About

About Me

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I’ve been running this blog since 2009 and whilst it takes up a lot of time, it ranks as one of the most rewarding things I’ve done. Not only from a financial perspective but mostly from the fact that I have met, helped and communicated with so many excellent people in the safety and risk community. I’ve also helped many of them get their business up and running, publicise their latest book or software and published their articles to an audience of now over 15,000 a day!! We now have some of the worlds foremost safety and risk psychology experts writing regularly for us.

The turning point for me and the blog was when the late George Robotham started writing as a guest author (see his articles here) in 2011. George had a long career in safety and his stuff was practical, to the point, no BS and he told it the way he saw it. I loved his style and learned a lot from him about safety and writing. We became great mates. George passed away suddenly in 2013, that was a very sad day for me but I am so grateful that he was able to leave behind and incredible legacy. I found out after he passed that his articles had touched and helped so many more people than I could ever imagined, not just from their reading his articles and Ebooks but he also made personal contact with many to offer support and advice – he even mentored some over a long period. Phil LaDuke paid a wonderful tribute to George here: https://safetyrisk.net/why-the-death-of-george-robotham-matters/

Recently, I had the incredible honour of speaking at the launch of the new book Following-Leading in Risk by Dr Robert Long (one of our awesome Authors) and Craig Ashhurst. The lead up to the event was a little nerve-racking for me, given the huge audience of safety thinkers that Rob has assembled. But, thanks to reading an article the night before by Rob Sams: Reflection Makes Sense, I realised that never before had I been given an opportunity to speak to an audience who all appreciated risk, improvisation, conversation and fallibility! I rejected the sunk cost of preparing my speech and just winged it! I spoke for the first time publicly of my venture into the world of safety consulting, the challenges, the cognitive dissonance, the mentors, the disdain for traditional safety, my ultimate demise and then my resurrection through starting this blog and my transformation through learning from Dr Rob and the other Followers-Leaders of this new safety paradigm. Rightly or wrongly my journey has closely followed the classic path of the Mythical Hero’s Journey shown diagrammatically on page 10 of the book! (download section 1 here free). I honestly have very little recollection of exactly what I said and I am sure I may have said some regrettable things? But it felt awesome!

I also got to finally meet, face to face, some of the awesome authors on this blogs (to clarify Max – you are all awesome but I only met some of you). Gabrielle Carlton, Rob Sams, Max Geyer and James Ellis were all there and I had the most incredible, passionate, intelligent and positive conversations with them, as one would expect given the way they write.

The absolute icing on the cake was the number of people who came up to me and told me how they had been following (and some brave ones even commenting on) this blog for years and enjoyed its transformation from a bulletin board for traditional safety stuff to a source of inspiration, information and learning about social psychology of risk and other new safety paradigms. They told me how they couldn’t wait to read the new posts and share them with peers. Many told me that they had first discovered the work of Dr Long here and through reading his articles and books they eventually enrolled in his Post Grad Studies. The people I met who are now on this journey speak about safety and risk in a way that I have never encountered before, I don’t have the words to articulate properly how it feels to be among them but it is refreshing and exhilarating.

Cheers

Dave Collins

3 MOST POPULAR SAFETY RISK ARTICLES THIS YEAR:

I’m just not that into safety anymore  One of our most popular articles of all time! Rob’s courage and honesty has certainly touched some nerves! I’m just not that into safety anymore I have spoken with a number of Managers over the past few months who have argued with me that ‘safety’ in our workplaces means that we must do everything we can to …… Read the rest of the article

What is Safety?  What is Safety? The World’s Hardest Question? What does Safety mean to you? Alan Quilley recent published this article on his blog: What is YOUR definition of SAFE?. He says: Many of us, myself included, use the word SAFE (and unsafe) in our writings and discussions. If you work in the Safety Management field, it is likely …… Read the rest of the article

Safety Should NOT Be About Safety One of our most popular articles in terms of the number of comments. We recently asked “What is Safety”? and got quite a mixed response but I think this article by Dr Rob just about nails it!  Safety Should NOT Be About Safety “if your world is just about safety, then your world is too …… Read the rest of the article