Feeding on risk creativity and dedication: the secret sauce for success: tying risk management into the corporate philosophy.

It says it all about a risk management program when the company CEO gets before a global audience on one of those cable financial shows and states, "We are focused on running the cleanest and safest restaurants in the business." Darden Restaurants CEO and Chairman Clarence Otis Jr. did just that. It's the ultimate recognition for the work of Darden Director of Risk Management Tom Cipollone.

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What can drive a CEO to speak so highly about risk management, safety and loss control? Try 17 straight quarters with reductions in workers' comp claims, with an overall reduction of 38.2 percent since FY2002. Claims with dollars going down by 48.8 percent from FY2002 to FY2007. And the expense of claims overall dropping at an annual rate of 15.4 percent in the last four years.

Or when it comes to the other prime restaurant concern--customer safety--Cipollone's work has lowered general liability claims frequency by 25.9 percent from FY2002 to FY2007.

Add up all of these results for the fastest growing casual dining company in America, and you get a 46.2 percent drop in workers' comp and general liability costs from FY2004 to FY2007, or $60.7 million.

"We've made some pretty amazing strides against the industry and in a broader look at the competitive landscapes," said Bill White, senior vice president, treasurer and Cipollone's direct supervisor at Darden.

"What's really exciting about being a part of it is he's driven it into the highest levels of senior management," said Charles Gerber of Liberty Mutual, who heads the risk consulting team hired by Cipollone to deliver risk management services and safety throughout the Darden organization.

Gerber has the sense that, while watching Cipollone operate over the last four years, that that was his goal from the get-go--to get this top level buy-in about safety, to essentially get the execs to "walk their talk."

"Early on when this process really began, he laid out the information, it was pretty clear. The opportunity spoke for itself when you looked at the dollars and the pressures that were naturally occurring," said White.

"He was able to take that thread if you will and turn it into an opportunity for us to really lay out the different steps that we could take," he said.

It's a matter, White explained, of not only appealing to the feel-good side of company management, but proving to them that the bottom line would always benefit as well.

Gerber astutely observed that Cipollone was able to apply this strategy with "baby step" tactics, basing everything he did on facts and evidence, not making sweeping promises he couldn't readily hold, identifying root causes of loss, teaching operations to avoid them and showing management the financial incentives for doing so.

Cipollone, who has been with Darden for 13 years and is the company's first and only risk manager, explained how the company used to play "whack a mole" with risk management problems, but that proved impossible with 1,700 restaurants. The risk manager believes that the company needs a passion and a system, which doesn't happen all at once.

"You need to demonstrate credible results, start out by building on small successes," he said. "It's to the point now, whatever we bring to them (management), has credibility and they're willing to implement it or give it very serious consideration to build it into their business plans."

We're talking baby steps like an investment in box and bag cutting tools, new cutting gloves, slip resistant soles--all which seem small on their own, but multiplied by thousands of restaurants and employees can have huge impact.

The slip-resistant sole program alone delivered $13 million in results, reported Cipollone, with a 72 percent reduction in slips and falls into the second year and beyond. Now Cipollone is into working with building designers to engineer safety into how his restaurants are laid out and constructed.

It all sounds pretty basle, admitted Cipollone, but it's a matter of implementation and doing it right the first time. It's also about innovation down to the minutest details, ingraining risk awareness into every nook and cranny of an operation.

It's about passion, too, vision and dedication to that vision.

"I think it's something that's spreading through all the business units," said White, pointing to how the two new Darden brands, LongHorn Steakhouse and Capital Grille are enthusiastic about entering into Cipollone's program. "There's a lot more pull for the services that his team provides than push."

Responsibility Leader

If risk managers should take one thing from Tom Cipollone's success at Darden Restaurants, it's his ability to earn his leaders' respect and fire up their imaginations. A lot of risk managers talk about getting their foot into the C-suite. Well, boys and girls, it's time to get your goals ingrained in those executive minds.

It's time to effect change in the C-suite. Like the time that the president of one of Darden's brands requested an extra pair of slip-resistant galoshes before he entered one of his restaurants ... because he forgot his own. And need we remind you of the story of Darden's CEO chanting the benefits of risk management to a global financial audience?

Cipollone said his key has been aligning risk management with his company's core values, or more importantly, vice versa.

"How we run those restaurants on a day-to-day basis directly impacts the lives of our employees and our guests," he said.