S15Ep1: Consultant Spotlight Eduardo Lan

What happens when a rising manager in a high-output factory realizes that the current tactics of fear, pressure, and blame don’t actually make people safer—or more successful? 

SafeStart consultant Eduardo Lan sat down with us to recount his candid journey from toxic leadership to a people-first approach that blends systems thinking, human factors, and practical skill-building you can use on the job and at home.

Host: Danny Smith
Guest: Eduardo Lan

Transcript

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Danny Smith

Hello and welcome once again to SafeTalk with SafeStart. I'm your host, Danny Smith, and today a very special edition of SafeTalk as we again shine our consultant spotlight on one of our newer consultants, and that is Eduardo Lan. So, Eduardo, first of all, welcome to the podcast.

 Eduardo Lan

Thank you, Danny. And uh yeah, thank you to all the audience members. Happy to be here.

Danny Smith

 So, a little bit about Eduardo as we get started. You were born and raised in Mexico, lived in Mexico City for a number of years, and currently you're in the big metropolis, the greater Toronto metro area, which is just incredibly huge. So, tell us 1. a little bit about yourself and your background before you came to SafeStart.

 Eduardo Lan

Yeah, absolutely. So no, so yeah, Toronto is quite big, but not as big as Mexico City. Nothing as well. I can imagine almost nothing is the biggest Mexico City. So, let’s see here. I many, many years ago, maybe 30 plus years ago, I worked as the warehouse in the material reception warehouse manager for a large, very large busy factory in Mexico, which had a very toxic environment. Basically, people were disrespected, they were abused, they were worked to the bone, nobody cared if you got hurt. It was kind of the way things were back then in many places, and certainly there. And I was a very young manager there at the time, and I was being groomed to be a director because I knew some of the head people there. And at the time I was young and a bit dumb, and I thought that's what the life was about, reaching uh as high as you possibly could. So, I took that kind of treatment and I dished it out. And I about three years into my journey couldn't do it anymore. Like I thought to myself, this is disgusting.  People don't deserve this. There has got to be a better way. There has got to be a way to do business and take care of people. And today I know and that kind of set me on my path to consulting. It didn't happen right away because we are talking, don't want to age myself here, but we are talking uh 30 plus years. I resemble that remark, so but I that's that it got me started on my path to consulting. It kind of first was more personal growth and development, and then I and then I went back to this conviction that you could build a company and do business and make money and treat people right and take care of them. And so today I know that not only is there a different way, there is a better way because you can scare people into compliance in the moment because people don't want to lose their job or be reprimanded or disciplined or whatever, but it doesn't work in the long term. People disengage and become uh very upset, and they either consciously or unconsciously sabotage the company goals. The only way to get people truly on board is to care for them and they have to feel that. And so, from there I did a uh yeah, a bunch of things. I worked in in multimedia, I worked uh as a translator, I created a translation company, but my passion has always been people. Like my life motto is to grow and develop in every area of life that is important to me and to help others do the same. And so that really kind of cemented me into consulting. I didn't start out as a safety consultant at all. I started out as a leadership and culture and communications consultant, and then one day I and I'm oh I've always been incredibly curious and a lifelong learner, and just I would devour books and courses. And at one point, somebody from one of the kind of organizations that I took courses with said to me, was a consultant in a safety consultant, and he said to me, would you like to do some safety consulting? Now, the word for safety in Spanish is the same for safety and security. So, I thought, security, and I thought, like, what are we talking about here? Guards and dogs, and like I don't know any of that stuff. And then he said, No, no, no, no, it's occupational safety. And so, I said, okay, but I don't know anything about that either. And he said, yes, you do, because there is this there are basically two sides to safety. One is a very technical side, and the other one is a side that has more to do with what you are good at, which is culture and leadership and communication. And so, I said, Yeah, why not? And I yeah, I did that and I absolutely loved it. In fact, over the years I've gone back to the business and performance consulting out of need, and I don't like it not even close to how I like doing the work I'm doing now. 

Danny Smith

Amazing. And what it sounds like you were already on the path along the same things that we do with SafeStart. 2. So, what brought you to SafeStart as a as a process and as a company?

 Eduardo Lan

Yeah, so I so I've as you know, we consultants are yes, up to contract our knowledge, our work, our time. And so, I've worked with several consulting companies, and SafeStart keep kept coming up and up every time, not every time, but many times I went to see a client and they would tell me about it. And I have wanted to be a part of SafeStart for yeah, a good part of about eight years, and I reached out to several of the executives of SafeStart and had conversations with them, but nothing ever materialized until next consultant of the SafeStart, who was my boss at another company, another consulting company, began working at SafeStart. And then we had a conversation as we often do, and he told me he was doing that. And I said, Oh wow, that's very interesting. I've been trying to get into that company for many years. And he said, oh, let me let me talk to some people, and he did, and then I talked to them again, and there was no need for a new consultant at the time. So, it took about a year and a half, an additional year and a half for them to say, okay, let's do this. And that's kind of my story of how I came to SafeStart.

 Danny Smith

Very good. What do you think? 3. And what do you find kind of unique about Safe Start? And what do you love about the process?  Not only the SafeStart process, but some of the other processes we have, such as SafeLead. What do you find appealing about our approach to safety and addressing the human factors?

 Eduardo Lan

Yeah, so I've always been a very kind of wide spectrum thinker, and one of my favorite quotes is by I think Cawthorn. And he says that the sign of brilliance is the ability to have two seemingly conflict the conflicting thoughts in your mind and make them and be functional. And so, I mean there's kind of this turf war among the various consulting camps of no, it's human factors and then it's personal responsibility, it's HOP, it's systems, it’s behavioral safety, it's I've always thought it's all of them. Absolutely. Yes, yeah. and because life is that complex and people are that complex. Anybody that tells you this is the path, I think, is lying to themselves and to you or to anybody they're talking to, it really requires a multi-prong approach. And in particular with regards to the SafeStart, I say this often at workshops, at SafeStart workshops, and I've been I've practiced many safety methodologies, many of them are very good, and I still practice some of them to date, but there is something about SafeStart that I find incredibly powerful. One, it's simple, and simple is incredibly powerful because we are dealing with people who are workers for the most part, and they are not interested in our complex safety theories. They but they are interested in getting home safe. And so, safeguard, as you know, Danny, is uh four states, four errors, for critical error reduction techniques, and then you add some some skills, some habits around that. I think that is incredibly powerful. The second thing is that people don't like for the most part going to class. I mean, I'm kind of an odd duck, but I didn't like going to class when I was a kid. I liked going to class when I was older because I got to kind of choose pick and choose what I wanted to study. I never wanted to memorize a whole bunch of dates and things I was never going to use. Um and I and I didn't like my teachers, and I didn't like the way I felt when I was called on and didn't have the right answer, and everybody laughed. And so, I think there's kind of this collective trauma around school that people don't like school. It's a shame because I think human beings are learning and growing is ingrained in us, and I think it's been killed out of us uh through many avenues. But people like stories. They love stories. Yes. I mean, that's why we go to the movies, that's why we read a book, that's we go why we go out for beers with our buddies, that's why we go to coffee with uh with a friend. That's what we're doing. We're telling each other stories about our life and what happened. And so, it's just transferring this the desire, this joy that we have already about telling and hearing stories, transferring safety into that, or that into safety. And people resonate with that, they really do. And so those are I think two of the things that really attract me about SafeStart. Another thing is that there is absolutely a personal piece to safety. Yeah, I'm a big HOP, I'm a big believer in HOP and how systems strive behavior. But and sometimes people on the in the HOP camp say, well, yes, but if you're if you're looking at personal safety and behavioral safety, you're missing that that really big pie that Deming talked about, which is that 90% of all incidents have to do with something other than the individual. Well, Deming didn't say that. He said other than just the individual, and that word is key. He never said the individual is only responsible for 10%. He said in 90% of all incidents, according to him, and he's somebody that knew what he was talking about, there is something other than just the individual going on, which is the system. But that doesn't leave the person out. The person has a huge say in whether you get hurt or not. And like Larry Wilson says, if you really think about it, you can't think of many instances where you've gotten hurt or almost gotten hurt where you didn't have where you weren't in one of the states and you didn't make one of the errors. 

 Danny Smith

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I love that idea that as you mentioned, you know, it's and I've often said in some of the presentations that I've done, you know, we do seem to be divided into multiple camps now in the safety profession, which I think is very much a shame because you really do need that that hybrid or holistic approach to things just to be effective. And you also mentioned something that made me grin a little bit. You may have seen me on camera there grinning a little. I referred to it as simple. And some people get upset when you say that the concepts of safeguard are simple, but I had a safety director come to me one day and he said, and I had done quite a bit of work with this particular site. He came to me and he says, you know, I had one of my key folks come up to me the other day and he says, the SafeStart stuff just seems like it's too simple, it's too simplistic. And he said, really? He said, so if I were to make it more complex, do you think it would work better? And the guy just kind of looked at him kind of funny and he says, No, he says, This is getting down to basic things, basic steps we can take, basic skills we can learn from, as you said, that Kevin Cobb used to refer to as that four by four by four technology, the four states, four errors, and four CERTs. And that is at the root of so many of the things that happened to all of us, right? 4. Tell me about how has SafeStart impacted you personally? Or are there is there a skill or something that you would say that you have gleaned from this already that you're utilizing that's helped you per not just professionally but personally to stay safer?

 Eduardo Lan

 Yeah. If I may, I'd like to add something before I get to this question. Simple is not the same as easy. And so, people that are getting upset at at the word simple because they think it's simplistic, they're missing the point. Yeah. And I said that today during a work during the workshop. I said, look, if this was just about understanding, I could give you a 20-minute class and we'd be done. Exactly. But who but who here knows how to be healthy? I mean, we all know we all do you eat right, exercise.  Who here actually does that? So, it so it really takes something. And then Larry, and I'm recalling all of this because I just finished doing three units, three- or five-unit threes if you take five, seven-unit threes if you take into account the week. Larry says in one of the videos, knowing that rushing is a risk is not much of a trick, but knowing that you're rushing, that rushing is a risk while you're rushing is a heck of a trick.

 Danny Smith

Exactly.

Eduardo Lan

Yes. And that takes skill, recognizing that in the moment takes skill, it takes practice. It does.

It does, it does. Now, to answer your question, I think it's impacted me quite a bit. So first I'll talk about kind of the skills part. I am way more aware of how I tend to have my mind and my eyes wander, and how I let certain states, rushing is probably my default state, get to me. It's not something I was very aware of before. I mean, I was always pretty careful, but well, not always, but in the past couple of decades that I've been a safety consultant. But then again, with all these stories, I'm just thinking I'm thinking of all these times when I wasn't that careful. And there's one in particular that I told today where I'm in Cancun with my family and I'm on this two-lane kind of bi-directional rural highway where people are just speeding by. And I was going to a restaurant on the other side of the highway, so in the other direct in the other direction, and I need to make a U-turn at a place where there's no stoplight or anything stopping the cars, and people don't stop, they just go. It you have to pick your spot to go. And I waited there for like five minutes and I was frustrated and really hungry. And I took that U-turn and I endangered my family in doing that. And I mean I the car kind of skid, the tires skid, cars came flying by, my family was terrified. If we had been hit from the side, it's almost it's almost a sure thing that they would have killed my wife and my daughter. And I and I think how could I do that? How could I do that? Yeah, and that is probably the most extreme close call I've ever had, and it really sticks in my mind. And I had thought about it over the years, because this happened many years ago, but not to the extent that I'm thinking about it now.

 Danny Smith

 Yeah.

 Eduardo Lan

Yeah. And it's just becoming as I as I deliver workshops and talk to people about this and interact with uh more CSIN, SafeStart consultants, just more and more live

 Danny Smith

Yeah, and you think about that. I think one of the interesting things you said that happened a number of years ago, and I'm sure at the time you probably realized that you were frustrated, and you were rushing to use the terms that we use. But you may not have had that framework, if you will, to talk about it. And I think that's one of the great things about SafeStart too. It gives us that vocabulary where we can communicate the things that have happened to us. And we see that on site with clients all the time. What's one of the most exciting things that's happened to you while you've been on site, teaching Safe Start?

 Eduardo Lan

Well, um I so I'm quite new to SafeStart. I'm very bad with dates, but it must be like five months or something like that. Not new to safety consulting, been doing it for many, many years, but they really threw me into the deep right away. 

 Danny Smith

Yes, we did. With us be careful what you ask for, you may just get it, right?

 Eduardo Lan

So yeah, with an engagement and four states and just a lot of travel and a lot a lot of workshops. And I'm just one of the it's not something new. It's I'm just so I get so attached and I care so much for the people that we are delivering these workshops to. Like I like, I mean, maybe this is not politically correct, but I don't care that much about our bosses and their bosses. I care about them because they’re the ones on the front lines risking their lives working so we can have the things that we need to consume. And I think they should I mean I understand we all work within a market and that market determines what you get paid, but it doesn't determine how you treat people. And I think these people should be treated like princes and princesses because they deserve every good every right treatment that we can have for them.

 Danny Smith

Absolutely. And I guess that kind of comes full circle back to where you started with the discussion of where you where you began your career, right? So that's I think that's a perfect place for us to end this. We do want to get Eduardo back for another podcast in the near future. He did not talk about it today, and I'm sure if we broached the subject, we'd probably be here for about three hours. But Eduardo is very, very skilled in the world of AI. And uh we'll get into that on another day. Because like I said, I know if we start talking about that, we'll be here a while. So, folks, if you would love to get in touch with Eduardo, his email is Eduardo. That's E-D-U-A-R-D-O. DOT L at SafeStart.com. that’s Eduardo.L@safestart.com. Eduardo, thanks so much for doing this today. I really, really appreciate it. Any final thoughts here as we're kind of wrapping this up?

 Eduardo Lan

Yeah, I first off, I really appreciate you having me on the podcast and I appreciate all the listeners listening to the podcast. My final thought would be you know, there is this saying that many important people have said, which is that we are technological giants back to kind of the AI thing, but ethical midgets, and you can substitute ethical for kind of human understanding midgets. We've been beating a drum forever that just doesn't work, which is that if we just push people and pressure them and blame them for the things that happen, then we're going to get better. And it's a bankrupt system; it's it doesn't work. And so the my last thought would be yeah, I think it's high time after so much suffering and death and injury. And also because treating people right makes business sense. People work better, they perform better, that we change our ways and understand that people are not the problem. They are this, they are part of the solution.

 Danny Smith

 Absolutely. I really appreciate it. And I think that's uh a great word for us to wrap this up. It really, really kind of encapsulates really the whole spirit of what we do with SafeStart, trying to get people to better themselves and make themselves safer, help their families be safer. Just a holistic approach to that. Yeah, you got to have the rules and the procedures and everything, like you said. But learning how to just keep ourselves safer, not just at work, but outside of work, I think is really, really big. And that's really what we want to focus on. So again, thanks so much for being with us. And if you'd like to get in touch with Eduardo, again, it's Eduardo.l at safestart.com. Thanks everyone for listening. And, if you'd like to, please share this with someone else for SafeTalk with SafeStart. I'm Danny Smith. Have a great day.