The Communiqué
May 1999

Posted for Your Reading

Welcome to First ISHM Approved Certifications
Frank Bird Scholarship Announced
Meet the Web Master
Writing Worth Reading
Welcome-Our Newest Members
Former NSMS Director Becomes Inactive
Our Readers Write! 		Managing for Performance Perfection: The Changing Emphasis
- by William C. Pope

Regularly $59.95, Now only $44.95 to NSMS Members Plus $4.50 postage and handling. Send order to Society Business Office, 123 KyFields, Weaverville, NC 28787.

FRANK BIRD SCHOLARSHIP ANNOUNCED FOR STUDENTS IN SAFETY MANAGEMENT

Since the early 1980s, the NSMS Golden Gate Chapter has had a scholarship named in honor of one of the most brilliant of our safety management masters, and past NSMS president, Frank E. Bird, Jr. Frank conducted a seminar for the Chapter and donated his fee for the establishment of this scholarship.

In its desire to continue this excellent program, the Golden Gate Chapter is opening the annual $250 scholarship to the Society's greater international audience. The successful scholarship applicant must meet the following requirements:
  • Be enrolled at an accredited college or university working toward an Associate, Bachelor's, Master's, or Doctorate degree.
  • Write an article that is accepted for publication in the Society's peer-reviewed Journal of Safety Management.
If more than one student presents an article, and all the articles are accepted to be published, the Golden Gate Chapter will provide the full $250 scholarship to the student that the peer-review committee thinks wrote the best article for publication.

The Golden Gate Chapter will provide the $250 scholarship to the winner along with certificates of commendation to all applicants who have had their articles published.

The Society will provide a one-year free membership in the National Safety Management Society to all student contest applicants who have their articles published.

For more information regarding this scholarship program, contact the NSMS business office at 123 KyFields, Weaverville, NC 28787.

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Meet The Web Master

The following is taken from a recent article by the same title Journal News authored by Deborah Porterfield

Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web and then gave the information away, is frustrated. Never mind that Time magazine named the Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher one of the most important scientists and thinkers of the century. Or that the simplicity of his global hypertext links is one of the main reasons computers are now in more than half of U.S. homes.

Berners-Lee, 43, still isn't satisfied with what he created.

"I'm embarrassed at how difficult it is," he said during a recent lunch celebrating the 35th anniversary of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science in Cambridge, Mass.

"It's supposed to be a glorified television channel," he says. 'I had hoped that the Web would be a tool for understanding each other.

Despite the Web's amazing growth in just a few years, it has yet to reach the lofty goals Berners-Lee dreamed of in 1989, when he created the hypertext links at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva. Instead of copyrighting the codes he put them on the Internet, thinking their free access would help the Web, and his ideas of communal sharing, take hold. These Web links made it simple for people to click from one site to the next.

Another author, Peter Clemente, stated that Berners-Lee "created a way for individuals to fairly easily get access to information of any and all kinds and continuously link to more and more and deeper information, whereas prior to the Web you had to know the arcane Unix language." Berners-Lee still had a tough time convincing people to try his new format because only a few Web pages existed in those early days. Since then, the Web has exploded. Everyone from Sears to the IRS has set up sites. The Web has become a part of everyday life: kids use the Web to gather information for school; travelers obtain directions; movie studios promote their films; and stores use it to sell everything from diapers and milk to computers and books.

But, it still isn't always easy in the opinion of Berners-Lee. "The problem is my mother, your mother, our kids. They go out to the search engine, they ask a question. The search engine gives stupid answers because it reads a large proportion of the pages on the en-tire Web, unbelievable, and it doesn't understand any of them."

Berners-Lee is overseeing a worldwide consortium that is working to make the Web easier for everyone. He also is working to make sure the Web remains an open forum. . .a place for schools to post lunch menus, for parents to put up baby pictures, for academic researchers to share theories. "It's important," he states, "that the Web continue to be a universal space. Anything can refer to any-thing."

Security is another concern of the Web Master. "We need a digital signature so when you share information you know you're sharing it with your colleague, not just some hacker who happens to show up on that particular Ethernet."

Berners-Lee hopes ultimately that people will use the Web not just to access information, but to create and share ideas. "The idea was not that it should just be a big browsing medium. Everybody would be putting their ideas in as well as taking them out." He goes on to say that "I wanted to create what I call an interactive space where everybody can edit. And I started saying 'Interactive.' Then I started reading in the media that 'The Web is great because it was interactive,'. . so I started calling it inter-creativity."

Realizing that he may have to settle for less, Berners-Lee says that "We used to say the Web would mimic the world, but, in fact, it ended up being the world."

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The Art of Scientific Investigation. Beveridge, W. I. B., New York, W. W. Norton & Co. 1950/1957. (Out of print, but there is Inter Library Loan or the used book market, not to mention that the library just might have it.)

The title alone raises a question. Here is hardheaded science being considered an art and the book is the literary equivalent of a museum tour inside the minds of various researchers That mild juxtaposition at the beginning should be enough to stir even the most lethargic to raise an eyelid. Open both eyes, start reading, and watch a rare world unfold.

How could this book possibly be of interest to the practicing loss control professional? First, it is necessary to face a most curious fact in our working lives. In loss control we are living inside the very experiment that we are trying to observe. Scientists in other disciplines are always evaluating the question of whether or not the very act of observing something has an effect on what is being observed. Every loss control manager has to deal with the fact that in doing the research to implement a practice or procedure he/she is already having an effect on what is to be controlled.

Beveridge repeats a common observation (p. 87): "Science1 to be of value, must predict." This is complicated by the fact that any statistical analysis that is done is done on something that has already happened. In loss control our bosses dearly want to know what is going to happen and where and when and to whom. If we can also satisfy the how and why, so much the better. The economists have an expression that says, "If you give a number don't a time. If you give a time don't give a number." In loss control our primary target of interest, the whole human individual and his environment, is far more complicated than 'infectious diseases' which was Dr. Beveridge's specialty. Our projections based on statistics, when they are available, aren't usually effective in applying to individuals, which is what the boss really wants.

In trying to stay close to the biological sciences in particular, Dr. Beveridge is able to describe ideas and procedures of thinking that are general and universal. He fits his science into E. B. White's "advice to young writers who want to get ahead without annoying delays: don't write about Man, write about a man." By staying close to biology in particular Beveridge sends clear general messages to loss control managers.

The book is only 178 pages long. Five and a half of the pages are for the 115 references from which many of the ideas flow.

Beveridge is scrupulous in identifying his quotations and giving credit for the ideas he incorporates into his work. The book is challenging but approachable, and it feels like Professor Beveridge is introducing you to his friends and hoping you will start a long conversation with them.

Which brings us to how the book was discovered for me. NSMS member Nancy Moorehouse invited me to dinner with one of her former professors and friend. As the evening wore on and I passed the test of interested spectator to life, almost on signal they agreed that it was OK to tell me about their book. At the time they really didn't say very much about it, but insisted that it was worth any time spent on it.

The chapter titles are a jumpstart to curiosity, and every chapter is directly connected to our profession: Preparation, Experimentation, Chance, Hypotheses, Imagination, Intuition, Reason, Observation. Difficulties, Strategy, and Scientists. A while back there was a TV series called "Connections." One of the rewards of this book is the number of connections that can be made between clear thinkers on one subject and how their ideas tie to what we are trying to do. An injury case that went sour was the stimulus for a new safety manager to question how doctor bills were paid. He discovered that, throughout the company, minor injuries were being paid for out of petty cash, contrary to company policy and the workers' compensation law in two states. This safety manager had never read page 16:
"Such occurrences should be welcomed, because a search for the unknown factor may lead to an interesting discovery. As a colleague remarked to me recently: 'It is when experiments go wrong that we find things out.'"

Administration of workers' compensation claims in a company is an "experiment." Something went wrong. This prompted this young safety director to systematically question every aspect of the program he inherited. He made other discoveries "before things went wrong" and he was able to strengthen the program. The vigor and persistence he showed paved the way for his acceptance by supervisors and more senior managers.

If you agree that loss control is a scientific enterprise then there is a significant load of help for acting and thinking in this little book. The book is full of interesting things well said. I would be willing to read far more than 178 pages for a gem like:

We are prone to see what lies behind our eyes rather than what appears before them.

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Former NSMS Director Becomes Inactive

Word has been received from Barbara Manley, former NSMS Director, that, due to physical complications, she is retiring from membership. In her note to the Society, Barbara wrote that "I am blind and it takes a lot to coordinate for someone to read things to me."

This shocking news will surprise current and former members of the Governing Board who have worked with this energetic individual over the years. Her enthusiasm will be missed.

If you would like Barbara's address, contact Bob LeClerg, NSMS Business Manager.

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I look forward to reading The Communiqué -- Keep up the great work. My boss wonders where am I coming up with all my safety management philosophy.

Ed Hughlett
Marine Terminals Corporation
Oakland, Calif.

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