Safety Moment - Get Caught Trying to Make It Better

This can get hard. It can get really hard. I had someone write a pretty horrible thing on LinkedIn about safety differently and myself and Decker and the whole gang. It can get hard.

But when it gets hard, that's when we prove who we are. We'll be right back. Music. Hi, everybody. Todd Conklin, Free Accident Investigation Safety Moment. I'm not in a bad mood. Don't get me wrong. Just trust me. You can write whatever you want to about me on LinkedIn because, first of all, I don't give a crap. And secondly, nobody reads LinkedIn. So I'm fine. So I'm not in a bad mood. But I want to sort of share with you something that my boss told me a long time ago.

And I actually think this is a really good piece of advice. It's something I've remembered, and it's a really good safety moment. And my boss told me all the time when things got hard or complicated or complex or political or burdensome or irksome, that's a good word, irksome task and weighty responsibilities, a little code word right there.

When things got tough my boss would look me in the face and say get caught trying to make it better. Get caught trying to make it better and i think about that all the time and and and when he told me that years ago it was probably a little bit wasted on me because i probably was completely freaked out and thought what did he know he's an old man hardly any you know i'm young and smart and genius.

But now I realize as I grow older, because I am almost 30 now, that getting caught trying to make it better is exactly the way you want to get caught. If things go to crap, if it all goes down, if you're in 60 minutes or if they write an anonymous letter about you in the Washington Post, the best thing you want it to say, and maybe the worst thing it could say, is that they caught you trying to make it better.

And that's my challenge to you, although that's kind of preaching to the choir, but it's really my challenge to your leadership. When they get frustrated and upset and concerned, instead of making it worse, harder, more difficult, more painful, what you ought to do is get caught trying to make it better. Get caught trying to make it better. It's kind of beautiful, isn't it? I think so.

That's the safety moment for today. Have as much fun as you possibly can. Learn something new every single day. And for goodness sakes, be safe. Music.