Joshua Kreger

Today on The Jay Allen Show, Jay speaks with Joshua Kreger. During their conversation, Josh discusses his career, the importance of leadership and how the journey started for him.

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The transcript is not perfect.

[00:00:02] spk_0: This is this show is brought to you by safety FM Well hello and welcome to another episode of the J allen show. I hope everything is good and grand inside of your neck of the woods. I have to tell you. It seems like it's been a while since we've had our last conversation. Keep in mind as we're kind of putting the context of this. Over the last few weeks, we've been taking a listen to the episodes that we recorded at safety day 2021 here in the glorious Orlando florida. So today we get to hold a conversation in real time. I guess it's really how you get to take a look at it. So this is an interview that I did with Joshua. Cregger. Josh is a visionary leader of human and organizational performance and has 10 years of enterprise safety and risk management, leadership experience and some high consequences industry such as critical infrastructure, energy and intermodal transportation. He holds a master's of Science and organizational leadership from the University of Denver with an emphasis of strategic innovation and change. Josh is currently a director of safety and innovation and strategy for the company that he works for. So I'm not gonna take up too much of your time at the very beginning of this thing and let's get started with this conversation with Joshua Cregger here on the jail in joe. The show is streaming now on safety FM dot life. So of course, my easiest question is also the hardest question all at the same time, you know that already, So how did you get involved in this little tiny world of safety? What where was the desire to jump into this mess? So like this is gonna sound like a familiar story, but like most people I fell backwards into it. Um did you know, did years of operations management and hospitality industry right on undergrad and you know, before that, always had a blue collar background. I'm working a lot of different trades through college and in high school. Um, so I, I've been sort of peripherally aware of safety, you know, when you're 17 years old, you have no appreciation for it. I can remember doing many of drilling without your plugs and whatnot. So, Um, yeah, I just was operations management and then got a little fried in about 2008. So quit my six figure job a month before the housing market collapsed to know it. Uh, kind of serendipitous though because my wife was getting ready to apply for med school at the time and she's like, hey, I wanna, I wanna go to this place called Federal way Washington and I want to join this program called AmeriCorps and I want you to come with me again. We weren't, she wasn't my wife at the time. And I said, well one where the hell's federal way Washington and do what the hell's AmeriCorps? So you know I went from sort of this 80 hour a week, cutthroat industry making tons of money to, I'm teaching math and science to um low income district uh Children after about a three week in doc on how to teach math and science in high school. So it's kind of like a warm body degree. Bass pass background check off you go. So that's how I left my industry. And then we ended up moving to Denver in 2011 for some bigger opportunities. And that's where I got my first job. You know, just trying to find a gig just coming in, trying to rebuild my professional career. And I got on as a D. O. T. Compliance specialist with uh oh the love, the love there. I am so familiar with D. O. T. How did you how did you like that gig? Uh You know it's again it's interesting looking back on, I'm glad I have that foundation and some part of my brain but you know it's very wrote it's very much um you know I hate anomaly. So I was really good at digging through D. O. T. Files and catching things on drug tests and whatnot. But yeah it was a good entry into the discipline and then sort of just evolving from there into enterprise leadership. From a safety perspective I had that already had that leadership peace in like in my in my background and then getting into safety was sort of like oh you're also not a lead. I'm like yeah and then it sort of just sort of snowballed from there. But that's one hell of a change. I mean let's talk about it. You left a six figure job, you go into teaching teaching. I mean essentially, I mean that is a hell of a change, but then you go into D. O. T. After that as you're going through these changes. Are you seeing like your your long term on what you're planning on to do trajectory wise? Like what is your what are your journey at that portion? Because I can't imagine you're looking at destination at that point, You have to be looking at journey. So what are you thinking at this time? Well you know, jay, the passion is leadership and it's all leadership. So whether it was in a restaurant opening new restaurants all over the midwest, whether it was trying to um you know, teach poor kids who probably didn't eat for three days how to do algebra two. Hey now we gotta figure out a way to um, you know, run drug and alcohol and bot compliance. For 21 union represented employee, 2100 union represented employees. Um to me was that leadership peace and I'm always chasing that next leadership challenge. I just happened to have these little superpowers as I pick them up along the way. Well, it's a nice little superpower. So historically, thereafter, out of that D. O. T. Compliance gig as you get into the regional Health and Safety Manager position, you pick up a certificate that I'm extremely interested in um by Excellent front, which is of course extreme extreme ownership, which is a Jacko willing company. How the hell do you get into that? How did you like this? Yeah, So I have um, I have a buddy who's a retired Navy seal and I kind of just fell into the Jacko thing via that. But um, You know, I, again, by the time I found Jacko in 2015, I had already been a leader for, You know, over 12 years and I kind of realized, I don't know anything about leadership and that's not to say that Jack was this guru, that everything he does is not unique. It goes back to Sun Zoo, I could grab rant, I grabbed peter decker, I could grab a bunch of different book, Drucker, I can grab all kinds of leadership books and they all kind of makes sense. But um, you know, I just was drawn to this idea of ownership and it was, it started with me looking in the mirror, it was the fat guy in the mirror going, you know, jay, that was your opportunity to say, I'm not fat, but I was waiting. I was not gonna interrupt. You know, there are no bad teams, only bad leaders. Like, wow, what a statement. Um, and as I started to onboard extreme ownership, I actually got to meet Jack O. Um, I do a lot of work with them now. I actually see them three times a week and it was just that game changer for me going, um, even when my employee steals and causes a problem, that's my fault. I own that. And it's just that sort of, that's sort of internal pressure you put on yourself as a leader is what really attracted me to that, to that philosophy and I hope everyone can at least give it a shot and people get a little wigged out about the military navy seal deal. But then in leadership is agnostic. It doesn't matter. That's why I know seals right now who run tech companies, billion dollar tech companies and it's because leaderships agnostic. So as you're developing this leadership and you're realizing more and more, some of the stuff that you have read in the past, some of the things that you're moving forward with and you're seeing these different concepts inside of the world of safety as you're moving forward because you've been focusing on leadership. What are you kind of seeing that they that they bring together, Especially when you start seeing these different things where it's to some extent, some people might take it too harsh on how they, you know, we'll kind of turn around and say on how they pursue and punish to some extent. So how can you distinguish the leadership from punishment? Because most leaders, depending on how they lead, won't take responsibility on their own. It's this person, it's their fault and you kind of move forward get them out of here and then the same issue occurs. So how have you been able to blend the two worlds together? Well I tell you so I consult with 56,000 different businesses in Colorado's are all my customers. And um you know I try to reiterate you know you can punish or you look you can learn but you can't do both. But that is not very um intuitive to especially to small business owners right? It's so personal when something bad happens to an employee even though they're empathetic it's you know it shuts down production. It increases their their mod increases their premium and insurance it increases the whole kind of things And so they want to punish. And we can all remember for those of us from the construction industry. You know as soon as someone gets hurt, the G. C. Well I want to expect this employee to get punished. And that's the unfortunate sort of failure of the discipline at this point. Cause that's still that is hat in hand right now in the discipline and I wonder if it will ever be different. I think we need to get some senior leaders in the C suite who actually innovate inside safety instead of focusing on innovation all over their business And then just rolling off the same crap from 1986 and safety from a performance measurement standard. But um yeah I try to teach my customers that as soon as you punish you can't learn and so it's easy to punish but the learning is what's going to keep people at the hospital and out of the morgue. And that's that that piece that I try to turn with that at that corner, we try to turn with those customers. But it is so hard because it is so intimate when one of your workers get hurt. Either you feel emotionally attached them and it's painful and or they have caused a ruinous act in your business and it's now compromising your livelihood. So when you start having those difficult conversations with your, with your customers, how do they handle this? Of course they're the ones that are normally calling you. So how does this work out? Well, again, they don't want to hear that. It's their fault. Well, I mean what you're, what you're telling it to them, I do tell them that and it's again, it's all in how you present it, right? And I try to use examples, This is where my superpower is coming into this, you know, stagnated industry in insurance safety, um as an operational leader. I kind of tell those stories. I do that storytelling for when I was in operations and you know, at the end of the day, I have to explain that you have to own this and when you punish them, the next incident is on you because you chose punishment over learning and punishment feels better punishments. Quick punishment is intuitive and it feels like it's like, it feels like you've done something. It's like these guys, these preppers, right? They'll go by 700 guns and then they can barely get up there stairs without wheezing. It's just, it's focusing on the wrong thing. But they feel this sense of accomplishment because I've stockpiled weapons, I'm ready for everything. But then you can't tell your shoes. So it's really just teaching them that you have to stick, make a stand now and it starts with you as a leader, You own everything in your world as a leader. And I actually teach more extreme ownership than I do OSHA compliance. So when you go in and do something like that, where you're, where you're actually presenting in that fashion, we're going okay. Extreme leadership. Not so much. OSHA. Do you kind of get the weird look or the weird conversation afterwards by some of the senior senior management inside of these different organizations? Because they have ex expectation because this is what they've grown accustomed to. But you're trying to tell them, hey, no, you need to really take some responsibility. Yeah. You know, the OSHA thing is that it's their life, right? We have to report on, on this. Soju is why not make it our performance measure for safety as an enterprise. Um, it's, and I try to do that in a way that, um, you know, doesn't insult their intelligence because these are brilliant people that run these companies. Um they've just they're part of the same system. And, and and sadly, and this is where I will kind of call out the profession a little bit. They're they're relying on the people like you and me j to make the right decision and recommend the right things that will work. So like, hey boss, let's let's set up a just culture or what's that? Well, let me give you this book. You know, it's starting that journey and that's on us as safety leaders to not lead up the chain. We do really good at leading down the chain backslapping at safety meetings, discussing with foreman how to run a, how to run a safety program at the work site. We seem to sort of pause and get inside our own fears when it's time to lead up the chain of command, which again, is another foundation of extreme ownership. Is being able to walk up to your ceo or walk up to your superintendent go, this isn't working. It looks like it's working because the number is zero right now on the board. But you and I know that all of a sudden something's going to blow up and people are gonna die and then we're gonna go, how do we go from 500 million man hours on injury to eight people dead? That's something we want to discuss before it happens. So being as you have that understanding and you're trying to open the eyes of people in different industries with this, what some of the pushback that you're getting because I know that that's not an easy pill to swallow. Yeah. The push back. People don't want to sock. It's a, the pushback is operational pressure. I don't know, Covid um You know lumber being $700,000 per square foot. It's these external pressures that always beat safety. Safety loses the operational pressure every day of the week and twice on Sunday. And The push back I get is we can't afford it or we're we don't have the motivator at the business. We're talking to the poor HR individual who knows someone's going to die. Who knows? This isn't good. Who knows? Oh, she's going to come in and wrap $100,000 in fines on us. But they don't have the skills, they don't have the stream ownership skills to teach it up the chain, that's where we come in, they're gonna teach that. But the big pain is affordability time and you know, any barrier that anything that would put a barrier in front of the now is the big struggle that we face on the consultant level. Even in an operations where I was the saved enterprise safety and less control manager for the largest gravity fed water system in the country. I still face that pressure had tremendous power. I could I shut down a multimillion dollar construction project in 2018. The pressure that came down on me but I was equipped to deal with that. But you know someone earlier in their career might just completely fold and then they'll never do that again because you start to enter the self preservation mode as a safety professional and all of us are always paranoid about losing their jobs. I mean I think that most of the times if you take a look, especially inside of the safety profession, it becomes extremely interesting because you have those compliance pressures. You have that safety pressure where you have what some people might call safety fix it where you have to know a little bit of everything to be able to fix it. But then if things are going, what some might deem well across the board, then it's all of a sudden. Well, do we need this particular safety person where it might be too expensive and just replace him with somebody who might be inexpensive in comparison. So it becomes a very strange thing. So when you decide to do this, when you're working for the largest water provider there, what happens? Do you get the phone call when you shut it down? Are you getting calls call after call? What the hell are you doing or what kind of pressure is being put upon you at this time? If you remember. Of course. Yeah. I mean, am I shut it down by email I would say by nine um I find out that the ceo of that construction company is called the vice president of public Affairs who's now talked to my executive who's now in my office asking what happened and you better be ready to rumble right to use Bernie Brown's quote. You know, it's and but so many of us in safety, here's the thing. Safety safety professional. It requires a lot of analytical attention to detail. Not always conducive the best leadership. And if you don't have that, if you don't have sort of that, that courage, that bravery as a leader, you're gonna just go, ok, I guess it's not that big of a deal. You'll look for ways out. And yeah, it came down on me and I am looking at this could be the end of it, right? And so, you know, here's the thing J safety is just localized rationality in the moment. Um, we make decisions based on what we knew at the time and then sometimes we're wrong or sometimes we didn't know something and someone gets hurt. And so I shut down that project. I had like one email from a foreman that said someone was going to die. And based on my relationship with that foreman, I pulled the pin on that grenade. I didn't have all the information. I I mean for me, I wanted like seven more pages of what's going on. I wanted photos. I want to talk to other people know, you know, again, it goes back to extreme ownership, look around, stop, look around and make a call. Here you go. Here's your email. So I'm gonna die in between the time I'm kind of fumbling around this looking for information so I feel more comfortable with making the decision because safety professionals, we want to hedge as much as we can, that's not the game we play and and that's honestly you do a disservice to the employees, you're responsible for protecting by doing that. So as you look back now in retrospective, because that's the only thing that we can do now. Do you feel based on the amount of information that you have or had at the time, better saying did you make the right call? I did make the right call, but I also burned up some significant leadership capital doing it. Um You can only do that so many times before, you know, cry Wolf or that you just start to lose confidence. Your your your your your senior leadership starts to lose confidence in you. Um but based on the information at the time, you know, I'm pulling off experience, it's more of that, Does it pass the smell test, having ownership leadership experience in the past? I don't know if I had the relationship with that individual that I did, would I have trusted him. But then again, is that the right decision to make? What if I don't have a relationship but this person's got a legitimate concern ou so knew where I was going next. We'll go for it. No, that's exactly what I was gonna ask you to ask. What if somebody else would have actually said the same scenario, but you didn't have the same relationship with them. But then what would have been, what the decision would have been the same? And I know that all this is retrospective and what it could've, should've, would've and all that kind of, you know, glass crystal ball stuff. But I'm always interested on, you know, when you have to make the difficult decision because it is a difficult decision when you have to look back, how do you feel about it? I would have still stopped it. And that's because I'd rather live with the termination than live with the worst case scenario. Um and then, you know, some people will get sanctimonious about what you can't stop everything. And then some people are given more sanctimonious and say you need to stop everything. You pick and choose your battles. You burn, you burn, you earn more leadership capital than you burn. And I had enough leadership capital built up to pull that pin. And that's another piece of advice I would give to these junior leaders and safety be building up leadership capital every opportunity because when you do need to burn it, boy, it goes quick now. Now that you pulled the pin, everything started moving on. You stopped everything, everything is going. How long is the site closed down for before? Everything is within the realm of your being comfortable with moving forward with it? I was like 12 hours, a couple, a couple million. So there was there was people gunning for you. I would imagine during that, during that time, as you were saying earlier, people calling, calling, calling. And I can imagine if that's our one by our five, they're wanting your your head on a lance. Well then internally, you know, that's also our sales, internally, you know, that's water sales for us. So it's not just this construction company whose on a deadline, it's also our internal water sales and you know, it is every hour on the hour and it's here's, here's, here's what I always tell. Individuals and operations. I will always say prove to me it's safe. I'm not going to take your word for it. Um and they proved it was safe. And I said, okay, I'm comfortable with it. Just having their attention and having them. You know, hey, can you remove your band? I said, it's not a band. I'm doing you a favor. Um, this is gonna be worse for you if we kill people. Um but yeah, it's, it's just proved to me it's safe. And sometimes we don't ask those questions. The safety professionals, we just sort of, we cower in the moment. Well, because also at the same time it's an emotional event for some, especially when it comes to the operation side, because now you've closed down the business. And let's be realistic, I have an operation background. And if you would have told me that before I started looking into anything at safety, you closed down part of my operation because of a potential safety related thing. I might have not been too happy about it. So how do you handle that emotional distress that's going on? Because it is coming your way? It's fireballing your way regardless of how you look at it. Yeah. Um you know, nothing's ever been accomplished by panicking and again that's another, I would say extreme ownership tenant is, you know, you have to detach emotionally and if you can't detach emotionally, you are going to get overwhelmed by that moment because you know this is all on you and you don't have all the information. And if you know all of a sudden you find out you've got information that you didn't have an hour ago and you on paper now in retrospect, you know, it's kind of like, hey, these preventable accidents we talk about right, Like we're only preventable once the things crashed. Um, same thing. It was only a bad call now that I have this entire ream of paper on what was going on and it's just being able to weather that and standing your ground either morally ethically or you know, immorally, you've got to take a stand and if you care more about your job than your, your personal, your personal beliefs, then you're in the wrong business. Well, I, I appreciate you actually going into that because most people would not give that much detail. So I do appreciate you going down that path. Now, I got a question for you because you see a little bit of everything. Of course, if you were building out your own company and you had to actually, let's say that we still have a safety department inside of this organization that you're running, where do you see that the safety department should actually report to if you were building it out, It was your company, your name's on the door. How does that actually? How does that company report to the chief safety officer who happens to be the chief executive officer? You know, safety is not really a discipline j it's not a professional discipline, it's a core competency of leadership. And again, I talked about a lot, We hired these really brilliant people to run these companies and then it's like a doctor, right? Like a, like a like a surgeon gets two weeks of nutrition training and then all of a sudden we expect them to know something about nutrition, but they act like they do, right? Oh yeah, you shouldn't be eating that well. It's like you're great at surgery. Do you know anything about what I'm putting in my digestive tract? I don't think so. The same thing with these ceos. They know enough to be dangerous. They know enough to say the platitudes safety culture yet not not one injury what have you. Um They don't know what they're looking at. And so when I start a company um I want to, I want the Ceo to be the most passionate about safety. I definitely don't want them to be the subject matter expert, but I want them to have the most passion and it can't be these empty platitudes and um these posters, right? That's why I despise safety posters. They should be used for target practice. It's really, safety is not a poster. Safety is a um is an expression of culture and the ultimate expression of cultures decentralized command. And that's what we need from these senior leaders. That's why to be honest, I do want to be a ceo. I'll be a terrible ceo, but I just want to run my safety program I think should be run and I'm probably gonna retire because we'll be out of business in two weeks. But I think that we can pull it off and so that's one day I want to be a Ceo. Just so I could implement safety as I've, I've always wanted to see it implement it either as an employee or as a as a leader underneath that. Well, you know how some of the sports figures signed the one day contract to go back to like, let's go back to a team. Maybe you're gonna make an arrangement like that. You can be like a Ceo for a day and give it a world. Yeah. I mean you get you. I still think that and that's why, you know, again, not to harp on Jacko, but the reason companies pay him millions of dollars to come in and basically run the company for 6 to 8 months is because it is leadership. He doesn't know anything about running Pepsi or running these other companies. He's looking for holes in your leadership curriculum or your leadership culture and filling them for you. And this is like, I wonder if I hope one day the safety discipline get to the point and we do have some actually anybody who consult shoutout magpie safety for humans, um a company that would really come in and do that type of work for you and educate those senior leaders. I mean every Ceo should have at least one confidante enterprise safety, that's not part of the business. I feel like that's super important. I just don't know how prioritized that is well and that's that's a great question because here's the thing sometimes when you're so close, when you have it so close to the chest, you don't realize the gaps that are there. So that's why the outside consultants come, come about. So it's always interesting on when you especially see big name consultants come in and take a view on what's going on, especially when you look at somebody like Jack that we've been kind of talking about here for the last little bit. All right. He runs it for X period of time. And of course, there's a cost affiliated or associated to the whole thing. So when you look at that in the grand schemes, do you think that's value added because of the of the holes that are the most organizations have? I do. And I think, you know, again, as a senior leader organization, you live in a world of lies of omission. Right? Well, you didn't ask. I'm not going to tell you, boy. That is absolutely president safety because you know, even the near misses, right? We like to report those. I don't know if we report them all. I don't know if we report the scariest ones um, having those fresh eyes. I mean I again if the law at the water utility, I we led the largest cultural study in the history of that organization and we did. We used outside consultant and we glean things we never knew. You know, safety is really that middle out, right? It's not here. It's top down. That's not the case. This is jay allen show, you know how sometimes you're out and about and sometimes you have to access a report, maybe your bank account, maybe something that's important to you, but you don't want other people to be able to access it. I know you're probably sitting there for a moment going well why don't you just go into a incognito mode and use that instead? Well let me tell you something real quick. Incognito mode does not hide your activity. It doesn't matter what mode you use or how many times you clear your browser's history. Your internet service provider can still see every single website you've visited. And that's why even when I'm at home I never go online without using Express VPN. It doesn't matter who your internet provider is. It can be Verizon Comcast or even a. TNT. The I. S. B. In the U. S. Can legally sell your information to add. Cos Express VPN is an app that re routes your internet connection through their secure servers. So your I. S. P. Can't see the sites that you visit. Express VPN also keeps all of your information secure by encrypting 100% of your data with the most powerful encryption available most of the times. I don't even realize I have expressed VPN on. It runs seamlessly in the background and is so easy to use. All you have to do is tap one button and you're protecting Express VPN is available on all of your devices, phones, computers, even your smart Tv. So there's no excuse for you not to be using. It protects your online activity today with the VPN rated number one by seeing it and wired. Why is it my exclusive link at Express VPN dot com slash safety and you can get an extra three months free on a one year package that's E X P R E S S V P N dot com slash safety Express VPN dot com slash safety to learn more. And we are back on the J ALLen show on safety FM. So yeah, I was just talking to the value of outside consulting and this is a good segue to talk about, you know what I do today because you know, I'm a big fan of steve jobs. I think he's the da Vinci of our generation, probably not the best human being, but you know, as far as being innovative and just being a visionary, um, you know, I look up to him a lot and there's a great youtube clip of him where he goes bad on consultants, you know, and how we don't have any skin in the game and yada yada yada, He's not wrong except where I work. And so pinnacle assurance were a mono line insurance care in the state of colorado. We operate more like a mutual insurance company because we're just peripherally attached to the state. But our vision is a revolution carrying. And the only reason I came to work here, I did not want to come work for insurance man. I mean, I was going to ask you, how do you make that transition man? I mean, I'm telling you as an enterprise safety leader for years. You know, The things that my insurance attaches brought me from a safety perspective. I mean it was drive by lost control from 1986. It's a lot of survey. It was almost like, hey, here comes to their cost based justification, their job this month. And then if you want the good stuff that here's the price for that. Um, so I just coming into insurance, I'm like, no way. But I had also grown so exhausted of the discipline because I wasn't seeing innovation. I'm not seeing a lot of courage And you know, we've got the books, we've got the academic publishing, that's great. We've got you j in, in the field. It's just not happening. Um, it is happening in small pockets of great companies, but across the globe are gonna work for 56,000 customers. It is an anomaly. And so the opportunity to come to insurance and pinnacle asking me, hey, um, we want you to teach our customers how to do safety differently, pun intended or how to do hop, We don't want cost, cost based justification of jobs. We don't want to drive by lost control. We want to have an intimate relationship with our customers because we care about them and sometimes you're the only contact they have at our company. And so just being asked to do that and then build digital products along the way as sort of an add on. It was just a great opportunity and if things are gonna change, I think it will come in the safety discipline.