Leading for Safety Excellence (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798199700757)

Stop Policing Safety. Start Engineering Excellence."David shows leaders how to build decisions that hold up, how to define the "what" while trusting the experts closest to the work to determine the "how," and how to measure the presence of capacity rather than the mere absence of incidents. This is the shift our profession has needed for years. Counting what went wrong tells you about your past. Building capacity tells you about your future."
-Shawn M. Galloway, CEO of ProAct Safety, from the Foreword

In the world of occupational safety, we are often fed a dangerous lie: that people get hurt because they lack rules, or because they are careless. They get hurt because organizations lack leadership alignment, systemic resilience, and a shared definition about what it means to work safely.

Leading for Safety Excellence dismantles the reactive, compliance-driven methods that have trapped organizations under a technical ceiling. Written with a sharp blend of critical thinking and behavioral logic, this book provides a blueprint to transition your culture from fragile compliance to active, unshakeable commitment.What you will discover inside:

• The Anatomy of a Work System: Learn to move past the Myth of the Broken Part (firing the "careless" worker) and look at the invisible web of relationships, pressures, and conditions that dictate human behavior.
• The Power of the Tactical Pause: Discover how to train your "slow brain" (cerebral cortex) to outmaneuver the automatic shortcuts and cognitive biases of the "fast brain" (amygdala).
• The Architecture of Decision-Making: Master the Ladder of Inference and Syllogistic Reasoning to build logically airtight, defensible decisions that can confidently withstand the "Yes, Your Honor" test.
• The Logic of Transcendence: Reject the false choice between productivity and safety. Learn how to relentlessly pursue Safe Production by discovering operational innovations that make your processes both faster and safer.
• The Cobra Effect and Systemic Drift: Uncover how well intentioned safety incentives inadvertently motivate people to hide hazards rather than eliminate them, and how to stop standard erosion before it triggers a crisis.
• The Safety Triad Framework: Implement an actionable, three-part universal definition of safety first introduced by Terry Mathis and Shawn Galloway in their book, Steps to Safety Culture Excellence, that your entire workforce can easily grasp and execute: Identify the Hazards, Control the Hazards, and Do These Things Always.

Why This Book is DifferentThis is not a tactical handbook or a boilerplate regulatory guide. You won't find step-by-step compliance rules or standardized incident forms here. Instead, Leading for Safety Excellence teaches the reader how to employ critical thinking and logic in developing their safety management system, emotional intelligence to obtain a shared commitment to safety, and a model that ensures every worker knows what it means to "be safe."

Author: David Thurwanger
ISBN-13: 9798199700757
Publisher: Independently Published
Language: English
Published: 06/02/2026
Pages: 404
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.19lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.83d