“For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.” — Benjamin Franklin The first time you ever encountered a weasel word was probably when your mom said, “Maybe,” or [...]
“I don’t have a particular recommendation other than that we base decisions on as much hard data as possible.” — Dorothy E. Denning The best waiters are the ones who are willing to make recommendations when you ask. Anything but, “Well, everything is good.” Because, admit it, everything is not. And then, when you try [...]
“Umpires don’t make the rules. They apply them…They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire.” — Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts A call about doing a PSM audit usually begins with a question from the caller about whether [...]
“It’s not how we make mistakes, but how we correct them that defines us.” — Rachel Wolchin One of the most common recommendations made as a result of incident safety investigations is “improved training,” especially when the investigation concludes that the incident was the result of an error. It is not because training is so [...]
“Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.” — Vernon Law When hit with the first winter storm of the season, everyone has to learn how to drive all over again. In our community, freezing rain coats everything, including the roads, which makes driving especially treacherous. A few years [...]
“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” Henry Ford Your company has had an incident or a near miss, the investigation is closed and the cause has been determined. Now what? In an ideal world, the goal is a return to normal operations with a lower likelihood that the incident [...]
“Stopping enabling isn’t easy. Nor is it for the faint of heart. Aside from likely pushback and possible retaliation, you may also fear the consequences of doing nothing.” – Darlene Lancer, JD, MFT, expert on codependency I hate to see an operating company fined for safety violations. First, it means that they were out of [...]
“There is no greater evil than men’s failure to consult and to consider.” Sophocles In our office, we write a lot of recommendations. As a rule, we begin recommendations with the words “consider” or “confirm.” This isn’t because we’re looking for weasel-words. It’s because not every recommendation is the best idea. Some recommendations aren’t even [...]
“Electricity is really just organized lightning.” George Carlin When I think of circuit breakers, I usually think of the circuit breakers in the panel in the basement at home. They are relatively small (120 to 240 volts, 10 to 60 amps), and they’re for fairly simple circuits. They supply power to my lights, outlets, refrigerator, [...]
