• What have authoritative people said about this concept?
• How long will the process take?
• Who has demonstrated the concept?
• Who are the best candidates? Why is this so?
• Will this conflict with other initiatives?
• How will employees react?
• What are the downsides?
• What happens if you are forced to abort midstream?
• Is Values-Driven Safety™ initiated from the top down or from the bottom up?
• What are the costs to institute Values-Driven Safety™?
• How does this thinking apply to individuals?
• What proof is there that this will work?

Since the publication of the book Values-Driven Safety, many authority figures within and outside the safety profession have weighed in on what they think of the concepts and their potential to do much good. Some of those feelings are recorded below.

"Hold on, safety profession, this one's going to rock you! Every once in a while, something comes along in a profession that holds the promise of unlocking the future. I believe [Values-Driven Safety™] is the key to that future. This is powerful stuff, an elixir for a profession that has been starved for success in its search for a better way. [Values-Driven Safety™] is that "better way!" For the first time, in a systemic way, safety can be upgraded to a level of strategic significance to the business process. At a time when answers are needed most, this provides those answers. [Values-Driven Safety™] is truly a path to a new frontier of safety success."

-- Larry Hansen, CSP, ARM, (former corporate insurance executive with Liberty Mutual and now consultant)

"Poignant, insightful and a good read...The values-based approach to leading safety and the included measures of progress may be the next breakthrough for the enlightened leader. The insights provided within can identify the values in organizational cultures needed to achieve lasting results. A valuable resource for establishing your pathway to minimize risks and limit losses for years to come. A WINNER!!!"

-- Douglas Tambor, CSP, Director - Safety and Industrial Hygiene: J&J Safety and IH, North America

"BEEN THERE, DONE IT--not until you've read this book! They don't teach this stuff at school, seminars, or at work. Don't make another plan or business decision without understanding the strategy that Don Eckenfelder outlines in this book.

Don's strategy provides a template for any existing program, process, or system that you wish to improve. More importantly, this process is a catalyst for plant or company wide systemic changes, and it's in a language that everybody understands.

If you've ever asked yourself what drives a company to outperform its competition year after year, a sports team to dominate their field, a site work team that sets records in a company, or an individual to exceed and drive for improvement, then you need to read this book."

-- Craig W. Bennett, CSP, Corporate Risk Manager, Coinstar

"I think anyone who reads [about Values-Driven Safety™] will enjoy the task and there are not many books that one can say that about. For a reader who is interested in safety, there are many fascinating stories and anecdotes that have an important lesson attached.

The [Values-Driven Safety™] concept is clearly an important new way of addressing safety management and your presentation makes a valuable contribution to our discipline. It's cutting edge stuff and I believe most instructors would want their students to master it."

-- R.E. McClay, Educator and ASSE Fellow

 [Values-Driven Safety™] delivers a powerful and timely message. The principles and techniques outlined in this insightful new look at the safety function should be a prescription for rethinking how we deal with safety issues as we enter the 21st century. Its value is by no means limited to the safety professional. Human resources executives as well as line operating executives will find it equally appealing."

--Ted C. Mullins, Vice President, HR, Retired: Unilever United States, Inc.

"For anyone tasked with safety responsibilities, staff or line, the author's concept of "The Maturity Grid" provides a tool to measure the effectiveness of even the most abstract value, or anything else for that matter."

--Jerry Chase, Production Supervisor: Air Products & Chemicals, Inc., Wichita, Kansas.

"Behaviorally sound, [Values-Driven Safety™] is a must for improving the quality of human interactions in the workplace. The ideas presented here have far reaching application for business and personal success as well as a safe workplace."

-- Michael W. Kesler, Ph.D., Behavioral Psychologist: Community Workshop Inc.

"I am excited that this powerful concept could evolve the safety profession to the next level and assist in making safety a more integral part of the business."

-- Kimberly K. Querrey, Retired Manager Corporate Safety and Health: IMCO Recycling, Inc. and now a Venture Capitalist

"It's pretty simple, in most organizations you will either be perceived as adding value or you won't be there. Value driven safety is the future direction of the profession and [Values-Driven Safety™] is the ticket to get there."

-- Lewis C. Booker, CSP, Manager, Loss Prevention: Unilever USA

"Values-Driven Safety is a book chock full of useful insights for managing organizations and life, masquerading as a bold, innovative approach to safety in the workplace. Whether its mission is to provide a provocative, audacious way to achieve safety, bring the safety profession "out of the closet" or to enlighten mainstream corporate America , the book's fatal attraction is that it refuses to be ignored; and the journey is worth the ride!"

-- Jack McFadden, Marketing Executive Deloitte & Touche

Practically speaking, significant culture enrichment should take between 6 months and 2 years. If there is trauma in the form of anything from a fatality to dynamic and committed new leadership, it could be a lot less.

Conventional wisdom suggests that it can take a very long time to change culture and that it can’t be measured. I believe both of those assumptions are patently wrong headed. In the case of the “twin towers” -- when the second plane hit the second tower -- the culture of the entire world was changed in a millisecond.

There are innumerable examples of dramatic culture changes in industry in very short periods of time. In 1993 the IBM culture was dramatically changed in less than a year. Jack Welch describes how he changed the General Electric culture in his book jack. When Lee Iococca took over at ailing Chrysler Corporation, he changed that culture in pretty short order. These are all massive corporations and their culture was dramatically changed in months, not years.

Craig Bennett -- the Corporate Director of Safety and Loss Prevention for Hasbro, Inc. -- said, “This stuff really works. I’ve been integrating [Values-Driven Safety™] into my organization’s Safety and Loss Prevention System ever since [it was] introduced to me in 1993. It doesn’t matter if we’re working in Europe, North America, or Asia, the strategy works and our performance is improving every year.”

In every instance where this theory of safety culture enrichment has been applied, success and improvement have been realized.

If you examine any environment that has produced loss resistance and even world-class performance, the structural elements resident in Values-Driven Safety™ are in clear evidence. In almost all cases the environment and resultant performance have been achieved unconscientiously. With Values-Driven Safety™ the performance can be replicated – and sustained –- because the success is achieved conscientiously. Instead of just arriving somewhere pleasant but not knowing how you got there, you will have a clear “road map” to return any time you desire to do so.

If you were planning a trip and knew where you were and where you wanted to go but had no map you may go to the Automobile Association of America (AAA) and have them plan the trip for you. When they gave you the map and plotted the best route from where you are to your destination, would you question if their highlighted route would in fact get you there? Of course you wouldn’t. But you might improvise a little if there were some things you wanted to see that were along the prescribed route. That is the way it is with Values-Driven Safety™. The basic directions are sound and the system has demonstrated itself to always work. But, it is culture sensitive and every organization can –- and should –- customize the process to meet their individual needs.

Clearly the best candidates should be those who have safety cultures that are producing undesirable results. Sadly and ironically they are not. The best candidates are organizations who have already recognized the importance of culture and intuitively have internalized the fact that culture predicts performance.

The troubling and discouraging answer can best be illustrated by a parable. Some years ago –- at a human resources seminar –- a seminar leader started the presentation by saying, “You know, those of you who need this the most will get the least out of it; and, those of you who need this least will get the most out of it.” At the time this teaching seemed counterintuitive to me but over time I have come to view it as a truism. It is true because those who need new ideas the most need them because they have not listened well in the past and/or have failed to apply the teachings; that behavioral pattern is unlikely to change. Those who have more skills have them because they have a habit of listening and applying teachings and will probably do so again.

So, the best candidates for Values-Driven Safety™ are those who have continually improving loss prevention efforts or who have reached a plateau beyond which they are having trouble ascending. They are having difficulty because they have used all the common-conventional tools and are looking for something more. Values-Driven Safety™ provides more. Occasionally, new leadership in an organization will provide a fertile environment for Values-Driven Safety™ to succeed dramatically. Serious trauma such as skyrocketing costs, a major-embarrassing loss, or sever regulatory problems can supply an atmosphere suitable for applying culture enrichment initiatives.

On of the great benefits and one might even say beauties of Values-Driven Safety™ is that it will either be completely compatible with other continuous improvement efforts or can easily be tailored to be so.

Values-Driven Safety™ is not a new program; it is a new way to look at old programs. It provides a wide-angle lens of great clarity through which to view past, current, and possible future efforts. It is a platform for performance improvement; it is a catalyst for every worthwhile effort of every organization.

Understanding what it takes to succeed and then strategically – and continuously – pursuing that strategy is what Values-Driven Safety™ is all about. Many organizations have been successful by developing a culture that is superior to their competitors; few of them have done so strategically…and understand exactly why and how they have the culture they have. Values-Driven Safety™ has the potential to change all that. Those who have been successful will be able to codify how they have gotten to where they are and if they start to regress will have the know how to recapture what they have lost or are losing.

Furthermore, there is a way to continuously monitor the situation. This provides the most leading edge measurement that has ever been available to management. Most traditional metrics only look backward. Values-Driven Safety™ can predict the future.

Culture measurement can be correlated with other traditional metrics. That will validate the culture enrichment efforts.

History has demonstrated that employees love this approach to excellence because it involves them, and doesn’t blame them. They are treated like adults and not like children. It is compatible with modern management thinking featuring flat organizations and empowerment.

Employees are – in a way – like children; and, their leadership is – in a way -- like parents. Children like rules as long as they perceive them to be fair and observe that their parents follow the rules too. If they can participate in the rule making, there is even more likelihood that they will be supportive. Values-Driven Safety™ builds-in leading by example and employee involvement.

Unlike behavioral approaches to safety that treats employees like children and feature observations and “shaping behavior” which operates downstream, Values-Driven Safety™ functions way upstream dealing with root causes and makes sense to employees. The process is intuitive and so requires relatively little explanation.

There are none. But, there is one pattern of behavior that can mute the effectiveness of the process. If leadership fails to walk the talk or trivializes the process, it will make change very difficult.

We are talking about change and change is usually difficult. The beauty of this process is that change can take place at any pace.

Within the answer to this question is embodied one of the real beauties of Values-Driven Safety™. There are no losses.

This is because that every bit of progress made is progress that is retained, even if the process is halted. The process focuses on individual attributes and the beliefs and values that lead to the acquisition of those attributes. When a value is changed or established, stopping the process won’t do anything to alter that change. The change is enduring -- until something happens to again alter the cultural artifact or the belief/value.

When and if the process to reengineer culture is resumed, you will start essentially where you left off.

This is one of the hardest questions to answer. But, the answer is, YES!

The process will work best if it is approached from all angles. Both the top and the bottom of any organization should be involved in the process right from the beginning. It would also be well to inform and involve customers and suppliers/partners. Everyone can and should have an equal role in making this happen as all will harvest the benefits in essentially equal measure.

In large organizations, it is feasible and possible for this to bubble up from lower levels. If one plant in a group of plants changes culture and produces exemplary results, the others and the overall leadership will surely be interested in the process and many will seek to emulate the success pattern.

In a relatively smaller organization, it is probably essential that there be buy in at the top level -- right from the beginning. The best way to get that is to sell benefits, which isn’t very hard. An organization with the right culture will be far easier to manage than one with a sick culture.

The answer is not much or very little. The primary cost in intangible; it is commitment.

If an organization seeks to create a process that resembles Values-Driven Safety™ but makes use of essentially new intellectual property, the development cost could be considerable. But, if the right to use the developed intellectual property is purchased, the cost barely gets into five figures.

Then the process is largely integrated into the regular pattern of operating an enterprise. There is very little additional time required and no out of-of-pocket costs. Then, when the process is well on its way, there will be large savings. When everyone understands the beliefs and values of the organization and subscribes to them, the need for inspection and monitoring is greatly reduced. Side benefits include less need for concern for aberrant behaviors and selection considerations; all that becomes much easier and natural when everyone understands and subscribes to the “rules.” Even dealing with customers and suppliers becomes far less ambiguous when everyone understands where you stand.

Any organization is but the composite of its parts. In the Kevin Kline movie The Emperor’s Club, it is often repeated that, “A man’s character is his destiny.” So it is that on organizations culture is its destiny. Not many people will disagree with this largely self-evident wisdom. What they probably will question is whether culture and character can be measured.

Probably one of the first people – or at least one of the ones with the most recognizable names, to attempt personal character development…was Ben Franklin

He planned to write the book The Art of Virtue. He established 13 virtues he sought to develop and worked at them one at a time and kept score on himself. He claims to have achieved a measure of success but seemed unsatisfied with his overall effort.

The character development system based on Values-Driven Safety™ overcomes some of the shortcomings in Franklin’s approach. It can be used by both genders, any race, all ages, and is synchronous with all religions and their teachings. The concepts can be incorporated into a wellness program or an employee assistance program.

“The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” So it is with Values-Driven Safety™. The applications of the concepts will prove the worth of the process. The fact that thousands have been exposed to the principles and hundreds have applied bits and pieces of the process and all have reported improvements in performance suggests that a more comprehensive application will be even better. Until now, there have not been applications materials available. Now that has changed. All the tools and aids and instructional material needed for a full and comprehensive application of Values-Driven Safety™ are available. Time will prove that this is the social and safety operating system that will deliver improved performance on an enduring basis.

Over the years correlation with other traditional measurement systems will completely validate the great return on investment that will accrue from the application of Values-Driven Safety™.

It should be noted that the claims of others who advocate different “programs” could be easily exposed for what they are…sophistry. If any new “program” is instituted, the only way to judge its impact is to hold everything else constant for the duration of the evaluation. That is never done nor can it be in a large, often amorphous and constantly changing organization. So, any results obtained are erroneous. Also, they are often crafted to meet the needs and specifications of the seller of the “programs.” Since the benefits of culture and character enrichment are self-evident, there is no need to construct such fabricated proof.