Some of the most common strategic planning mistakes can be very costly. Any one of them can turn the process upside down. Below are some methods to ensure success:

In the past 25 years, I have watched the safety profession grow. I remember listening to leaders speak of achieving zero disabling injuries. It seemed as impossible to some people then as achieving zero recordable injuries seems to many people today.

One of the more difficult situations in which to make an ethical decision is when more than one person is potentially impacted by your action and their expectations of how you should proceed are in conflict.

Strategic planning is a process that provides structure to move an organization toward higher levels of achievement in safety or other areas of interest. The most common challenges to strategic planning are:

This time of year makes the best of us reflective and after doing some soul searching and reflecting I came up with a short list of things I think we as professionals can do to be even more effective:

1. Forget perfection - Stop obsessing over doing it all. 2.Take a whiff of citrus - Researchers studying depression have found that certain citrus fragrances boost feelings of well-being and alleviate stress by upping levels of norepinephrine, a hormone that affects mood.

It’s not being smart. It’s not your experience level. It’s not your education. None of these are the determining factor between why one person is successful at work and another is not. It’s something else that few people know about.

On Friday I went to the neighborhood bar as I am wont to do from time to time. While there I saw a regular who works with my brother in an open die forge. I passed the pleasantries with him and asked him how he was. He said he was doing a lot better and was healing.

One of the ongoing discussions about OH&S management systems revolves around what it is exactly that the organization should be accomplishing. In “standards speak” this is referred to as the “intended outcomes” of the OH&S management system.