Ep091: Lessons in changing a bureaucratic industry, with Kobi Simmat

There’s still too much $hit, Kobi Simmat tells us today following our much earlier podcast chat in episode 16, and he’s got some great insights about an entire industry, to challenge the way you think and act to get better results for the people you serve.

Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.

Since you’re listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Welcome to you, you’re in the right place.  If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course, welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.

You know, you are pretty amazing. I know this based on one fact alone, and that is that you are listening because you are invested in your own development, your own growth. One of the biggest challenges to improvement that I observe in my work and general conversation with health and safety professionals is seemingly simple – taking action.  We know what we might be able to do.  We are often motivated.  But action doesn’t follow.  We are too busy, too distracted, too disjointed, or we simply don’t know why it is that we have great POTENTIAL which doesn’t turn into REALITY.  I help people like you to take action to improve, to become more effective – I do this in a variety of ways like coaching, team facilitation and planning, and more.  Recently I’ve had the pleasure of facilitating critical risk workshops using human-centered design principles, facilitated sessions which brought together a government funding body with industry funding recipients focussed on health and safety knowledge transfer.

I am an action taker and can help you to be too.  If you want to improve your personal, team or organizational performance beyond what you’ve tried before, I’d love to hear from you.   Send me an email andrew@safetyontap.com and we can start the conversation.

Many of you will know Kobi Simmat, CEO of Best Practice Certification.  Kobi is hugely generous with his time and knowledge through his popular youtube channel and comes back to the Safety on Tap audience to share how he’s going about changing himself, his business, and his entire industry for the better.

Here’s Kobi:

I love Kobi’s clarity in his challenge to us: Don’t be the buyer who encourages the bad behavior of generating more bureaucracy.  Don’t be the consultant who continues to lead prospects and clients down this path.  And he won’t be the certifier who drives the wrong behavior.

Before we get to my three takeaways, please get in touch if you want to explore me coming out to help you, your team or organization get better results by trying something different to what you’ve tried before.  I’d love to hear from you.

Here’s my three takeaways from that chat with Kobi Simmat:

Takeaway #1: Focus on the best outcome for your customer.  Kobi lamented the work he was doing in developing management systems because it was disconnected from reality – one pop of the firecracker as he said, and that was it, back to business as usual.  Kobi was became uncomfortable with the idea that what he was giving customers, wasn’t what they needed.  Do we do that sometimes? Giving management what they want, versus what they need? Focus on the outcome.

Takeaway #2: Get clear on your WHY.  I know people who work in health and safety who simply aren’t that interested in safety as an outcome.  It’s a job.  I also know safety people who are very engaged in their big WHY, which is clearly about worker health and safety.  Kobi is in the second category, yet found himself in the uncomfortable realization that WHAT he was doing, wasn’t aligned with his WHY.  Getting clear on your big WHY will go a long way to helping you be clearer about your focus, challenge what you are doing and whether it is aligned, and effective, and you’ll ultimately be happier for it.

Takeaway #3: If you are serious about change, change the way you work to get a different outcome.  Kobi challenged us: “What business do you want to be in?” If you want to effect genuine, useful, impactful change, don’t be a victim to your operating model, change it.  In Kobi’s case, he changed his entire business and is starting to change an entire industry.  That’s not for everyone, but I know some of you listening can be those game changers.  If your model of safety resourcing isn’t working, change it.  If your management system or audits or contractor management isn’t working, change it.  And I don’t mean tweak it, refresh it, rebrand it.  I mean turn it on it’s head.  If you are a management systems consultant, stop selling systems, give them away for free, and start selling outcomes.  The price needn’t change and the people you serve will get greater value.  If you want different outcomes, change the model.

A few other episodes which you may find helpful, which link very nicely with what you’ve heard in this episode, are Ep 56, Know your Customer, Ep 59 on ikigai will help you get focussed on your big WHY, Ep  66 with Dave Wild explores how innovation and thinking like a futurist can help you, especially changing entire system models, and of course my earlier interview with Kobi in Ep 16.

Thanks so much for listening.  Until next time, what’s the one thing you’ll do to take positive, effective or rewarding action, to grow yourself, and drastically improve health and safety along the way?  Seeya!