"Safety Council Executive Director is resigning" from the Wyoming-Montana Safety Council Safety Reminder May 2008
David Sneed, who led the Wyoming Montana Safety Council out of the red and through nearly eight years of steady financial growth, has decided to step down as the organization’s executive director.
“I’m a fixer, and I came in to fix the council, Sneed said in an interview. “The council is at a plateau and I feel like this is the right moment to leave.”
Sneed, 61, who notified the Board on Friday April 18, 2008 of his decision, will stay around until as late as July 15.
“Joe Kaplan, my counterpart in Los Angeles, was executive director for 66 years. He retired at age 94 and is still going with other ventures. Joe’s 66 years sure dwarfs my almost 8 years. But in this day and time even 8 years may be too long” said Sneed.
During Sneed’s tenure, the council phased out a major low-quality training product, added new ones and outsourced most of the commodity training to almost 150 smaller players scattered throughout Wyoming and Montana. “That move, which is still in progress, allows training to take place locally without the travel expense from Cheyenne” Sneed said. “It also minimizes the fixed costs of the council by not needing to have a large employee trainer staff.”
The council negotiated a new contract with the National Safety Council and became affiliated with the Association of Reciprocal Safety Councils (ARSC.) “The ARSC relationship allows us to present a standardized 4.5 hour basic safety program that was given more than 250,000 times last year nationwide” said Sneed.
The council also partners with SCORE and can provide free counseling for businesses. “A real plus here is that we have been able to help startups understand the need for safety as a mission critical value” he added. Sneed is the Wyoming District Director for SCORE.
Recently the council has been testing the Safe Communities program with a grant from UPS via the National Safety Council. “A town with a population of 242 will be the first town in Wyoming to achieve the designation” said Hannah Fields, council Safe Communities project leader. Other American cities with the designation are Anchorage AK, Omaha NE, Dallas TX and Springfield MO. “Donna Stein-Harris of the National Safety Council will be a speaker at the conference in Cody in May” said Fields. “She can tell you more about what this program can mean for your community. “
Financially during Sneed’s tenure the council has seen revenues grow at a rate of 21% per year. The council did a major office and classroom building renovation and has paid off that cost and the mortgage. As a prudent measure used by responsible non-profits there is now a cash reserve to allow the council to weather downturns. “When I came on board the council was on cash with order with all the suppliers” said Sneed. Now we take all the discounts.”
There is state of the art technology primarily done with donated professional help. “Unfortunately we do not yet have the conference registration fully automated because of some other priorities” Sneed added. “Hopefully we are forgiven that they have to print, write and fax.”
Sneed said that he was not sure what would be next for him. “2008 is the peak year of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) bandwagon” he said. “The safety world got onto it somewhat later than other industries even such as meeting planning but is fast catching up.” Sneed indicated that he has encouraged the safety council board to go that route. Sneed said that there is plenty of CSR money and that safety councils should get their share.
Sneed said “I want to be at the forefront of the future and so I am going to go beyond CSR. It is farther than the council Board wanted to go and so I need to do it another way. We will provide real value to community oriented small businesses that want to save their community and want to save money. We will be working to set actual guarantees of incident reduction on the job, off-the-job and in the community.”
Sneed pointed out that during his tenure at the safety council there was a conscious effort to avoid begging for money. “We accepted but did not even push advertising in the Safety Reminder as we felt that with such limited and diverse circulation it might not be an efficient medium. We have devoted our resources to finding ways to always be available. Safety training programs are offered daily, without advance registration, in Cheyenne and at another council location in Kansas.
Sneed then quoted some statistics and pointed out that more and more money is being spent on safety but the numbers do not show any significant improvement.
“By 2010 there will be more millennials than baby-boomers. With an understanding that the majority of our population is a new generation of people who have a different approach to life, that the industrial economy with its command and control philosophy is gone and that there is global competition we can see the need for a new safety paradigm.”
“ More and more businesses are receptive to moving from a compliance focus to best practices. ” He went on to describe a variety of provable results programs that he will be implementing. “By taking advantage of open source knowledge sharing, virtual community concepts and social networking, with process and product innovation, and by understanding the new ways of learning, then incidents will decrease and safety costs will drop dramatically. With improved distribution efficiency we will also be able to reach a large number of entities not currently reachable.”
Sneed pointed out that he will mobilize collaborative resources in a variety of disciplines all around the world and will be able to quickly provide customized solutions. “Product in a Day (PIAD) and organized tacit knowledge will be two of our competitive advantages” he added.
Sneed has a vast background in a number of industries where he has always been involved in innovation. He left the large company world in 1976 and has transferred and adapted best practices to small business since then. As a new twist now he expects to transfer lessons learned in small business about safety to large business.
When asked for any more comments Sneed said “The council is the smallest turn-around I have done and took the longest. But it has been the most fun.”
He can be reached at 307-433-0557, dsneed@lcrossranch.com or by mail at L Cross Ranch School, PO Box 126, Burns WY 82053.
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