At ASSE’s SeminarFest, coming up at the end of January, Jay Brakensiek, environmental health and safety manager at Claremont University Consortium, will present “Peter Drucker’s Principles to Evaluate Your Safety Management Skills.” The work of Peter Drucker is a great compliment to the work of safety professionals, Brakensiek says, and in this seminar, attendees will learn why it is beneficial to gain an understanding of traditional management to increase safety management skills.
In the past, a disconnect between classical management and safety management has interfered with the implementation of safety systems that would greatly improve an organizations’ overall effectiveness, Brakensiek says. Knowledge of Drucker’s ideas helps identify and focus on key ideas that can help improve safety management through:
- Increased program management skills (MBO skills);
- Increased personal effectiveness;
- Better understanding and linkage to management principles;
- Enhanced awareness of personal strengths & weaknesses over time through the feedback analysis method;
- Enhanced decision making ability over time; and
- Increased ability of managers to reposition staff based on strengths and minimize organizational weaknesses.
Peter Drucker, sometime called the “Father of Modern Management,” is known for his involvement in creating the discipline of management, and is one of the few management writers to value workers as a key resource for organizations, Brakensiek says. As an early advocate of "Servant Leadership," a belief in which one succeeds by serving the needs of others, Drucker’s ideas directly align with goals of safety professionals who put the needs of protecting the health and safety of others in the organization as the first priority, Brakensiek continues.
Drucker’s teachings offer safety professionals tools for individual and organizational effectiveness and pave the way into senior management discussions. This session will provide a background in Drucker thought as well as tools for immediate application of these concepts through a combination of history and "how-to" exercises. Brakensiek will also lay out potential paths for attendees to explore further in-depth knowledge of Drucker’s teachings.
SeminarFest will be held Jan. 25 to Feb. 1, 2014, in Las Vegas, NV. Register today at http://seminarfest.org/.
