is the more powerful human motivator, while behaviorists focus on delivering extrinsic or external reinforcers (social and tangible) to increase behavior and drive performance.

Curiously enough, BF Skinner, the behaviorist legend, once said “Human thoughts are simply behaviors we haven’t learned to measure yet.” I kind of like that idea.

In my BSN keynote speech in Jacksonville, I offered the audience a challenge. Which type of reinforcer is most effective: internal or external?

And I believe that the answer is (drum roll please) . . .

Both.

I believe that the repair guy at the moment he helped me was being reinforced from his “heart” or self-reinforced for his good deed. He cared about my plight and was feeling the power of the statement, “It is better to give than to receive.” In this mode of behavior, we humans are at our best. We are the firefighter rushing into the Twin Towers on 9/11. Or the soldier who covers the grenade with his body to save his comrades. A wise man once said,, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

So when my repair guy was operating in this mode of high self-reinforcement, my giving him $5 made him feel cheap, as if he was a hired servant. Thus, it was a punisher, not a positive reinforcer. It offended him and reduced our relationship to a mere transaction, something external.

The pen however, was a gift, a symbol of our brief friendship. The pen was well accepted, and didn’t conflict with his own internal reinforcement, but likely will be used a long time and as a reminder of my appreciation for his help.

But the game changes somewhat when people come to work for us and we pay them a salary for what they do.

Had the roadside assistance guy showed up before my repair guy, if he had jumped-off my car, and I tipped him $5, he would have been cool with it. Why? Because it was a little extra compensation for services rendered. The pen might have offended him, but I doubt the cash would have. Had I given nothing to the roadside assistance guy (no pen, no money) he would have probably muttered “Cheap jerk” under his breath. Verbal praise here would have fallen on the roadside assistance man’s deaf ears, because it would have seemed insincere and cheap.

Social reinforcers work well if and only if they are sincere, specific, and not seen as manipulative. That’s why training in giving feedback and verbal reinforcement is very important.

But in the relationship between employer/employee, sadly, many companies are making the same $5 mistake that I made with my repair guy.

Busy managers don’t have time to find out what gift would be truly reinforcing for each one of their people. In the 80s, a supervisor had 10 people reporting to him; in today’s downsized world, he  might easily have to oversee 100.

How is that poor supervisor or steering committee going to know what reinforcers work for their people?

Answer: They don’t and they can’t. Even though that would be great, realistically there isn’t enough time to know.

So what do most companies do? They succumb to the power of the Dark Side, the easy way out. They give people money or cash substitutes like gift cards.

Granted, rewarding your people with gift cards and money has advantages:

-It’s easy.

-People can choose more things to get with their gift card/money.

-The CAVE (Citizens Against Virtually Everything) people stop whining—sometimes.

But rewarding with gift cards and money has these important disadvantages:

-Sometimes, it conflicts with the internal motivation or self-reinforcement that we want people to develop (as it with did my repair guy).

-People become “entitled” to the cash; they expect it and their behavior is driven totally by the money and not self-reinforcement.

-You lose well over 50 percent of your cash/gift card budget to income taxes and other hidden costs of gift cards.

-Dozens of studies show that non-cash reinforcer gifts have 3 to 6 times the impact of cash on behavior.

I have seen many companies fall into the trap of confusing compensation with recognition. They ultimately fail to get people to a higher level of behavior since they rely solely on carrot-and-stick approaches.

So what is the right rock to use to hit the mark with employees and ensure that we’re delivering positive reinforcement?

1. Reinforcement and recognition must be linked to the behavior within seconds, not days or weeks.

2. Recognition should be specific and include both tangible and social reinforcement techniques. Don’t succumb to the Dark Side and reduce everything to a transaction due to lack of time or tools.

3. When it comes to the gift, make it a gift and make it fun, not an obligatory transaction. Make the act of giving the gift memorable. Provide each person a wide array of options to choose from so they can find something personally reinforcing to them. Use cash and cash substitutes as a last resort, or filter the choices so people won’t just pay off their bills or buy a tank of gas with their award.

4. Make the award unexpected and a surprise! Again, make it fun.

5. Track everything down to each behavior reinforced when, why, and by whom.

6. Analyze, analyze, analyze your data to move the process to the next level.

Our new Genesis platform has been developed with these fundamentals in mind, and it provides busy managers with comprehensive tools to pinpoint and reinforce critical behaviors and results that drive bottom-line business improvements.

The proof in the pudding is a recent report from Horizon, our newest client, who have reported injury reductions of over 60 percent in a few months of operation of using both Smartcard and Genesis.

Well, that about wraps up this blog.

Oh wait, I forgot to tell you about Bob my BFF with OSHA. Bob says that OSHA has an SEP (code name for Special Emphasis Program) which means they are looking hard at incentive systems that reward lagging indicators and which drive injury hiding.

So, if you are using a system that rewards people for working days, weeks, months without reporting injuries, now would be a good time to rethink your strategy.