The Algorithm Can’t Walk the Floor

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Technology can identify a pattern. It can surface a risk, flag a trend, and show us where attention is needed. But
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what it can’t do is walk onto the floor. It doesn’t notice when someone hesitates before answering a question. It can’t
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earn the trust that makes a worker comfortable enough to say, “This is how the job really gets done.” And it
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certainly cannot turn a safety requirement into something people genuinely believe belongs to them. My
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guest today has spent almost four decades working at the intersection of safety, leadership, and human behavior.
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And after building a career inside some of the world’s largest organizations and now helping organizations use safety
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technology, he’s written a book about the part technology cannot do for us. What happens after the data tells us
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where to look? Who starts that conversation? And how do we turn the idea of safety partnership into
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something leaders and frontline workers actually practice every day?
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Welcome back to the safety brief. I’m your host Monica and today’s guest is none other than my virtual co-host and
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now two-time author Scott Gatis. Scott has spent nearly four decades in occupational health and safety with
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leadership experience at General Electric, Kimberly Clark, Bristol Meyers, and today he leads the health
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and safety practice at Intellects and has spoken at just about every major conference in his profession. Now, with
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the release of his second book, From Partnership to Practice, 52 weeks of five-minute lessons for safety
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leadership at every level, he can officially add two-time author to that already very, very long list of
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accomplishments. [laughter] The book contains 260 lessons designed to be used over the course of a year
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with practical actions for both leaders and frontline workers. Scott, congratulations and welcome to your own
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podcast as the guest. How does it feel being on this side of the conversation? You know, it’s uh I I I’ve done both, of
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course, right? Even on this podcast, sometimes I I’m the the host, sometimes
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I’m the subject matter expert on on whatever we’re talking about. This one maybe hits a little closer to home
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because it’s something that uh that I’ve been working on for quite a while. Wow, that’s so exciting. I’m happy to
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have you. Uh let’s start with a bunch of the questions. So, you work at a safety technology company. you spend a
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significant amount of your time helping organizations understand how data systems and technology can improve
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safety performance. And then you wrote a book about it, but it’s not really about technology at all. What’s it actually
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about? Yeah, I I would say that, you know, first I I would kind of clear that up is
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technology and people are are not competing priorities. I I think the very
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best organizations understand that technology enables better leadership, but it doesn’t
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replace leadership. And that maybe is is the genesis of of the book because I I I
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do spend every day helping organizations leverage technology to improve safety,
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our environment, our health. But but my mandate when I joined intellects, believe it or not, was to act like a
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like an EHS practitioner. and and that may sound somewhat out of out of you
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know right field is that uh I wasn’t hired to be a a technology professional.
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I was hired to be an EHS practitioner and often I’m the one that that many in
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our organization call or they ask me uh how should we think about this challenge
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as a practitioner. Uh so I’m that that person I I’m the conversationalist. So
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when our teams go away, you know, they can fill that gap with product. They may
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leverage a sales action or they may, you know, deliver better customer support by
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by having that that knowledge of a practitioner. And the more that I that I
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do work with technology, the more convinced that I am that leadership is
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still the differentiator between going from good to great. And and to maybe explain that to you, Monica, is that two
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companies and and I I see this even with some of our our own clients, two companies can implement the very same
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software and achieve entirely different results because one has they they have
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leaders that engage people and the other simply want to manage data within their
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company. So technology I absolutely believe it gives us visibility but leadership gives us influence and and
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that really is uh the genesis of my book. That’s what I wanted to to reinforce uh in the pages of that book.
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I I’ve just seen firsthand how powerful uh technology can be. But I’ve also seen
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how technology uh reaches its full potential only when when leaders use it
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to have better conversations with the people actually doing the work. So that was was was the reason that I wrote the
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book. And kind of funny is that I I write very late at night. So I usually
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try to to go to bed around 10:30 in the evening and I’ll set in bed and uh which
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which absolutely drives others in the house crazy. But I I’ll write, you know, I’ll just start writing something that I
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think is is quite important and then it turns into chapters and then of course it uh it turned into a book or my second
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book. So yeah. Um there’s a line that’s connected to the book that kind of stuck with me. It
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said the algorithm can’t walk the floor. What did you mean by that?
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Yeah, I I think it’s it’s real simple. Is is technology identifies where your
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attention is needed. uh leaders I believe discover the why. Uh so AI and
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and we’re we’re seeing it within our own company. We have a tremendous amount of interest from our clients and and
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including AI in some of their decision- making um you know avenues that they
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want to make as practitioner. But I I find it best that AI can recognize trends faster than than any human can. I
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I’ve actually been using it with within Intellects and it’s catching things that
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I would not have caught or I would have spent a tremendous amount of my time trying to figure those things out. Uh so
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dashboards, things like that, they certainly can, you know, reveal patterns. Uh analytics really kind of
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point us to the risk. And I I uh I say this I mean I I spoke at ASSP in Anaheim
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what a month ago and I probably had you know 700 people in that room uh and they
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were all very very interested right in the benefits of AI. I even told that
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group of people is that analytics can point us to the risk. But when I say that, I want it to be a litmus test,
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right? I still want that practitioner in their chair hopefully deciding between those two or three things or those three
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or four things that AI can really do for us. None of those tools that I could
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talk about, what intellects has, what anybody has, can understand context though. So workers provide context,
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leaders uncover context, and um you know, so I I’ll give you an example. A
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dashboard might might show an increase in hand injuries. Walking the floor will
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probably reveal that a production schedule got really tight or it got changed or your overtime doubled or we
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had an experienced employee training a new hire employee. Everybody started to feel rushed. So that’s the story or an
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example of a story that a dashboard simply can cannot tell. And that really
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is the the genesis behind some of my writing is that data I I think is very
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clever and how it can begin a conversation, but leadership actually
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completes that conversation. Yeah, we’ve talked about many times on this podcast how AI and technology is
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very helpful, but it could also be harmful. And I imagine that the danger is not that the technology itself, it’s
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believing that once we have collected that data, issued the report or displayed the dashboard that once the
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leadership work is finished. Um, is that kind of where you see organizations getting stuck?
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I I do. I mean, I think it there’s and we all come to this, especially in the
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field that I’ve chosen to to, you know, have a career in, which is safety and health and environmental programming, is
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that I I understood very very quickly that the better I was at the front line
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of my organization with the people that were actually making something or providing the service, the better I was
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able to connect with them, the better my programs were, the better my process was in in regard to it robustness. So I
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think technology really excels at some of the things I mentioned of collecting information, identifying those trends.
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Uh are is there repetitive work that we can build efficiencies from? Uh can I
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predict future risk? And and certainly we’ve showed that through through AI. Uh
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I I like tools, you know, like AI that help me standardize a process. I just
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like connecting information across an organization locally or on an enterprise level. But I I think my dividing line is
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is that at the end of the day, regardless of all of that stuff that we have flowing in now because of of AI or
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or even technology, uh you still had to build trust within the organization, you
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still have to be able to coach people who are who are in the in the workforce.
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And and many times I I talk a lot about this is is that I need to see the whites
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of the eyes, right, of the people that are working in my organization because
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there is no technology that can tell me that that a person on the front line may
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be going through a financial hardship or maybe going through a relationship issue. Those are really things that are
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key on me trying to understand. So I need to be able to read emotion. AI can’t do that very well. uh
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understanding the context of of what I find at the front line and then all of
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that really helps me when I lead effectively is is I can solve the
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ambiguity that I see in the workforce and that inspires ownership across the board. So I I think that when when I
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look and especially you know I get this question quite a lot even when I talk now you know many of the things that I
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present at the conference have nothing to do with technology uh and it’s really because of this is that the future for
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me isn’t deciding whether technology or people are more important I think we’ve
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proved both um I would say that you know every time that I mention technology the
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rooms are going to fill up and they’re very very curious about that the point that I always make though is I don’t
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want you to forget about the people that are in that organization. So it’s understanding which work belongs to each
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and u and then you know I would say don’t don’t expect talent technology to
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do human work you know that’s not where we’re at yet at least. No that’s fair. Um, one question I did
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have though is what can workers tell immediately about a leader who’s genuinely there to listen and care
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versus one who’s just there to inspect or perform like a leadership ritual?
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Yeah. Well, it’s pretty easy. I I write about a lot about this. I mean, you mentioned that I wrote 260 lessons and
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it’s true. I I did and and there are thousands of lessons but most of them is
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exactly what you just me mentioned is that presence is far more important than
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proximity. uh and I I’ve often said is is that a person especially on the front
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line you know the ones that actually make something or the ones that are providing a service uh they are they are
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tremendously good at judging authenticity right so walking the floor
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it’s really not about inspecting things sometimes it is of course finding violations you know catching them in
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some type of mistake uh what I usually try to say check those boxes and I spent
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you know, really my formative years very very early in my career doing just that because I was just trying to to achieve
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compliance to stay into compliance and and those are the things that were were what I thought were required of me. The
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decision point you know really in my mind started happening when I changed my
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perspective totally is that I went to the floor to learn. I I went to to see
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if a procedure that they were performing match what I wrote for them to uh to do.
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And many times it it wasn’t right. We we talk about this quite often. Uh work as
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written or work is actually done. And many times those those two things aren’t the same. So learning what’s happening,
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why are they now following things that I’ve asked them to do? There’s usually a really good reason for it. And it
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requires me asking uh questions of uh of them about why things are are occurring
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the way that I see them. It’s just observing what what’s the what’s the actual floor look like? And it makes no
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difference if you’re in manufacturing or in construction. Observation is a really really big tool that helps me develop
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program for the uh for the organizations I’ve been asked to to to lead. The big
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thing I believe is is listening. Is that we just need to listen better. And when
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I say listen, I don’t mean listen to answer. I I I spend an entire section of
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that book. You know, we we listen to answer, right? We want to give this answer back. Uh but we shouldn’t listen
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that. We should be very active listeners, right? We should be listening to see what perspective is coming out of
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the mouth of that person that you’re actually talking to. And that allows us to have conversation.
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And once we have conversation, we can build relationships. I’ll I’ll kind of give you a really kind of funny story
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about that is again, you know, kind of earlier in my career when I was just at a site level, I was notorious for going
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into a machine room or on an operating floor and I would ask, you know, I try to create these relationships and uh and
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you know, we had we had some of our men and women that were working there. they they had piano recital at six o’clock at
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night or they had a little league ball game and and I would show up and I I would just show up. I would show up at a
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a little league ball game or a piano recital and uh and those employees were just absolutely astounded that I would
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do something like that that would would really kind of pull me away from what I could be doing but it allow me to invest
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in them. and they saw that and what I was trying to do was to build relationships with them because I wanted
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them to trust me and I wanted them to have a relationship with me and you have to really kind of step outside of
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yourself especially you’ve got to step outside of just compliance so you know
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practical questions and this is for our audience right you know tell me about today’s work right that that’s an open
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question to really you want to understand what they’re going through what’s different today than it was
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yesterday. What’s making your work harder? And if you could change one thing, I mean, these are my four
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questions I use quite often. If you could change one thing without authority, what would it be? That
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changes the entire bank of answers that you’ll receive. So, don’t go to the floor looking for problems. Go looking
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for understanding. And understanding comes from those things, right? Learning and asking and observing and building
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relationship with the people that you care about. Oh, that’s great. I’ve often heard the
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quote that people don’t leave bad companies, they leave they leave bad leadership. Um, so that’s great to know
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that there’s people like you out there. They’re actually sitting down and building that report. Did you find that it had a positive influence on the
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output from the employees? Well, it does. I I I go back to to what
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we talked about, right? Authenticity really matters. I people are are
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wonderfully clever at understanding how real you are especially if you’re quote
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a leader and and I do think that those especially in safety and health you know
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I I have found us you know I’ll put me in that category you know are those that
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are very compliantminded right we we want to get a a side or organization in compliance and then
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there’s many others you know that said there’s there’s more to than just compliance. And we tend to go towards
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soft skills. And and to me, those are the harder ones is that if they see you
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as this person that they perceive really cares about them, then they’re going to take the chance with you. They’re
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they’re going to lean into you and they’re going to build this relationship where they trust you. And you don’t have
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to have these negotiations or all these mediations uh with the workforce once they trust
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you. because I I’ll uh I I’ve never led anything where I didn’t try to lead it
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like I would my own immediate family is that I cared about him a lot. I I can
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remember that I was leading you know uh a big organization pharmaceutical
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company and and the the president of the company asked me to stand up and say a few words and I did. I mean not with not
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not thinking too much about it. I said, “I love my job and I love you enough that I want to get you home every single
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day safe and healthy.” And I said that, you know, we had the meeting and we
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turned around. I’m walking back to the office with him and he said, “Did you just tell 600 people that you loved
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them?” And I said, “You know, I think love is an action, right? You really do have to love what you’re doing, but you
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have to love these people enough to keep them safe.” And uh and I’ve always led that way. And that really does require
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me to really get very personal with the folks that that are in my organization.
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And and I don’t think we we talk about love like you would for a spouse, but you really do have to care for the
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people in your organization. And if that happens, you can lead them very very effectively.
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No, that’s I agree with that entirely. And I think that’s the bridge between your first book and this one. And
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correct me if I’m wrong, but the first book really made the case for partnership. Um, it challenged
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organizations to stop treating workers as passive participants in safety and instead build that genuine partnership
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with the front line. So, was that the response? Was it the response to this book that convinced you the second one
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was necessary? Yeah, I I think when I look back at it, I uh Yeah, I was a I’ve gosh, I’ve been
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writing for a long time, but never to never 300 pages of anything. And when I
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was writing my my first book, it was a reflection of me looking at my my my
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work, how I how I worked, how I had success. Uh there’s certainly some how
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in that book. And uh uh and I I was really focused on it for maybe the
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younger practitioner. Uh but then I quickly found out that, you know, plant managers were reading my book,
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operations managers were reading my book. But overall I would say the first book explained why why these things are
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important why this should come before that and then uh and it was not push
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back but it was feedback from those that read the book. They absolutely uh got
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what I was saying, right? They received the message, they were excited about the message, but one thing kept coming back
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is how do we do that stuff, right? And uh so this one really kind of explains
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the how. And I’ve always been a um a big advocate. I I keep a devotional, a
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spiritual devotion on my desk. And every morning I I’ll come and I’ll read a devotion and it kind of sets me uh for
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the day ahead. It gives me, you know, a couple things to think about and I can meditate on that, right, just a little
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bit and get on into my work. And I thought, right, how how clever it would
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be if there was something like that um for for safety and health professionals. And then I thought broader than that is
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that couldn’t it be just for those that care about safety. And so I received the
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message, you know, I believe everything you’ve written. Now tell me what to do tomorrow. That’s how I I’ve kind of
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talked about that. So I uh so this be my my new book became that. It was a daily
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habit book. It was how to have a daily conversation. Uh it gave you very
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practical leadership ideas. And then I think for me I I’ve always been somebody
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that was into nudge strategy and and nudge strategy is doing very small
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things over and over again and they compound, right? So if you do these things over and over again, if you make
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them disciplines uh then they compound and you’ll see uh those accumulations
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really acrue into something very very positive and and so I think vision expire inspires people and that was the
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first book. I think practice kind of transforms all of that through very simple actions and and I you know
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everyone that that listens to to to this podcast you know many of them will
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probably be EHS professionals and they do know that this is very very uh
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complete work that we do because we have to be an engineer we have to be part HR we have to be a minister there’s so many
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facets of being a great EHS professional and but we get to where we we are. If we
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do get to that level, it’s practice. We just do things over and over again and we transform, you know, organization
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that way. So, it sounds like you’ve taken real world examples and firsthand experience
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and turned it into practical advice, if you will, that people can implement in
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their day-to-day. So, I’m wondering did in your experience, did people agree with the philosophies in your teachings
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or did they struggle with what to do next? Um, how did it resonate? Yeah. So, yeah, I I I would say overall
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uh the ones that read my first book, they almost they did take it more of a philosophy, which which kind of
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surprised me because I didn’t write it thinking that. Um but it it really is
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how a lot of practitioners struggle uh leading program is that um they they get
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the whole idea of vision. They create these strategies right and they’re very lofty ideas that they have and and they
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talk to people. They benchmark but what they struggle with is implementation.
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And so, you know, when I think about this book, um, it’s not the fact that
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most leaders, they don’t resist partnership. That that’s what I would say first. They simply don’t know how to
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create it on a very consistent basis. So, there’s these stops and starts, these hills and these valleys that they
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fall into and and they don’t see the results right away that they would like to see. So, they stop and they look for
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something else. And it really is because they’ve taken this big huge strategy that’s in front of them and they really
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don’t know how to execute it. So questions you know that that they were asking me is how do I start right who do
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I ask? Who do I go and take these great things that you’ve talked about too? What if nobody talks to me right which
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many times the front line won’t talk to you or the seauite won’t talk to you? Uh
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what if somebody disagrees right how do I respond to all that? So when I look at
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the book that that I wrote, the first thing I had to kind of figure out is that which of all of these things that I
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know, you know, over the last 40 years are worth talking about and Kenya kind of size them up in 52 weekly themes and
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260 lessons. So this book, what I really tried to do was to give leaders very
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practical answers on those everyday situations. And you know um I I don’t I
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really don’t think that leadership failure is a failure of intention. Um I don’t think any of us intend to fail. I
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think failure comes through execution of really not knowing what that that next step is. And many times I just think
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that we never are really great at moving from strategy to objective setting that
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are small enough steps that get us to where we want to. And I would also say I’m making a very blanket statement. And
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I I recognize that because some of us are very very good at at doing those things. But I I wrote the book for those
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maybe that do struggle a bit. Is that why you structured it in that five minute 52 week of lessons format?
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I I did. Yeah. But I I think uh well a couple things, right? I talked about that devotion book because I uh I I
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don’t have time to read you know you know big books of of really anything. I try to uh but I I’ll read a book and
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I’ll put it on a shelf and I won’t think about it ever again. And what I wanted to do was to try to compose a book to
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write a book where you could revisit it over and over again or or there may be this one week right within those 52 that
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really struck a chord with you. Uh but the big thing I I guess if if I were to
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have an idea about it, I think leadership does grow through repetition
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and I think it’s not information overload. Uh and every book that I’ve read on leadership, you know, it’s three
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or 400 page book. Uh you you take it chapter by chapter by, you know, chapter
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27, you forgot what chapter 13 said. So I I did I wanted to be in very small
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steps. Um, you know, I I even wrote it where nobody, you know, even reads
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anything over the weekend. You know, these are fiveday lessons. So, you start on Monday, you end up on on Friday, you
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spend maybe a little bit more time on Friday because I summarize things. Uh, and and people change because they start
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to think differently every day. So, five minutes before the shift, five minutes
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during a team meeting, five minutes after an incident, that is really what I think, you know, really goes after uh
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culture and starts shaping it a little bit differently, a little bit at a time.
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And I uh you know, I I wanted to to really write something that was part of
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someone’s routine. I didn’t think that the average practitioner and Monica you
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know this man we work in marketing trying to figure out what the sweet spot is even from from material that we’re
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trying to get a a practitioner to read and and we don’t have a lot of time right so we do have to say things very
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succinctly short many times but I just didn’t want it to be a book that was sitting on a shelf and uh and so
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leadership I don’t think it it does happen in one breakthrough moment I think really just kind of built with hundreds
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of these ordinary conversations that we would like to have, but we don’t.
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I mean, that’s a lot to say, but I think that is the truth. [laughter] Right. Right. I was going to say, um,
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260 lessons is super impressive. And after nearly four decades of experience,
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was narrowing down your experience into just 260 lessons difficult, or did it
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kind of come quickly to you? Well, I I don’t know if it came came quickly. Uh, you know, in some ways, yes. I mean, I
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think I could have talked about 500 different lessons, but I it was easier
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for me to think about it in themes and and it was easy for me to think about it
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in parts. So, really what I intended to do when I started writing the book was
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to write it thinking about this young practitioner that had entered the work force. uh many of the things and I I sit
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on several you know college boards that uh you know give give direction or at
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least advice on what occupational health and safety program should look like. And
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I remember when I came out of college I had a complianceminded
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focus about what my work was. It was within two or three months that I figured out there’s a lot more soft
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sides of this that I don’t have. Um, you know, I put a bishop on the front of
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this book because a bishop on a chessboard, it moves diagonally. Uh, it
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moves very informally through an organization and in many ways how an EHS
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practitioner moves in their organization. We never start with all of the authority that we would like to
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have. Uh, we are always negotiating. We’re always mediating things. uh we are
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always trying to get to a decision uh that we can’t make alone. So how do we
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build influence? Uh we are always talking with a supervisor that may have
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you know control over an area that we think that needs to change. So that bishop right where all of these these
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informal diagonal moves within an organization should really started there is that you know the first part of the
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book is about understanding who you are as a as a safety and health practitioner
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and then the second section is how do you really do that work and then the third section is how do you extend that
29:27
work past yourself and then the fourth which I didn’t expect to write but I thought it was important is what is your
29:34
legacy and safety and health. And I recognize that this could be, you know, a 25 or a 30 year old person that that
29:42
would be reading the book looking at this being a couple of decades away before they even need to consider it.
29:48
But how you start many times is how you’re going to finish. And that is
29:53
really has been my mantra is that I’ve always wanted to to quickly get to where
29:58
my ground is, right? what’s my north star in leading safety health in an organization and the rest of it has has
30:06
just been those accumulations of small things that I was able to do. So that’s really how I thought about it. You know
30:12
kind those four big parts and then I just started dividing those what within that section what’s important for you to
30:17
know. Um so yeah I I probably started with 300 different things. I I I was
30:23
telling someone, you know, just the other day that they started reading my
30:28
book and they had noticed that and uh you know, they said, you know, I don’t know if this section is going to be, you
30:34
know, what I need. I said, I think that’s okay. You I think there’s going to be weeks that you’ll you’ll find, you
30:43
know, find lessons that you you’ve passed or you validated or you
30:48
know the reason why you read a book. Well, having said that, was there a lesson that was particularly difficult
30:53
to write just because you might have handled it differently earlier in your career? Yeah. Well, it actually is um in in that
31:02
last section of the book, I I I spend a week talking to safety and health practitioners really about the weight of
31:09
what we do. Uh I think there is a significant amount of weight to to leading safety and health in an
31:15
organization because it’s it’s different than if you’re simply an engineer or
31:20
it’s different if you’re in finance or it’s different right if you have in HR
31:25
you know we carry the weight of an organization many times on our shoulders. So I think every safety and
31:31
health practitioner that really is striving to do the role that that they know is their calling it’s that kind of
31:38
stuff. It’s it’s the missing, you know, dinner at night. It’s missing the little league ball games because you’re still
31:44
at work. Um it there’s really a a tremendous amount of weight, especially
31:49
in this field because there’s so many emotional ties that we have to the workforces that we’re we’re asked to
31:55
protect. So that’s probably the harder section, you know, that I wrote. But I’m going to think when a practitioner reads
32:02
that section, they’re going to identify with it immediately.
32:07
You also managed to have um Malcolm Staves, the global vice president of health and safety at L’Oreal, write the
32:13
forward. How’d you manage to pull that off? Well, you know, I’ I’ve always admired
32:18
Malcolm uh Malcolm Staves. He is the vice president now, environment, health,
32:23
and safety. He’s been at L’Oreal for a long, long time. But especially when I
32:29
when I go to Europe, uh he’s many times one of the keynote speakers. He’s done a TED talk. Um, so I enjoy sitting back
32:37
and just listening to a person that reminds me of myself and but he’s more
32:42
articulate. I’ll just say that is that when I listen to him and how he goes about uh you know doing his work and and
32:51
I uh I actually have a post that’s going to come out right about him is that uh
32:57
uh when I look at him you know he has all these global responsibilities thousands and thousands of of people
33:04
that work in in that organization. He could really focus on compliance. He could focus on process. he could focus
33:10
on his program, but he always ties it back to a person. He’s a very people
33:16
centric uh you know leader. He always ties his success uh over to to the
33:22
people that work for L’Oreal. And that’s exactly the way that u you know that I think as well is I’m always very people
33:29
centric. I’m always going to be focused on on leading with people first. And and
33:34
so I guess in many ways I I really like him. I asked him to forward the book
33:39
because we think a lot alike. I often tell him though, but you’re more you’re you’re more articulate than I am. He’s
33:46
from, you know, he he’s from uh the UK, so he honestly always sounds smarter,
33:51
right, than than I do, but he’s become a really good, you know, a good colleague.
33:57
Uh he he uh I I use a bishop to understand, you know, in formerly moving
34:02
through an organization. uh he uses in his TED talks was about the hummingbird persistent right taking little small
34:09
chunks delivering value a little piece at a time so it just kind of connected
34:14
like that and I just really do uh regard him as a really forwardinking leader and
34:20
in safety and health as well as environmental programming. So what do you think it means to have
34:26
someone with Malcolm’s experience recognize the need for this kind of practical leadership guidance?
34:33
Yeah, he he did. I I sent him my first book and I actually sent him the manuscript of of the second book. And
34:39
after he read them both, uh he thought that that uh the second book especially
34:45
was a missing part of what we do as practitioners, uh the idea of fiveminute
34:51
lessons, the idea of carrying a practitioner through different stages of their development u was a necessary part
34:58
of of what our work, you know, should be. But I think more than that is that
35:03
he recognized that I was doing this and what I would call the safety devotional,
35:08
right? It’s it’s just a five minute lesson that I want you to kind of focus on. And I I put a try this section. You
35:15
know, there’s a there’s a statement or a question for you to answer as a leader and then there is a question for you to
35:21
answer with a frontline team. So, we’re doing this in very very succinct small
35:27
little nudges of the organization. So that really is is how he works. Uh so I
35:33
think he he really liked that approach a lot and it’s just something different you know than than has been done before.
35:40
No, I agree. Um so earlier we talked about the way you structured the book and the different sections. Um
35:48
were you intending to make the point that safety cannot change if only one side of the organization is doing the
35:54
work? I I think that I I uh for years for a long long time and you still see this is
36:02
that uh leaders try to lead from the desk from a chair and it’s one of the
36:07
things that really scare me about us with technology influences is that we
36:13
[clears throat] want to spend so much time on our dashboards that we forget that there are people out on the front
36:19
line making something or or providing a service. I I wanted to close that gap and I’m actually writing a third book to
36:26
leaders about what their job actually is and [snorts] uh and it’s that it’s closing this distance between the office
36:33
between the seauite or even the EHS practitioners office and those that actually do the work and if we can do
36:40
that then you’ll start seeing those partnerships that I talked about in book one. So it’s really that it’s that I’m
36:47
trying to close difference between people that have notoriously right been
36:53
stuck in the offices and I really don’t direct that at at EHS professionals because we’re more prone to be where the
36:59
action actually is. But it’s all those other leaders that I need to pull them away from their desk or from a meeting
37:06
room and put them out where the work actually happens. And once we can do that, uh, we can see the value through
37:15
partnership where you actually have people co-authoring and co-owning the
37:21
process with you. And and you know, for for the life of me, I don’t know why we
37:26
as leaders want to do a lot of the work when if we all took a piece of that work, it’s a little bit of work for all
37:33
of us or it’s a lot of work for the few. And if we can do that, we’ll have the success that that u that I think that we
37:39
want to have. I I’ve never had a bad organization. I I’ve had, you know, bad quarters. Certainly, I’ve had years
37:45
where I didn’t get the success that I wanted. But, you know, over this 40-year career that I’ve had, I can look back
37:51
and say I’ve always been quite successful. And I think the tie has been Monica that I’ve been very very good at
37:58
connecting with the front line and adding value uh of what they can give back to the organization through
38:04
partnership. So takes a little practice. It does. It does. Um is there anything
38:11
that you know now that you wish you had known in the beginning? I in writing the book No. I think if I
38:18
look back over my career, you know, 40 years of this is that you just simply can’t fake authenticity
38:25
uh and I I think I started this conversation and and I think that is the number one rule that that I I have when
38:32
I counsel young practitioners. They need to be authentic. They need to be looking for relationship building. Uh employees
38:39
who’ve been around, you know, for years can tell within the first minute whether you’re there to help them succeed or
38:46
you’re simply there to document some type of deficiency, to record some kind of audit, right? To inspect them. They
38:54
want to know that you’re showing up. And trust isn’t built by simply showing up.
39:00
It’s built on how we show up. and and that’s through really caring about the folks that we are in charge of
39:06
protecting and building relationship with them. Is there something that you’re still
39:12
working on or you believe that even after all this experience you’re never going to fully perfect it?
39:21
Well, I I mentioned it. I mean, I I’m probably uh I don’t know 40 50% uh
39:27
through outlining the next book. I I’ve always said that I I would write a trilogy. You know, the first one was at
39:33
the front line. Uh the second one was really developed for the middle of an organization and the third one would be
39:40
will be me talking with senior leaders of an organization and what their role really is especially for safety and
39:46
health. Uh it’s not the fact that that um you know it it does not work for for
39:52
anything else but the way that I write I write it with a lens towards safety. So
39:58
everything that I look at is through safety, but it’s really about leadership. Uh I I’ve often said that,
40:05
you know, safety is just a template for other things that you can do through a leadership stance that’s just different.
40:11
So it’s a boilerplate. Uh many of the things I write about, you can erase safety, put quality, you can write erase
40:18
safety and put operations. It still works. But the big thing is is is that
40:24
uh you know pulling you out of an office, putting you closer to the front line, closing that distance, it’s a good
40:30
thing. And that’s what my my third book will talk about. It’ll be directly at senior leaders who maybe forgot right
40:38
what the most important thing is about their role. I mean, we’ve talked a lot about the
40:43
book, but for those listening in the book, where can they actually find it? How can they get it in their hands?
40:49
Well, I I Yeah. So, the easiest thing since most people have it, Amazon uh
40:54
carries the book. All you got to do is type in the title or just type in my name and you’ll see both of my books
41:00
listed there. So, you can do that. But Books a Million, uh they have it. Uh so, there’s all the bigger establishments
41:06
that sell books, they do have it available. I do have a a website, scottgatispeaks.com,
41:13
and you can find those links on that website. It has my speaking calendar. Uh, it also has workbooks. And we didn’t
41:20
talk about that, Monica, but I have individual workbooks. I have team workbooks. If you wanted to spread this
41:25
out in an organization, they’re both there. All that information is on the website.
41:31
No, that’s fantastic. We definitely should touch on that on a future episode. But I did want to finish with
41:36
the spirit of the book, not a transformation strategy, not a five-year road map. I want to know, do you have
41:43
one favorite lesson? And if it’s one that you could give to any leader to do tomorrow, what would it be?
41:50
Yeah, I I I talked I think I just put this on on LinkedIn. U you know, go out
41:56
to the floor with a question. Is that is there one thing that makes your job harder today? And if you could change
42:05
one thing about your work today, what would it be? Right? And don’t frame it. Don’t frame it through authority. Don’t
42:12
frame it if you had enough money. just ask those questions. And that may be my
42:17
my uh my best ones because I think that you have hundreds of employees in your
42:23
organizations that are just waiting for that question. What’s making this hard for me to do correctly? What’s making
42:29
this hard for me to have success? What is this one thing that if you allow me to change it, I would?
42:36
And then be surprised what you hear. Yeah. Yeah. I’d imagine they all have a different answer. every single person
42:42
because they all handle different things. Um, yeah, absolutely. No, that’s fantastic. Scott, congratulations again.
42:48
Writing a book is such an accomplishment and you did it twice. I mean, after nearly four decades of experience, you
42:54
turned it into something that another person can use during a five-minute conversation before a shift. And that’s
42:59
a contribution to this profession. And what I’m taking away from this conversation is that safety leadership
43:05
is rarely defined by one major speech, a new initiative, or one perfectly
43:10
designed program. It’s built through hundreds of smaller moments. Um, the question a supervisor chooses to ask,
43:17
the way a leader reacts when someone raises a concern, the willingness to walk into the floor,
43:23
understand the work, and treat the people doing it as partners rather than problems to solve. Um, technology can
43:28
help us recognize risk sooner. It can connect information, reveal patterns, and then give leaders a clearer view of
43:35
what’s happening, but the algorithm, like you said, cannot walk the floor. It still takes a person to step forward,
43:41
start that conversation, listen to the answer, like you said, and then do something meaningful with that uh with
43:46
what they’ve learned. So, I wanted to thank you for letting me take over the questions today, letting me interview
43:52
you, and if you have a chance, please order Scott’s book. I think it will change everything.
44:00
Gosh, thanks Monica. I appreciate it. And thank you to everybody listening. Um, until next time, stay curious, keep
44:07
asking better questions, and remember that safer work starts with how we lead.