The challenges of leadership have never been simple, but today’s environment is testing leaders in new and often chaotic ways. We’re no longer operating in a world where change is episodic. It’s constant, compounding, and unpredictable. A CEO I recently spoke with described it best: “It’s not just uncertainty anymore. It’s layers of uncertainty, and it doesn’t look like that is going to change any time soon, if ever.”
Audits tell us whether employees are following safety procedures, right? Not necessarily.
Audits don’t always tell the whole story. I’ve seen cases where well-trained employees looked good on the audit yet had a troubling number of incidents on the job.
I’ve seen situations where companies have an admirable history of safety practice yet still experience fatalities—and in one case, two-thirds of the deaths occurred in high-risk areas.
How is this happening when their audits looked so good?
Here’s what keeps executives awake at night: You’ve got a brilliant strategy. Your board loves it. Your investors are excited. Your team is energized.
It is one of the oldest and most tragic truths of modern business: even though we know that people are the key to business success, we often fail to provide those people with what they need to succeed.
As a business leader, do your words and actions demonstrate that you really care about the people you lead?
As many people know, Ted Lasso is a popular television series that follows the journey of an American college football coach who is unexpectedly hired to manage an English Premier League soccer team. The twist? Ted Lasso has no experience with soccer. The team’s owner hired him hoping he’ll fail—part of a scheme to get back at her ex-husband, who loved the club [1].
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