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Art Fettig’s Monday Morning Memo
Originally distributed on December 28, 2009
In This Issue
o Better Safety Meetings
o Say Something Good
o Points To Ponder
o A Little Humor
o Quote of the Week
Better Safety Meetings
The entire audience was hissing the speaker except for one man. He was applauding the hissing. Does this sound like your last safety meeting? Oh, if this could have been your last safety meeting, but no, there is another one staring you right in the face. If there is one thing I have learned in my career, it is that if you want to have great safety meetings then you must first make a commitment to that goal. Next you have to learn how to communicate. If you are mumbling to the group don’t expect positive results. Why not start the year by working on your communication skills? Many years ago, I wrote a little book modestly titled “World’s Greatest Safety Meeting Idea Book.” Safety people loved it. Many carried it around with them on the road and thousands kept it on top of their desk for instant reference. Then I wrote another book titled More Great Safety Meeting Ideas. That book was really popular too and so when safety people complained to me that they didn’t know how to sell their workers or their management their safety ideas I wrote a book on Selling Safety. We published a number of printings of that book too and then one day I started thinking big and I put those three books together and added yet another one for good measure titled The Quest Continues. The quest I was referring to was that continuing quest for the golden goose egg, zero injuries.
We titled the book Winning the Safety Commitment and it is a hefty 400 plus pages.
What sort of benefits might you gain from reading this book? First you will learn how to break down an audience’s resistance to you and your message. I discovered it by doing several thousand talks traveling to all of our 50 United States and all of the Provinces in Canada. I spoke to groups as small as three people on up to over eight thousand. Chapters are bite size so you can read one a day if you prefer. We offer a money back guarantee and not one has ever been returned. If I was a corporate safety leader, I would see that everyone that had the responsibility for safety meetings had one on their desk right now. It takes four pages just to list the contents of the book. The Union president of an electrical union at one of the top Power Corporations spent ten minutes praising this book before a meeting of several hundred management and labor.
Why am I making such a strong pitch for the book right now? Because it just grieves me to think about all of those lost work hours wasted at ineffective safety meetings. The book is loaded with stories and techniques you will use for the rest of your life. Once I learned to really communicate my income soared. Believe me, or if you don’t believe me then buy the book and prove that I’m wrong.
I promise, I won’t pitch the book this hard again. If your organization does not provide you with funds to buy such items then dig into your pocket and invest in your future. Believe me, I paid for my own self-improvement most of the time. I paid my own way to conventions too. And now as I look back on it I believe I was paid back for such investments a hundred-fold in my career. Nuff sed. We take credit card orders too.
Say Something Good
Somehow, I ended up in a Wal-Mart Christmas Eve just as they were about to close the store. I was sitting there near the door watching the security guard check buyer’s carts and he stopped a young girl because her receipt did not jibe with the items in her cart. Of all things, she had a long steel prying bar that she was evidently endeavoring to slip past the checker. It must have been three feet long and really heavy. He was very polite with the girl and she finally returned it to where she had picked it up and he let her leave without further action. Not a minute later he stopped a middle-aged couple. Evidently, they had some electronic item in a box about three-foot square in their cart that had not been paid for. Obviously, the security man was full of Christmas Spirit because he allowed them too to return the item to its place and to leave the store with the one item they had paid for, unmolested. Evidently, some shoppers get so full of the Christmas Spirit that they do some mighty foolish things inside a WalMart store. As I sat there observing for just a second I was tempted to jump up and purchase that prying bar for that young girl but then the thought hit me that she might want to use it for breaking and entering places she should not be going. Then my wife arrived and I jokingly asked her, “Did you pay for everything, Dear?” And she said, “Every last item this time, Darling.”
It just shows to go you that on Christmas eve small miracles still happen. May God Bless America and keep our troops for harm this blessed season.
Points To Ponder
The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others. Devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning. Mitch Albom
A Little Humor
A young lady gets lost in her car in a snowstorm. She remembers her father’s advice, “If you ever get stuck in a snowstorm, wait for a snow plow and follow it.” Soon a snow plow comes by, and she follows it for about 45 minutes.
Finally, the driver of the truck gets out and asks her what she is doing. She explains the advise her father had given her. The driver says, “Well, I’m done with the parking lot here at the mall, now you can follow me over to the bank.”
Quote of the Week
He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determine the end. Harry Emerson Fosdick
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