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I am in charge of strategy for my whole function, EHS&S. This is a big job – corralling the energies, talents and opinions of a community that is 450 people strong. I got this job because of my ability to think big picture. I can lead a great process that challenges us to consider changes in the external environment, emerging issues, the internal direction(s) of our business, current performance, available resources, and our vision and aspirations for the future. And then we set out to execute against this strategy. All goes well – right up until the first sparkly thing appears. Sparkly things are what I call any event or idea that makes us veer from our strategy.
In the domain of EHS&S at a company with more than 100 business entities and 126,000 employees, there are so many sparkly things you may as well call it glitter. Could be a near miss at one business regarding poor execution of a safety permit. Could be an unapproved flashlight in a potentially explosive atmosphere. Could be three fork lift near misses in two months. My list could be endless and every piece of this “glitter” makes us question what reaction (or size of reaction) is warranted. How many other sites are using this kind of flashlight? Why don’t we know that? How come we’re not collecting that data? Business A has a mobile device for tracking flashlights with GPS chips; why don’t we have that for everyone? Was the workspace labeled to restrict non-explosion proof equipment? Do we need to do flashlight training? Maybe we need a flashlight technical standard…. I’m being a little silly, but you get my point. We’re well down the road chasing a shiny object with our precious resources. And we’ve just voided our carefully crafted strategy.
It takes real discipline and leadership to stick to a strategy and not be distracted by sparkly things. There will be occasional shiny things that demand a scramble and realignment, but it shouldn’t be the daily way of operating.
In the domain of EHS&S at a company with more than 100 business entities and 126,000 employees, there are so many sparkly things you may as well call it glitter. Could be a near miss at one business regarding poor execution of a safety permit. Could be an unapproved flashlight in a potentially explosive atmosphere. Could be three fork lift near misses in two months. My list could be endless and every piece of this “glitter” makes us question what reaction (or size of reaction) is warranted. How many other sites are using this kind of flashlight? Why don’t we know that? How come we’re not collecting that data? Business A has a mobile device for tracking flashlights with GPS chips; why don’t we have that for everyone? Was the workspace labeled to restrict non-explosion proof equipment? Do we need to do flashlight training? Maybe we need a flashlight technical standard…. I’m being a little silly, but you get my point. We’re well down the road chasing a shiny object with our precious resources. And we’ve just voided our carefully crafted strategy.
It takes real discipline and leadership to stick to a strategy and not be distracted by sparkly things. There will be occasional shiny things that demand a scramble and realignment, but it shouldn’t be the daily way of operating.