Gerard co-authored Dialogue: Rediscover the Transforming Power of Conversation with Linda Ellinor, and it was that book that a senior organisational development consultant at the plant read before inviting Gerard in to help. The compliance-and-punishment approach between 1996 and 1999 had reduced recorded injuries but produced a parallel culture of workarounds and non-reporting, meaning the real picture was hidden rather than improved. The new initiative was designed on fundamentally different assumptions: participation was voluntary, individual teams owned the process they chose to achieve an Incident and Injury-Free outcome, and choice replaced mandate at every level. The target was zero recordable events per year, a vision leadership called IIF, and the paper documents how dialogue became the primary mechanism for anchoring both the values and the practical skills needed to make that shift in culture durable. Published in The World Needs Dialogue! Four: Putting Dialogue to Work (2022), the paper offers a detailed account of what it takes to move safety culture from external enforcement to internal commitment.