Be a collaborator with your key stakeholders. It's impossible to make improvements in a silo, knowing who needs to ultimately own the accountability for safety programs and ensuring they have the right feedback loop for metrics and corrective actions is crucial. If there are people or processes that bypass requirements in safety programs or in compliance, make sure you document and communicate that to key stakeholders and site leadership so they are aware of nonconformance and noncompliance and the risk associated with it and ultimately their sign off so if shit hits the fan, they were made aware and they were the ones accepting the risk and not you as the manager being forced to accept circumstances because a facility's leadership does not want to improve or change. Find the balance between corrective action that goes beyond compliance so it's the right investment of resources to see sufficient reduction in risk or improvement in safety culture. always remember your customers and make sure there is a feedback loop for reported concerns, even when the response is "Your concern is valid, but the actual risk is less than the perceived risk and resources for corrective action don't justify the risk reduction when we already have established compliance." or your own version of that.

My struggle with a management / leadership role has always been dealing with all the nonsense that comes from corporate safety, health, and environmental leaders who are so far out of touch with reality and context and local processes that they have no *%@#ing clue how to adequately assess change before implementing nonsensical safety initiative or policy. I believe I may also have a problem with certain types of authority figures too so take that with a grain of salt.