A safety manager asked me this week: "How would you create a world-class safety program?"

I have to admit I was both excited and daunted by the question.

Excited because this is exactly the kind of thinking that separates exceptional operations from average ones. Daunted because safety managers rarely get to think this way. They're too busy administering the program they already have.

The urgent stuff eats the vision stuff. Every time.

But I came up with three conditions before any world-class safety program could be built. Conditions. Not regulations. Not procedures. Conditions.

Condition 1. Stop caring what your competitors are doing - If your benchmark is what everyone else does, your ceiling is average. That's it. That's the whole job.

Condition 2. Take safety away from the Safety Department - You need the full context explanation in the video for this one. But the short version: safety has to live with the supervisor on the shift — the person who already should have the relationship, the trust, and the crew's attention (Hope Promotions won't get you there).

Condition 3. Become the 16% — not the 84% - Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations tells us that 16% of any industry leads the change while 84% wait to see what everyone else does first. World-class doesn't happen in the 84%.

A CareFull Supervisor — one who is FULL of Care for the people they lead — is at the center of all three conditions. If you want CareFull Supervisors in your operation, that's what the PeopleWork Supervisor Academy builds.