AI-generated illustration courtesy of Kristoffer Rasmussen.

I recently read Simon Sinek’s “The Infinite Game,” and it immediately made me think about the safety culture in the tree care industry. Many of us have heard Tim Walsh talk about “Safety Differently” which urges leaders to close the gap between “work-as-imagined” and “work-as-done” by listening to those who do the work. Whether you agree with every point he makes or not, he challenges us to think differently about safety and emphasizes something that should be familiar to anyone who holds the Certified Treecare Safety Professional (CTSP) credential – “continuous improvement.” That idea raises an important question. Are we managing safety as a finite game or an infinite one?

The finite safety game

A finite safety program has measurable goals and an identifiable finish line. It focuses heavily on metrics such as MOD (Experience Modification) rates, days away, restricted or transferred (DART) rates, recordable incidents, root-cause analysis, disciplinary actions and the number of days without an accident. These measurements have value. The problem occurs when the measurement becomes the purpose. A company celebrates 500 days without an accident, and everyone feels successful. But what happens on day 501? An accident occurs. The clock goes back to zero. The focus shifts to finding the root cause and determining who or what was responsible. We can become so focused on the outcome that we lose sight of the people and the system that produced it.

Consider this: Do you drive a rental car the same way you drive your personal vehicle? Most of us would say no. Why? Because ownership changes our relationship with the equipment. The same thing can happen in a safety program when employees feel that safety belongs to management rather than to everyone in the organization.

The infinite safety game

An infinite safety program has no finish line. The goal isn’t to achieve a certain number of accident-free days. The goal is to keep improving and keep people in the game. Infinite safety is about curiosity. It means asking open-ended questions instead of assuming we already know the answers.

Instead of asking, “Who caused the accident?” we might ask, “What can we learn from what happened?”

Instead of asking, “Why didn’t the employee follow the procedure?”, we might ask, “What made the procedure difficult to follow in the real world?”

Instead of looking for someone to blame when performance falls short, we should examine the environment in which the work is being performed. How do we create an environment where people can work to their natural best? That is a leadership question.

People are not wet towels

People are not wet towels that can simply be wrung out for more productivity. We cannot continually demand more production, more efficiency, more hours and more output while assuming that safety will somehow remain constant. Infinite safety requires change and adjustment. Training, experience, good equipment, good planning, adequate resources and – perhaps most important – people who are willing to speak up are all part of an infinite safety culture. If employees see something that doesn’t look right, do they feel comfortable saying something? If they make a mistake, do they believe they will be punished, or that the organization will learn from it? If the answer is punishment, eventually people stop talking. And when people stop talking, organizations stop learning.

Leadership sets the environment

When performance lags or something goes wrong, the easiest response is often to blame the employee. But the people doing the work don’t create the entire environment in which the work occurs. The people who lead the people doing the work set the tone for the safety culture. Leaders establish expectations. Leaders provide resources. Leaders determine whether employees have the training and equipment they need. Leaders decide how mistakes are handled. And leaders determine whether people feel valued enough to speak honestly about problems. Employees want to feel protected on the job and in the job. They want to know that their employer values them as people, not simply as producers. And people want to feel they are part of something bigger than themselves. That sense of belonging matters.

Don’t forget where you started

One of the easiest things for a leader to lose is perspective. As organizations grow, spending time with new employees becomes more difficult. A new employee sees things experienced employees may no longer notice. They may see confusing procedures, inadequate equipment, communication problems or barriers that have simply become “the way we do things.” If you want to understand your safety culture, occasionally look at your organization through the eyes of someone who is experiencing it for the first time. You may learn something.

Safety is not the enemy of profit

Profit matters. Companies have to make money to survive. But money is a result, not the purpose, of safety. When profit becomes directly tied to an MOD or another safety metric, there is a danger that the metric itself becomes the objective. The purpose should be bigger. A strong organization should strive to advance a meaningful purpose, give people a sense of belonging and value in their work, protect people and generate a sustainable profit. Profit allows the organization to continue pursuing its purpose. It shouldn’t replace the purpose.

AI-generated illustration courtesy of Kristoffer Rasmussen.

The cherry tree approach

There is an old saying, “The best way to get the cherries out of the tree is not to chop down the tree.” When something goes wrong, a finite approach may eliminate the person, eliminate the task or eliminate the activity. But an infinite approach is to understand the system and make it better. Infinite safety asks, “What can we change so the next person has a better chance of succeeding?” That’s continuous improvement.

Walking the walk?

Every company can say the right things about safety. We can put safety on the wall. We can talk about it at meetings. We can include it in our employee handbook. We can say, “A culture of safety is afety is our number-one priority.” But do our actions support our words? If employees hear one message but experience something completely different, we have a credibility problem. Safety culture isn’t what we say. It’s what people experience.

So ask yourself:

• Do our employees feel protected?
• Do they feel comfortable speaking up?
• Do we learn from mistakes?
• Are we curious about why work makes sense or doesn’t make sense to the people performing it?
• Do our leaders create an environment in which people can perform at their natural best?
• Are we continuously improving, or simply trying to maintain our safety metrics?

Stay in the game

A finite safety program asks, “How do we get to zero?”

An infinite safety program asks, “How do we keep getting better?”

There is no final number. No finish line. No point at which we can declare victory and stop improving. The goal is to protect people, develop people, improve the work, strengthen the organization and keep everyone in the game.

So, what kind of safety program are you building – finite or infinite?

Kristoffer Rasmussen is a CTSP, QCL, ISA Urban Forest Professional, Florida ISA Chapter Prescription Pruning Coordinator, TCIA Accreditation Auditor and Loss Control Specialist, and serves on the TCI Magazine Editorial Advisory Committee.