Staying Safer in Any Situation - The S.M.A.R.T. Principles™

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a quick and easy way to make yourself safer – in any situation – immediately? There is – the NAPPI S.M.A.R.T. Principles. The S.M.A.R.T. Principles give you a framework that will help keep you safer and help make you more effective.

S – Stay One Step Ahead. There are three elements that help you stay ahead and prevent you from being caught by surprise:

• Do your Homework – what happened before, what is happening right now, and what are the relationships between the players?
• Make a Plan – decide what the best path through the problem will be, and then make a Plan B for when that fails!
• Attend Fully – look for danger spots, escape routes, and warning signs. Do not let complacency – “Well, nothing happened last time,” overwhelm your common sense!

M – Move One Step at a Time. This means two things:

• Say one thing at a time, and
• Do one thing at a time.

In emergency situations, chaos reigns, and the only way to get some breathing space is to SLOW DOWN. Pause – assess – take a breath – then move one step. Doing too many things at once overwhelms people and leads to catastrophe.

A – Always Make It Safer. Is the thing you are going to do next safer than what you are doing now? Is going through that door safer than standing here? If one thing goes wrong when you take the next step, will it lead to disaster or an unrecoverable error? If so, don’t take that next step!

R – Refocus the Attention. Sometimes you have to get someone to think, act or move differently for the safety of everyone. You may be able to distract him by changing something – e.g., the topic, the activity, the location, the environment, or the person working with him. With a little extra work and forethought, you might be able to reframe the situation to reduce or even eliminate the conflict.

T – Together with TLC.

• Work Together – You are not alone, and you should not act as though you can do this all by yourself. You should communicate comprehensively and frequently with your coworkers and others that help you get this work safely done. Tell them what you need, and offer your help to them. Keep them informed of changes in behavior or status – they will be able to respond more quickly and more effectively if they are already briefed. Go out of your way to provide support to others; it will pay huge dividends when trouble heads your way.
• TLC (Tender Loving Care) means two distinct things: treat everyone with respect, because it is much more likely to succeed than treating people with rudeness or disdain, and use minimum impact whenever possible. If you choose a low key response, and it works, you can have great success with little danger or effort. If it doesn’t work, then you can always ratchet it up a notch. If you choose a maximum effort first, and it fails, it is hard to fall back and try again!

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