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A recent study, done by Australian Bond University and the University of San Diego, of US CEOs in the supply chain industry found that 21 percent had "clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits" (psychopath: a person suffering from chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior). Based on my 46 years in industry, I think they have nailed it, perhaps even gotten the number a bit low.

So, this column is for the other 79% of you. With fairly regular occurrence, we see in the news a CEO being accused of some sort of violation of regulations, policies or laws. We usually accept that this person is at the top of the heap, so to speak, and like it or not, they are responsible and they take the fall when things go wrong. If we give it a thought at all, we say to ourselves, poor fool, shouldn't have reached for the CEO slot to start with.

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There is another way to make sure everything beneath you is working properly. This applies to all managers at all levels, but especially to CEOs. A friend who is a retired CEO recently told me what he did when matters of regulatory or legal nature came up during his tenure. This was a typical scenario. He would tell the appropriate vice president to take care of such and such a matter and report back to him.

For the first few times this played out as follows. The appropriate person would come back and say, in a regular weekly meeting they had with the boss, that indeed the matter had been appropriately handled. He would say "fine" and slide a piece of paper across the table for them to sign, certifying that said matter had been appropriately handled. The subordinate would balk, and say something like, "Let me make sure before I sign that." This would end up in a heated verbal exchange, for the CEO would confront them--"Why did you say it was done and now want to check when I want you to certify it was done?" Of course, word soon got around the business that this was the way the CEO conducted business and the confrontations stopped, for the subordinates actually did their jobs the first time.

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This procedure can work at any level in the organization; you simply have to implement it with your subordinates. One place where it should always be used is in routine shutdowns (or wash-ups or field days--whatever you call them). Every project, be it a maintenance project or an operations project, should have a manager. That manager should sign off, and I mean physically sign off, on a master sheet for each project assigned to them, indicating that they personally inspected the work and it was done according to procedures and specifications and is complete in every sense of the word.

If half the readers of this column will do this for the next month, I am convinced we'll raise uptime in the industry by one percentage point. No joke. And if CEOs adopt this idea, we'll see fewer of them going to jail. As for the 21% who are psychopaths, we don't care anyway.

So, what do you think? Please take our quiz this week here.

For safety this week, LOTO (Lock Out Tag Out) procedures have an element to them that requires a signature in order to comply. Let's be sure to follow these procedures.

Be safe and we will talk next week.

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