The Vision Thing

Are your goals shared by others?

Two weeks ago we emailed scores of EHS experts asking: What are the big stories shaping the EHS world today? Our analysis of nearly three dozen responses will be the cover story of ISHN's October issue.

But we received one response that deserves to be singled out.

"Where are the BIG IDEAS and the vision and determination to make them happen?" asked Frank White, former MSHA and OSHA official, now senior vice president for ORC Worldwide.
Here is White's assessment: The business community is content in the post-regulatory era. Unions are just trying to survive. OSHA standards-setting? "Fuggetaboutit." And the EHS profession, broadly defined, "is focused on (some would say obsessed with) just retaining some discrete identity and preventing cataclysmic future membership loss in an outsourcing, off-shoring competitive corporate environment."

"This guy is deep," wrote one EHS veteran, applauding his insights that identify "the quagmire we call the profession. I agree with Frank 100 percent…we’re in deep ‘do – do’ in the not to distant future!"

"He reflected a lot of the feeling throughout the safety and health community about the lack of leadership," said another respondent.

To be sure, not everyone agrees. "I just shake my head at the fact that many of us continue to link safety and its future existence to OSHA," said a long-time safety pro and ASSE officer. "In the 'post regulatory era' we just seem to be in despair. I am not in despair. I believe we have a great future but we have to get serious about determining how to best move forward."

Calling Dr. Howard
White, an extremely well-connected Washington insider, does see a bright spot — NIOSH. Yes, the little institute that Congress created 35 years ago and promptly forgot about. (Except for NIOSH patron Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) who has faithfully funneled millions into its Morgantown, W.Va., facilities.)

"With strong, creative leadership by Linda Rosenstock and now John Howard over the last decade plus, NIOSH has moved into the forefront as the new leading national voice of safety and health," said White.

"With leadership in areas like nanotechnology and control banding, NIOSH has emerged as an institution that recognizes the importance of becoming involved in the global arena and identifying future trends," he wrote.

John Howard took over as director of NIOSH on July 15, 2002, and it can certainly be argued that no one has the credentials and resume to lead the EHS field that Dr. Howard possesses. An impressive string of letters follow his name: M.D., M.P.H., J.D., LL.M. Dr. Howard headed Cal/OSHA from 1991 to 2002. He's also been a professor of environment and occupational medicine, medical director of an AIDS prevention clinic, and worked closely with asbestos-exposed shipyard workers.

And he does articulate a vision. Consider these comments from the past four years:

• "It is no longer enough for us to say that our job is to ensure that workers go home from work as healthy as they came to work. We need to ensure that workers return to work the next day as safe and healthy as they can be."

• "Ensuring total workforce health… has to become as important a goal of occupational safety and health programs as health protection against workplace risks currently is…"

• "Work organization needs to be promoted as a cohesive field of study"… because an employee's physical and psychological stability in the midst of radical organization pressures "is critical to his or her survival as a human being."

• "Occupational genomics should become a field of interest for every occupational safety and health professional."

• "For too long, we've paid scant attention to the threat that communicable diseases pose to workers and workplace productivity."

• "It has become inescapable that business workplaces are indeed at risk of terrorist workplace violence."

Can you think of anyone in the EHS field who speaks with this kind of humane passion and conviction about a breadth of subjects ranging from occupational genomics and communicable diseases to terrorism and an employee's physical and psychological stability?

Many people in safety and health emphasize goals and outcomes, but only Dr. Howard describes "a holism where work is self-defining in the most enhancing way possible, where a worker can enjoy any retirement years with intact health, and where health-enhancing behaviors are valued and promoted in the workplace along with safety and health protection."
And one of our EHS experts thinks Frank White is deep…

Howard Gardner’s “Leading Minds”
Dr. Howard has leadership qualities, a vision, but is anyone listening? The central thesis of Howard Gardner's "Leading Minds" (Basic Books, 1995) is that leaders must have a story to relate, and an audience ready to hear it, if they are to succeed.

Dr. Howard has a story — a central theme or message delivered with knowledge and conviction. But as Gardner writes, a leader's ability to persuade and be effective depends on fit. The message must make sense to audience members, in terms of where they have been and where they want to go, he writes.

Many employers, employees, and EHS pros and organizations listening to Dr. Howard's message don't want to go there. Few businesses put the "psychological stability" of employees high on their "to do" lists. Nor are most interested in the off-hours lifestyle behaviors of their employees. Many employees don't want bosses nosing around those behaviors, anyway. And there are not enough hours in the day for most overworked EHS pros to take up the study of work organization and occupational genomics.

Complacency is the biggest challenge EHS leaders like Dr. Howard face today.

Workplace injury and illness "outcomes" are at record low levels. Most employers are satisfied with the current performance and scope of their safety and health programs.

Most employees are complacent about their own health (how many of us go for annual physicals?) and their own safety (Violent crime and natural disasters worry most workers more than unintentional injuries on and off the job, according to a National Safety Council survey. But as the NSC points out, violent crimes and natural disasters are far less common.)

Dr. Howard is a leader with "big ideas." But in contrast to EHS's golden age of expansive thinking — the 1970s and early '80s when most current standards and policies were set — in 2006 "big ideas" don't have a big following. They are too costly. Or anti-competitive. Or what's their ROI?
One example: EHS performance metrics. Everyone in the EHS professional world understands the shortcomings of OSHA's after-the-fact injury and illness records. "Dashboards" of leading, lagging, and financial metrics have been proposed for years now. But with the exception of some leading corporations that use leading indicators, industry has learned to live with the OSHA numbers and doesn't want to change recordkeeping practices.

It's tough to lead — in EHS or any field — with vision and big ideas when your followers see no compelling reason or need to think or act differently.