Building Influence And Impact In Safety, with Steven Harris

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In this insightful episode of the "Safety and Risk Success Podcast," host Christian Harris interviews Steven Harris, founder of Integrity HSSE, on elevating leadership and influence in the realm of health and safety. They dive into what HSC professionals must do to become effective leaders, touching on the evolution from mere compliance to strategic influence. Steven shares personal stories and highlights the crucial role of mentorship, the significance of saying 'no,' and how professionals can better communicate their value. They also discuss the groundbreaking potential of AI in safety and prevention.

Highlights

Steven Harris, a renowned safety professional, discusses the importance of moving from compliance-based roles to strategic leadership in safety. 📈
Christian and Steven explore the evolving role of HSC professionals and the critical skills needed for the future. 🛠️
The discussion covers AI's transformative role in predictive safety and how it can revolutionize practice. 🤖
There's emphasis on mentorship for early-career professionals, encouraging learning from experienced leaders. 👶👴
Storytelling and effective communication are highlighted as keys to establishing influence and trust in the workplace. 📖

Key Takeaways

Leadership in safety requires a shift from compliance to strategic influence. 🚀
Text and authorship can significantly enhance one's professional credibility. 📚
Mentorship plays a crucial role in developing tomorrow's safety leaders. 👥
The art of saying 'no' powerfully aligns with leadership goals. ✋
AI offers groundbreaking potential in transforming safety practices. 🤖
Building a 'credibility bank' solidifies professional relationships. 💼
Personal and corporate storytelling distinguishes competent leaders. 🗣️

Overview

In this episode, Christian Harris connects with Steven Harris, who shares his journey in the field of health and safety. They delve into the evolution of HSC professionals from traditional compliance roles to becoming leaders within businesses. The conversation reveals how adopting strategic leadership can help in proactively managing safety and enhancing business operations.

The show highlights the importance of professional credibility and personal storytelling. Steven advises building what he calls a 'credibility bank,' crucial for earning trust and influencing change within organizations. They touch upon how publishing thoughts and learnings, like writing a book, can bolster one's authority in the field.

Christian and Steven also discuss the dramatic impact AI technology can have on safety practices. They envision a future where AI helps predict and prevent safety issues, transforming the industry from being reactive to proactive, thereby making workplaces healthier and more sustainable.

Chapters

00:00 - 05:00: Introduction and Stephen's Accomplishments The chapter introduces the podcast hosted by Christian Harris, featuring guest Steven Harris, founder of Integrity HSC. Steven Harris is highlighted as a notable safety professional with a keen interest in leadership. The chapter sets the stage for a discussion on the essentials that HSC professionals need, referencing that Steven has authored a book on leadership which will be explored further.
05:00 - 10:00: Evolving Role of HSC Professionals The chapter discusses the evolving role of HSC professionals as effective leaders. It emphasizes the importance of engaging with the conversation, taking notes, and implementing the ideas discussed. The audience is encouraged to extract value from the discussion by actively participating and applying the concepts. Additionally, there is a call to action for engagement with the content through likes, comments, and shares.
10:00 - 15:00: Strategies for Safety and Productivity In the chapter titled 'Strategies for Safety and Productivity,' the importance of proactive safety and risk management as a driver for business performance is emphasized. The speaker, Christian Harris, hosts the Safety and Risk Success Podcast, where each week they delve into topics related to safety, risk management, and business improvement through insights, stories, and practical advice. Listeners are encouraged to subscribe and leave reviews on their preferred podcast platform, highlighting the interactive and community-driven approach of the podcast.
15:00 - 20:00: The Power of Storytelling and Personal Branding In 'The Power of Storytelling and Personal Branding,' the conversation opens with a dialogue between Christian and Stephen on a podcast available on major platforms and YouTube. Christian humorously accuses Stephen of having a grievance due to Stephen's accolade of winning the SHP most influential health and safety professional award in 2023. The exchange sets the tone for a discussion likely centered on storytelling, personal branding, and their impacts on professional life.
20:00 - 25:00: Leveraging AI in Safety and Leadership The chapter discusses the experience of being nominated for an award against a group of highly esteemed professionals, described as 'giants' in their field. The narrator expresses humility and gratitude for the recognition, acknowledging the contributions of other dedicated professionals who add significant value to the world.
25:00 - 30:00: Closing Remarks and Contact Information In the closing remarks, the speaker reflects on an experience with a team member who initially suggested a role that seemed unfitting. Despite initial skepticism, the speaker eventually pursued and achieved success, leading to a surreal and rewarding experience. The chapter highlights that year's award being dedicated to Mavis, a person who had passed away, adding an emotional and meaningful layer to the achievement. The narrative captures a sense of triumph, surprise, and tribute within the professional journey discussed.

Building Influence And Impact In Safety, with Steven Harris Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 Welcome to the safety and risk success podcast with me, Christian Harris. I'm joined today by a Harris namesake, Steven Harris, who's the founder of Integrity HSC. And Steven, as well as being a great safety professional, is also really passionate about the topic of leadership. Indeed, he wrote a book about that as we will speak about. and we really get into what things HSC professionals need
00:30 - 01:00 to do to be more effective leaders nowadays. Lots of great topics to explore. Lots of things for you to go away, think about, cognitate on, and do. I'd really encourage you to take some notes from this conversation and go away and do some of the things that we speak about, and I'm sure you'll get a huge amount of value from it. As always, hope you enjoy this episode. If you do, please give us a like, a comment, a share on social
01:00 - 01:30 media. Please do subscribe on your podcasting platform of choice. Uh, and a review on there would be very much appreciated as well. Cheers. Welcome to the safety and risk success podcast with Christian Harris. We believe that proactive safety and risk management powers business performance. Each week we explore this theme sharing guests stories, insights, trends, hints and tips. You can find us on all the
01:30 - 02:00 major podcasting platforms and video versions are available on YouTube. But for now, let's join the conversation with Christian. Thanks for joining me today, Stephen. Oh, it's my absolute pleasure, Christian. This is long overdue. Um, and I'll tell you why. I' I'm bearing a grudge against you. Because the first thing I'm going to ask you is how did it feel to win the SHP most influential health and safety professional in 2023 and I bear a grudge
02:00 - 02:30 because you I was one of the people you beat. Well, so there's an old phrase that says uh you know you're standing on the shoulder of giants and I really was standing on the shoulders of giants. uh some of the people that were up there as finalists were just incredible dedicated professionals that add so much value to the world that is just not worth talking about. So, it's one of those moments when I was nominated um and I I know who I was nominated by and
02:30 - 03:00 it was uh somebody that was on my team and as much as initially I said to him, "What on earth were you doing? That's that's not a place where I belong." Um, and he convinced me that it was. But when I actually won, it was uh it was a bit of a surreal feeling actually. It really was. And one of the most incredible things about it was that um it was it was dedicated that year's award was dedicated to uh Mavis who'd passed away
03:00 - 03:30 on the November beforehand who was just the most incredible HSSE professional and dedicated her life to talking about asbestos that ultimately she passed away from which I used the opportunity of being labeled as the most influential person in 2023, in 2024 to talk about Mavis and to carry on her fight because I thought that was that was that was only right and proper. Um, but her
03:30 - 04:00 story, for those that don't know, which is an incredibly powerful story, was that it wasn't actually Mavis that was working with the asbestos. It was her husband. And as she took her took his coveralls home, she'd washed the coveralls when he got back in. And the story goes that she would shake them out in the back of the house and that's where she she ingested the asbestos for one of a better expression. But uh incredible lady and um when her life did end which is tragic, she went down
04:00 - 04:30 swinging and uh never stopped campaigning until the very end. So to win that award, incredible, mind-blowing. To win the award that was dedicated to Mavis that we just lost selfishly was the cherry on the cake. It was incredible. But I still, you know, there were people on that final awards list who arguably were more deserved winners than me. Um, I mean, I don't think there was a to say someone
04:30 - 05:00 took home the award. Yes, they did. But everybody in that final list was was great, including yourself, Christian. Yeah, bit about that. But um we we try the best that we can do, which is all we can do, isn't it? But is it is every year um the the the short list is is always incredible. It just it just goes to show, you know, the great work that that is being done. Um, you know, that's one of the reasons I do this podcast is to try and highlight some people that are doing some great stuff because I feel
05:00 - 05:30 sometimes I feel like safety kind of um sort of it has a kind of negative connotation to a lot of people. Um, and I think sometimes we focus a bit too much on things going wrong rather than the positive side of things. So, it's kind of good to talk about those positive things and the people that are making a difference. I couldn't agree more. there's such a broad brush um perspective put on safety and generally when I speak to clients and we mention things like safety they
05:30 - 06:00 immediately think oh this person's going to you know give me a go slow there's going to be more procedures there's going to be more clipboards there's going to be more checking and then I sit them down and explain to them that safety when it's done properly is about preventing unplanned events and actually it'll turn you into a more effective more efficient business. And as soon as they see that, especially with the likes of, you know, you can bring a business case to the table of for every one pound of direct cost that is insurable in
06:00 - 06:30 terms of health and safety, there is about 8 to 32 times as much uninsured costs. And then you take their incidents from last year and maybe they, you know, bashed the forklift truck in the factory and it cost them 10,000. They cost them 10,000 on their P&L sheet, but what it actually cost their business was so much more than that. And then the light bulb starts to go, okay, so you're here to solve my problems and not create more of them. Yeah, it's more than just, you
06:30 - 07:00 know, complying with legislation, which should only ever be a minimum minimum thing that you should do. It's about maximizing your business, facilitating your strategy, and making you the best you can be. And amazingly, we've done a great segue into the first thing that I was going to talk to you about, which is kind of the evolving role of the HSC professional. We shared a few notes in advance and you said, "Oh, here's a few topics, and that was one of them." And uh we've managed to get straight into it. So, um it must be a Paris wavelength thing that we that
07:00 - 07:30 we're on nobody else will appreciate. Yeah. So who we talking about that that shift I suppose from kind of a compliance enforcement role into more of what you've described of being a strategic leader. Um how well are we doing in general terms at that? You know how far have we traveled and how far have we still to go? Um to be perfectly honest I think we're doing incredibly badly. I I
07:30 - 08:00 think we're failing our next generation of professionals that come up. I think that there is an awful lot of mission creep within the profession. And to be perfectly frank with you, I think there's an awful lot of incompetence in the profession as well. And that can be two types of incompetence. It can be unconscious incompetence and conscious incompetence. And I'm I'm sad to say there's an awful lot of conscious incompetence which isn't then being matched with a competency development program that fits that HSSE professionals role. And I think one of
08:00 - 08:30 the one of the absolute perfect um examples of that is the uh the industries want to um tackle mental health which is uh which is an incredible thing. You know, they say in the UK it's the biggest killer of males under 45. And it's not that after 45 people stop killing themselves. It's that after 45 things like cancers and heart attacks and things come more prevalent. But what you have is the mental health remitt often dripped down
08:30 - 09:00 into an HSSE professional or an HSSE advisor's um you know scope, but there's no developmental training there. There's no just all of us. And it's exactly the same with the likes of behavioralbased safety, which is, you know, it is a scientifically valid wonderful way to um manage risk within your workplace, but it it has it it's relatively complex with the interplaying parts of what you need uh before the human and after the
09:00 - 09:30 human. So, we're not necessarily looking to change the human. We're we're changing what's before and after and then the the human will nudge the change itself. But it's something that HSSE professionals read on a LinkedIn post or read in a textbook and then try to adopt in the workplace and ultimately their guinea pigs are the same people that can get hurt and go home with with some pretty tragic uh injuries. So what do I think about the evolving profession just now? I I I look at
09:30 - 10:00 institutions like IOS and I have a look at their competency development program and it's very very broad brush. Um, so it is fit for purpose for a segment of the industry at a certain level, but I struggle with more nuanced and more niche pieces, especially when our SLTs are saying, "Ah, Christian, right? So, uh, security's just fallen into your
10:00 - 10:30 remmit. Now you're a security professional. I know you've never done it before, but now you'll do it." And, uh, well-being as well. So, that's now with you. and uh let's talk about uh environment safety too and let's talk about things you know just let's go for it and and if you're not a qualified psychologist by George you should be because that's what you know it's uh and and I tend to find as well I'm on my soap box a little bit here so please stop me but
10:30 - 11:00 uh I think uh there's been a little bit of mission creep about HSSE as well I don't think many organizations are actually having a look and and doing a real good hazard identification risk analysis process of their business and seeing what they need to be managing in order to achieve their strategy. I think there's too many good ideas based on subjective judgment and not enough empirical evidence. M so yeah the
11:00 - 11:30 evolving it's a it's a tricky one but what I would advise um and what I always advise for both for myself and for anyone else in the industry but especially for those that are earlier in their career is uh find an older gray bald person that can be a mentor for you that you can uh you know or two or three mentors that you can that you can get those little bits of quality information out of. You should never be a carbon
11:30 - 12:00 copy of someone and that mentor should never try and make you into a little version of themselves. The mentor's job is to release your potential and let you be the best you can be. But taking little pieces from those mentors and using them to develop yourself, arguably in line with something like the IRS competency development program. Yeah, that that would be certainly where I'd be advising where I do advise people to go. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? because I I think that the word I used was leader uh
12:00 - 12:30 in terms of you know can we be more of a strategic leader and that ability to you know push back in that scenario that you've outlined is is leadership isn't it rather than you know yes I'll take this on I'll take that on I'll take the other thing on and then stretch yourself too thin actually no push back saying no is a really powerful thing to be able to do a difficult thing to be able to do I'm I'm guilty of I say yes too too readily and take too much on sometimes times um as I'm sure many other people
12:30 - 13:00 do as well. But actually, yeah, being able to sort of say, "No, this isn't aligned to where I want to go. It's not aligned to where we want to go. It's not the best way of doing it. Let's come up with another plan." And having the strength and the foresight to do that, I think, is going to be a key thing that we need to be teaching people. I I think so as well. And you know, the evidence would tend to agree with us. The chartered management institute came out with the figure that 82% of managers that we currently have in industry in the UK have no training to be managers.
13:00 - 13:30 So you know in the same exactly the same goes into leadership and which are two different disciplines management and leadership but they are intertwined. I would say the uh the percentage is far greater in leadership of people that have no leadership training. But we do we do a lot of leadership training here and we base it on the three pillars of authenticity, credibility and consistency. And we underpin that with the courage to
13:30 - 14:00 follow what is right. And the ability and the skill to say no is huge. And with certain personality types, and this is another thing that people assume, you know, me saying no and somebody else saying no, well, it's the exact same amount of effort that goes into it. No, it's not. So, I I have a personality type that says saying no is really quite easy for me, and I don't necessarily dwell in it. Um, and subsequently, I'm
14:00 - 14:30 not so much of a people person. I'm not the guy that walks into the room and everybody immediately likes. I'm the guy that walks into the room, listens to everyone, makes an opinion, and I'm buzzing away in my head, but outwardly I'm I'm I'm perhaps a little bit quiet. I'm not an extrovert. I'm an introvert. But I totally appreciate saying no to some for some people is a really really difficult thing to do. And that's where the mentor comes in. And you know, you
14:30 - 15:00 can't get that on an IOS development course. That's when sitting next to the old gray ball person that says it's okay to say no. I mean, you know, one of the one of the quotes I often fall back on is uh you know, as as Hallmark card as it is is a quote from Winston Churchill who said that uh it was uh anyone without any enemies means you've never stood for anything. Now, I'm not saying create enemies, but you need to stand for things. And so, saying no is is
15:00 - 15:30 important. Yeah, I'm I'm much better at that in a work capacity than I am in a personal capacity, but we won't turn this into a therapy session for me. We'll be we'll be here all year, so if we do that, but uh yeah, no, I definitely agree. It's it's um it's something that um you know and I think we're we need to be mindful of because I think we're pretty good at the technical stuff albeit I do agree we stretch
15:30 - 16:00 ourselves too thinly often. Um I don't know what you think about this but I often say that you know a HC professional should be a bit more like a GP. So they should be able to diagnose a whole breadth of things but they shouldn't necessarily be able to solve every single problem. And I think sometimes where we get into trouble is where we feel like we've got quite a broad knowledge um of of diagnostic but actually can we necessarily solve those problems in enough depth in every single area. I don't think you can can't be a specialist and an expert at everything.
16:00 - 16:30 Yeah, very much so. And I think that's why one of the relationships that often suffer with HSSE professionals is the relationship that we have with operations teams. and they should actually be the strongest relationships that we have, but they're quite often the weakest relationship. And I tend to find that whenever we bring on a new client or we're placing somebody within a business or we're jving with somebody to deliver a project, sitting down with those operations people, agreeing what
16:30 - 17:00 good looks like, agreeing the mission and the vision and then them telling us how they want to do it and us then advising how they can do it within a tolerable risk spectrum is really really interesting. But also what is absolutely key to those conversations throughout everything from organizations to projects to everything is consistent communication and no elephants left in
17:00 - 17:30 the room. People bounce the term around psychological safety just now and it's very fashionable and and everything but like uh I remember Judith Hackett said that we don't invent new ways to hurt people. We just do the same thing again and again. We just don't seem to learn. um the ex ex head of the the health and safety executive. And in terms of psychological safety, we've seen it in every high performing team from sports to military where people have the the freedom and the and the and the support
17:30 - 18:00 to be able to talk about what they need to talk about, but it being listened to in a non-judgmental sense, but also not taking it to heart when someone turns around and says, "No, that's stupid and here's why." you know knitting it together in in a team way. So a lot of work goes into uh goes into building project cultures with this organization for sure. And the sort of age-old speaking about
18:00 - 18:30 operations, you know, the age-old challenges, safety on the one hand, productivity on the on the other. Um what are some of the strategies that you've seen that work around reframing that kind of conversation? So I I often talk about uh a term called technical limit. And technical limit is something that operations personnel understand because it is something that they try to achieve themselves. And what technical limit means is that it's almost like the triple
18:30 - 19:00 constraint of project management when you see time, cost and quality, you know, and and you can have two but you can never have three type of thing. in the same type of thing, the people, plant, and process. And it's about moving them up to their ultimate performance without it then going into an area of unacceptable risk, which will turn into an unplanned event. And whether that unplanned event then turns into someone cutting their finger or downtime, quite often that's just
19:00 - 19:30 serendipitous. It's just luck. So what we do with clients, especially the the larger firms, the likes of the the manufacturing firms, the energy firms and things, we reframe safety and we talk about operational limits. We talk about technical limit where we are going to help you take everything to its optimum performance standard, but not so much that it drops off the other end of the bell curve and starts to get into dangerous territory. And they understand that and they like it. Yeah. Especially
19:30 - 20:00 if you can, as you just done, bring the um analogy of downtime, you know, something a machine break. Doesn't have to be a a finger breaking or an arm breaking. It could be a machine breaking, couldn't it? But it's the same kind of idea. You really want everything to be humming along at the best performance it can be, as you say, within that tolerance. And I think yeah, if you bring that talk in their terms, make it
20:00 - 20:30 understandable to them, I think you probably got much more chance of of winning their the hearts of minds. 100%. I mean, if you were to show either one of us um the technical efficiency reports of an organization and said, "What do you think the HSSE figures show?" We'd be able to to kind about estimate around and about right. And it would be exactly the same with the HSSE figures. Here's the HSSE figures for an organization. Now, I don't like things
20:30 - 21:00 like TRIR and LTIR because they they're not contextually dependent upon anything at all. You can have two factories doing completely different things, but they measure the same TRIR. It's it's, you know, one standard normal operation, one very extreme operation. The one with the higher figure, the one with a higher TRIR could actually be performing an awful lot better than the other one. So, I don't necessarily like the figures to be used, but you could show both of us a TRIR figure and we'd be able to
21:00 - 21:30 estimate relatively accurately the wastage, the quality, um, downtime and the HSSE events and and once once the operations people understand that again, it's about working against that unplanned event because that's either going to break your machine or break your personnel or break your process or break your whatever. Then they get it and they realize okay so we're working towards the same thing all right yeah brilliant but then then comes the really interesting thing of
21:30 - 22:00 building credibility because what tends to happen is the next question will be so you must have a history on the tools no well who are you to make this comment to me well here's who I am and here's all my successful projects and everything So that's another thing that the HSSE professional really needs to work on is their what they call the credibility bank. Why people should listen to them in the first place. And
22:00 - 22:30 it's terrible to go into a room unarmed, not thinking about the credibility bank, and then being called out by someone just like me who understandably just wants us to achieve our objectives, saying, "What's the effect of, I love the fact you're in this room, but tell me why I should listen to you." And then the bomb blast rabbit in the headlights look which is so difficult to repair. Yeah, it's always worth having like a I
22:30 - 23:00 mean you you and I both run a business, so we probably do this in in um without even thinking about it, but having almost like a 30-cond pitch, you know, an elevator pitch almost of like this is who I am, this is what I've done with a few, you know, not being big-headed about it, but here are some of the key things I've achieved, ideally with some kind of tangible evidence to back it up. Um something like that. If you train yourself to be able to answer that kind of question with something that's kind of intriguing but gives that
23:00 - 23:30 credibility, I think would be a really good actionable takeaway for for people from from our conversation. I think very much so. You'd have to know your audience, but well, you don't have to intimately know them, but know who you're pitching to, but ultimately people love stories. The corporate storytelling is such a skill. I walk into an organization and um I always kind of start by saying do you know do you know much about integrity HSSE do you know much about me and uh and generally I'll get a a bit of
23:30 - 24:00 a blank stare and I know we don't know that much at all and I have it's no more than two minutes where I talk about the junior sports teams that we sponsor I talk about the the companies that we work with but ultimately I talk about our purpose and the fact that we're not financially driven. And we're here to make the working world a safer, healthier, more sustainable place. And genuinely, and here's how I can prove that's why we do that. Because of the sponsorship, because of this, because of that, we don't all drive around in Ferraris. In fact, none of us drive
24:00 - 24:30 around in Ferraris because we give away an awful lot of our profits to be positive influence in the world. And as soon as my audience understands that and understands my purpose and vision and mission, then my vibe tends to attract my tribe. And you'll tend to find in the room you'll have, you know, you'll immediately win a couple of people over straight away, which is great. Yeah. Yeah. Just looking see if I can see it on my shelf. I've got a book
24:30 - 25:00 um which is I can't see it immediately, but it's it's called um seven stories every salesperson must tell. So, it comes from a sales angle, but it's exactly that. It's that piece around the kind of corporate storytelling. So there's the the founding of the business story, there's the vision of the business story, there's the technical expert story, there's the personal story about the you know uh and all of these things. Um you know not all of those seven stories are going to be relevant to a HC
25:00 - 25:30 professional. just think trying to think about, you know, how you can frame your why um a bit better and sort of give yourself that credence without again sounding too bigheaded is a really really powerful thing to do because that's going back to what we started speaking about. If you can do that, you're going to get a much better hearing as a leader. Totally. I always try and think about what is this person out of out of what I'm going to talk about, what's this
25:30 - 26:00 person going to talk to their husband or wife about on the dinner table this evening? Do I even earn the opportunity to be at that dinner table when the partner turns around and says, "How was your day at work today?" You know, so and essentially what they're saying is, "Tell me the one or two highlights and the one or two low lightss and what happened in your day?" How do I get to be one of those one or two highlights? And uh and we we often talk about you know again it's an old cliche but people don't really care about what you say
26:00 - 26:30 they really care about the way you make them feel though. So, how can we resonate with that person so that they get it? And also, you know, being productive enough, we're uh we're bringing our first AI product to market quite soon and uh we were doing a a pitch to a potential client uh a couple of days ago and uh it it went particularly well and it looks like we've got another client on board which is which is super. But uh we were talking about doing a pitch deck and you
26:30 - 27:00 know we turned around and said well look they want they want the story and they want the value proposition after that they just want to play with a really cool tech. They they they don't want loads of PowerPoint. They just want to be able to say does it do this and does it do this and and and they want a couple of oh my god moments of does it do this? Yes. Oh my god. So, let's stop with the powerpoints and the this and that and just give them some Oh my gods. And uh if you can do that whilst you're
27:00 - 27:30 pitching as an HSSE professional, then then brilliant. Well played. Yeah. Yeah. I remember um I won't say um her name, but um a lady that you may you may know, I know a little bit. She posted on LinkedIn about how she was struggling to articulate the the value of what she was doing. Um, and she worked in a really high-profile location as head of safety. She's quite senior. She's moved on from there subsequently. Um, and I said, "Well, why don't you think about something like, you know, every day I help however many
27:30 - 28:00 hundreds of thousands of people to do X, Y, and Zed and get home safely to their families, you know, rather than I'm a health and safety professional and I've worked for 20 years doing this and I've got this qualification." um just reframing it, making it more personable and understandable and memorable. Um really good skills to have. Oh, it's a wonderful skill. I tell you something that we probably should bring up though as we're talking about the the power of storytelling and the power of of of basically fostering
28:00 - 28:30 champions onto your team is the fact that sometimes that's mistaken with competence. And especially when we're talking about social media platforms like LinkedIn, there is a fashion where people those who shout loudest must be the most competent and and there's an awful lot of misinformation and an awful lot of disinformation out there, but there's not an awful lot of verification of who I'm actually speaking to and the information that I'm taking on board.
28:30 - 29:00 And I've seen this actually in in Aberdine, funnily enough, where people have been employed um taken on as a contractor to deliver a service and they've got through supply chain onto an approved vendor's list with no competence checks whatsoever. But they've turned up and said, "I can do this thing." And the thing that they are preaching that they can do is very very important in terms of it
29:00 - 29:30 could have tragic outcomes at the at the at the other end of it. So the corporate storytelling in terms of ourselves to get out there. Absolutely. Yes. 100%. And you know I think it was Einstein that said it's the marked of an intelligent mind to to kind of listen to other ideas but not necessarily adopt them. So, I I would caveat this to anyone that's listening to say, you know what, enjoy the corporate storytelling. And you know what? If I'm doing it, immerse yourself in it. It's great fun and everything, but also challenge me
29:30 - 30:00 and make sure what I'm saying, I'm actually competent to say it because opinion does not make fact. No. No. Very, very true. And again, that goes back to what you said at the start about the conscious or unconscious lack of competence, doesn't it? um lots of lots of organizations, lots of people um for whatever reason will put themselves forward as being, you know, the world's leading expert on XY Z without actually the ability of of following through on that. And it's it's not necessarily that easy to to see through it. Not at all.
30:00 - 30:30 We've we've got a chap that works for us called Rob Diver who is uh he's not only an incredibly close colleague but um unfortunately so so in in terms of leadership and leading this organization I always try to lead in a friendly manner but I do not want to lead friends because leading friends is very very difficult and it's it's increasingly difficult in this organization because we have uh I'm surrounded by people who are just lovely and uh and Rob is one of
30:30 - 31:00 those people that I would now class as a friend, which makes my job as a leader even more difficult. But Rob is uh he has a a long career in law enforcement and military and now he is a a subject matter expert that's called upon by NATO in their joint joint warfare center and and he is just an incredible security professional. Very very humble, very humble. Won't talk about um all that much about what he does and how he does it and things like that. and
31:00 - 31:30 subsequently in my opinion h kind of robs the world a little bit of Rob you know of all this of all this incredibleness that he can bring to the world but I guess that's my job to kind of tell the world about it but um he goes along to conferences with other people that claim to be security professionals as well and you're looking at Ronaldo in a Sunday league team and and I just I I just wish that when people were and these other people are very successful in their security careers and I just wish that the public
31:30 - 32:00 would or or our our our potential client base um would just do that little bit more checking of the person that they and not rely on that that that LinkedIn CV so much. Yeah. How how would you suggest people sort of try to overcome that then? I've got some ideas on that, but what would you what would you sort of say? Well, the verification you're in Rob's position, how what should you do to try to to make it easier or or try to demonstrate that
32:00 - 32:30 authority? Well, I think thought leadership is is really critical. Um, but I think also being brutally honest. So, being British, we are pre-programmed. It's baked into our DNA to be humble. Yeah. And, uh, I remember um, gosh, when was it? It must have been about five years ago. I had somebody working for me when I was working for uh well you can all find out my career history on LinkedIn so it's all good
32:30 - 33:00 mentioning companies. Uh somebody working for me when I was working for Lloyd Register and I loved working for Lloyd Register. My family has a huge maritime pedigree. So I went from total energies to Lloyd Register and I was exceptionally proud. Um, and it was brilliant. And and one of the one of the things that you know you you have is you inherit a team. Unless you have the wonderful opportunity that I had to to build a business and that you had, then you're often parachuted in and you inherit a
33:00 - 33:30 team and you inherit all the beauty of the last person and all the the things you don't necessarily agree with of the last person. And I had an exceptional high performer on that team who um just wouldn't shout about what they were doing whatsoever either on the internal internet or externally when I was talking to them about professional branding. And I remember them sitting down with me in one of those train booths that we had in the office where you had your one-on-one conversations
33:30 - 34:00 and they said to me, "I don't need to uh shout about it, Steve, because if I do good work, people will recognize that." No, they won't. They won't recognize it. If you do good work, it is you should be telling people about the good work you do. you need to to swallow that humble piece of my my professional credence will organically grow. No, it won't. It might have done
34:00 - 34:30 in the 80s, 90s, and naughties, but with the advent of people being in charge of their own personal branding, unless you're telling people what you do, then your professional credence won't grow. Now, when I say telling people what you do, I'm not saying hit them in the face with a brick. Uh there are ways to communicate and you know there are ways to nobody likes anyone that's arrogant. I I know it's one of my massive turnoffs with people but I do like somebody that
34:30 - 35:00 that genuinely tells me what they've done, what they're really proud of. And they can even caveat that with what their, you know, if you wanted to do a personal SWAT, what their weaknesses and what what their threats are, but how they're countering them with opportunities. But, you know, start that off by telling me what you've done because it goes back to that credibility bank thing again. I'm really time poor. So, when I speak to someone, the likes of yourself. When I speak to you, I know that this is a really high use of my
35:00 - 35:30 time because Christian Harris is Christian Harris. A lot of respect, love what you do and all the rest of it, but you need to tell me if I don't know you, why I should be listening to you. And it goes back to that little pitch you were talking about earlier. So important. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you. So, um I mean not that everybody needs to write a book, but obviously I've written a book, right? And one of the reasons I wrote the book was if you look at the word authority, it's author ity, isn't it? I think writing um writing and
35:30 - 36:00 thought leadership as you've as you said is really really important. Doesn't have to be written. You could do videos. You can do podcasts nowadays. But I think getting your thoughts, your experiences, your successes, your the hurdles you've overcome down onto a piece of paper or at least something that someone else can listen to, read, read, uh, watch, whatever it is, is is really the best way of of achieving that and and um, just getting that that stuff in the right place. Um, because as you say, you
36:00 - 36:30 know, nowadays attention is the most valuable currency. Um, and people aren't necessarily going to be looking for for stuff. And if they are looking for stuff, they want to they're looking for stuff that's easily accessible. Um, so you've got to invest a bit in yourself to document this stuff and put it out there in the right kind of places. I thought it was fascinating, you know. So, um, I've read your book and I think it's wonderful. I think it's brilliant. I I and I I I think it's very much the
36:30 - 37:00 vehicle that you use for messaging is so important. So, I I stuck together a book as well and got it out there. And one of the most um and it wasn't nearly as refined and elegant as yours, but one of the most interesting things that I found with that was that um I was downloading as much of my experience and everything that I could into the book. And I found that I I there were certain pockets that I told the stories to and that I told the lessons to and they paid no
37:00 - 37:30 attention whatsoever. But when they read it on a page, if it's in a book, then it has to be right. Now, um I sent my I I completed my manuscript, sent it away to a third party editor who uh corrected all my grammar and silly stellar mistakes. And then uh I self-published on Amazon. So I had no checks or balances. I could have put anything at all in that book. But as soon as something goes in a book, it is
37:30 - 38:00 hugely believable. So again, it's that thing about certainly the vehicle for messaging a book is incredibly powerful. And there's different levels of power in different things to reach different demographics. But again, it's about going back to that LinkedIn profile, going through and say, did you actually do that? Tell me tell me about when you did that and then tell me backwards just so I know that you you know and then I'll read your book and say it's amazing which your book is amazing but yeah but yeah it's interesting. Yeah I think the
38:00 - 38:30 thing with a book is just the sheer volume of it I suppose. So obviously, you know, you could publish a book that was just full of um nonsense um and and just padded out and whatever and maybe people wouldn't realize, but if anybody actually reads the book in any way, even if they're just sort of skimming through it, um you know, they can sort of see whether it's coherent and and makes sense or not. I suppose it's I mean I I personally found it really valuable the
38:30 - 39:00 actual act of writing the book to sort of get my thinking aligned and and so on. But I mean fundamentally if you if you know enough about whatever the topic is to write a book about it of a decent size then you must know a fair bit about the topic. So it does give you a massive credibility. Not that I'm suggesting everybody should write a book but you know you can write a 500word article um and achieve a similar result. It's not exactly the same obviously, but you know that's that's sort of what what we're saying I think is is is start with something like that, isn't it? Well,
39:00 - 39:30 yeah, definitely. And I tell you what, I'll go one step further and I'll say everyone should write a book because yeah, the the process the cathartic process that it took me through was it was incredible. So, I started uh with a couple of articles on LinkedIn realized that, you know, I I quite enjoy writing. Um, and the nice thing with LinkedIn is that I' i'd put the articles out there and think, you know what, I'm not shoving these in people's faces. If they don't like the articles, unfollow me and
39:30 - 40:00 you don't have to see the articles. If you do like the articles, then follow me and you can see them. So, anyone that uh comments on that professional platform and says, "Oh, this person, oh, terrible." Well, just unfollow them and and take control of your thread and grow up. But um with the with the process that was happening with my articles and it and I tended to find it was really really good for me to put it down on paper and then even revisit what I thought was a really really engaging informing comprehensive lesson and go
40:00 - 40:30 back to it a couple of days later and realize actually there's so much more. there's the, you know, it's not it's not now the IQ lesson, it's the EQ lesson that that took a couple of days to come through for me to realize actually that's what I was doing. So, I I guess there's kind of two sides to the coin, isn't it? When you spin a coin, there's there's two sides on it. And the first one is for the reader and the benefit that you can give them, but for yourself in the retrospective analysis. And you
40:30 - 41:00 know what? You don't if someone's listening to this and thinking, well, that's rubbish. I wouldn't want to write it. But you don't have to write a book. You can talk a book and Microsoft will put it into print for you. But just journaling and getting that out, I think it's so valuable. Certainly was for me anyway. Yeah. My book was basically dictated. Um and then obviously, you know, tidied up a bit afterwards. But um I I quite liked that and lots of people that know me well have said when they've read the book, they said, "Oh, you can actually hear your voice in it." And I thought
41:00 - 41:30 that that's planned. you know, I didn't want to write like an academic tome. It was kind of, you know, designed in that way. So, yeah, there's great apps you can get nowadays. And um, you know, you can leverage AI. I mean, I used AI to check. So, I uploaded my book, the PDF into um, uh, claude.ai AI and I said right can you analyze this and tell me in every chapter you know how many um case studies have I got which sectors do
41:30 - 42:00 those case studies relate to and so on and so forth and you can just just you know really make sure that it's um thorough and and you know it was helped me a lot because um that doing that manually would have just taken me you know so so long so writing the book took me long enough that expanded and stuff um I think the the ad the advent of AI is just it's it's really gamechanging. I was uh I was speaking to my father just uh a couple of weeks ago and I
42:00 - 42:30 introduced him to AI and my uh my son rises and sets with my father. He's uh was very fortunate with him. Um but my father doesn't have an academic background. He uh he's a liver puddle that jumped on a ship when he was 16. Um and they weren't going to give him a job on the ship. And then the one of the management in the line said, "If you can learn shortorthhand, then you can get on the ship." And as much as education hasn't engaged him, he's still got the
42:30 - 43:00 shortest record in Liverpool for learning shorthand, which which is brilliant. So lots and lots of intelligence, just the education system just wasn't there. So subsequently, he's a little bit um nervy, understandably so, about uh grammar and things like that. So, um I I was at his house a couple of weeks ago and I I clicked up chat GPT and uh wrote down in chat GPT, "Hi, my name's Dad's name and uh I'm writing this to his friend." Put the
43:00 - 43:30 name in uh who lives down in Cornwall. I dearly love to come down and visit you. I have great memories of us uh sitting in our cabin together drinking rum and laughing about the stories online. um I've got a window in a month's time and I'd really like to know when you've got a couple of spare days. I said write it in relatively formal British English in an engaging narrative in 200 words and it pumped out this email. Dad subsequently spent two or three days just writing emails to people that he'd
43:30 - 44:00 never ever you know usually talked to that he really really wanted to and it I think it's a really great lesson and that AI is there to facilitate our our our living to raise our standard of living and it really can people that are afraid of AI you should always be frosty you should always be you know challenging when when it's appropriate but uh this is something that's going to come as a tidal wave and you can either surf it or you can drown. Um, and it's always better surfing on the crest,
44:00 - 44:30 isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly the analogy I use when I speak about it. You know, you want to be riding that wave, not standing on the beach when the uh when the tsunami comes and crashes in. Exactly. And it's an interesting time actually with AI now because we're kind of at the the point what we're what sort of two years in almost to Chat GPC. If you look at a lot of um historic uh technological trends, you know, that first couple of years is kind of adoption, but it's kind of slower adoption and then all of a sudden it
44:30 - 45:00 starts to really um really go and and I wonder whether you know if we were sitting here in in April uh 2027, two years from now, you know, how far it would have accelerated in the last two years. I think it's going to be Yeah, it's going to be very very interesting. Oh, absolutely. The the data analysis potential of it is absolutely massive. So, one of the things that we're doing at the company is we're opening um we're going to be opening a health center here. And that's going to be for
45:00 - 45:30 uh uh offshore medicals and seafaring medicals and vaccinations. And one of the things we're going to be doing is uh blood testing as well. And the analysis of blood work when you employ something like AI is just gamechanging. It's amazing. Taking anything from 150 to a thousand criteria and then building up the probabilities on something like a basian probability belief network where you can say you know the
45:30 - 46:00 971st criteria is at 17%. When that's mixed with the 11th criteria that is at 23% then we know the outcome could potentially be this things that as humans we just can't do and and AI can in terms of health care in terms of not sickness management but in terms of preventative health care preventative yeah oh it's you know they say these days that cancer is coming for one and two of us it's only going to be a couple
46:00 - 46:30 years before it's three and four and then a couple years before it's four and five AI I will give us the ability to not just predict it earlier preymptomatic or what we understand right now as being a symptom but it'll be able to to steer us and and you know it's it's incredibly exciting. It really is. Yeah. Yeah. Tony Blair's speaking a lot about that as a preventive um NHS moving to that preventative model um
46:30 - 47:00 which I think where streetings picking on board and yeah I mean that's what I bang on about all the time in in my field of of safety you know got to be preventative and and stop these things from happening um if we can and and use the science use the data leverage the technology yeah so it's uh it's definitely the way to go. Yeah, but you know, like you say, leveraging the technology and using that. But if you were to take that um kind of analogy that I gave of the blood work and said, I've got AI that's that's predict that that's using a thousand criteria in order to um create a threat landscape
47:00 - 47:30 for you in terms of health. Okay, wonderful. And then you you you put that down to an organization and you have AI monitoring a thousand inputs and outputs of your organization. everything from the weather and the way the wind's blowing to the time of day to everything and have a you could potentially have a live alar demonstration as things go on with predictive analysis of where your risk's going to go when it's going to go
47:30 - 48:00 and then you know what uh Julie who's the operations manager in uh factory C has just resigned and she's working her three-month notice. Okay. Well, the AI actually just thought, well, in three months time, this is going to happen. This is going to happen. This is going to happen. And then, you know, we can we can see so much that as humans, we have amazing abilities to love and feel and be incredible, but uh cognitively we're
48:00 - 48:30 ants, you know, we need we need help. And that's what AI can bring. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Well, uh really enjoyed that conversation. and we went down some really interesting paths there. So, thank you for sharing your your views. Um, where can people learn a bit more? Where can people connect? Um, and have you got anything you'd like to plug? Um, I've got lots of things I'd like to plug and um so uh you can learn a little
48:30 - 49:00 bit more about me on on LinkedIn. Uh you can find me on there. Um, I am very fortunate to run a company called Integrity HSSE along with my business partner Daryl Lines and just an incredible group of people. Uh, one of which I can hear through the office called Jennifer Hall who has just just incredible in terms of business development. She's uh she's really acted as a catalyst for this organization and we're we're helping more and more people to make their working world a safer,
49:00 - 49:30 healthier, more sustainable place. Um I would point people towards uh my book as well. So you can buy it on Amazon, the little book of leadership. Um all profits go to uh cancer related charity which is very close to my heart. So uh you'll notice a consistent theme in some of the things I talk about. So uh so yeah, please have a look at that. But uh I guess my my my last thing that I'd like to say is read my book, but don't adopt my ideas. Just listen to my ideas. Make your own judgments. It's uh my book
49:30 - 50:00 is just, you know, 40 45,000 odd words of just my history and what I've learned in the world, but everyone's perspective is different, so own your own. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. No, definitely. Great. Thank you so much. Really enjoyed it. Um, and uh, thanks for joining Stephen and I today and we'll see you next week on the next episode. Thanks for joining us on the Safety and Risk Success Podcast. If you've enjoyed
50:00 - 50:30 this episode, please hit follow and do share on social media. Does anyone you know spring to mind as a great guest, even yourself? If so, please contact us on podcastsafety.co.uk. See you next week for another