Dean of Springs

It’s Time to Take a Deep Breath Dean of Springs and Restart: Four Score and Seven Years Ago

By Dan Sebastian

Please forgive me for borrowing from Abraham Lincoln but the time period seems appropriate, as we appear to be One day, an employee inadvertently fell into one of those tanks. His fellow employees rushed to his aid. They knew the through the worst of our recent pandemic. In that period of four score and seven (87) years we have been through the Great Depression, numerous recessions, near economic meltdowns not to mention World War II to defeat fascism, a Cold War to reduce the threat of communism (and a not-so-Cold War in Korea), and wars in other parts of Asia and the Middle East, and of course the pandemic of 2020-2021. In all that turmoil, we have had to adjust our management practices and policies.

In most areas where there is misconduct or poor judgment, it normally results in the establishment of a rule, policy or procedure. In the world of safety, our rules are meant to protect everyone, and in most cases are only common sense. In my many years on the factory floor, most accidents resulted from well-intentioned people thinking they are doing the right thing to produce a quality part that too often would be destined for the scrap bin.

As we establish our rules, policies and procedures, we can get advice from consultants, experts or even bureaucrats or political leaders as to the corrective action for rules violations. In today’s world, the advice we receive for serious violation is the establishment of “zero tolerance,” with mandatory termination. In many cases, termination is the appropriate action, but Dan Sebastian is a former SMI president and it should never be an absolute. As managers, we must always currently serves as a technical consultant to practice the wisdom of Solomon and not be a slave to the never. A few years ago, GM had a plant in Bristol, Connecticut. They had some of the strictest safety rules in GM, with an excellent the association. He holds a degree in metallurgical engineering from Lehigh University and his industry career spans more than four decades in various technical and management safety record. There were a number of areas that had chemical roles. He may be reached by contacting SMI tanks that had a “zero tolerance” rule for anyone entering the at 630-495-8588. area because of the extreme dangers posed. danger, so they followed the mandatory established safety procedures to get him to safety. Nothing worked. It was then that an employee, who knew he was clearly violating the zero tolerance policy, jumped into the tank, rendered aid and rescued the injured employee before getting out of the tank himself. The best of all outcomes resulted in both the hapless victim and his …rules are important rescuer making a full recovery from in the ordinary course of business, the incident. Eventually they were both able to return to their jobs. but managers are confronted with The rescuer had clearly violated many situations every day the rules and under the zero tolerance policy should have been where they must use wisdom, terminated. common sense and GM realized that the actions of the rescuer went above and beyond science in their decisions the call of duty and they awarded him for his courageous action. Zero tolerance was not the way to save lives in this particular situation. (As a matter of full disclosure, that hero was my cousin Fred.) The lesson here is that rules are important in the ordinary course of business, but managers are confronted with many situations every day where they must use wisdom, common sense and science in their decisions. n