PAPod 582 - Accountability vs. Blame: Who Really Owns Safety?

Todd Conklin breaks down why accountability is an act of clarity, not blame or discipline, and why leaders and workers share responsibility for operational safety. He highlights the need to set roles before incidents occur, contrasts accountability with performance management, and announces a case-study workshop about Redonda’s Vanderbilt story in Santa Fe (March 31–April 1).

Todd Conklin explores why its so difficult to measure events that never happen and how traditional safety metrics can mislead organizations. He argues for focusing on metrics that validate safeguards and create desired outcomes rather than only counting accidents. The episode also touches on automation risks, the limits of frequency-based measures, and the need for better leading indicators and verification practices to keep systems safe even when nothing appears to go wrong.

Todd Conklin opens 2026 reflecting on why how we begin interactions and jobs matters more than we often realize. He uses stories from travel, aviation, and workplace examples to show that the start of an encounter often predicts its outcome. Conklin urges listeners to choose kindness, psychological safety, and deliberate planning—start the job when the right controls are in place—rather than beginning from hate, division, or aggression. He links these opening choices to organizational resilience, safety, and reliability. The episode is a New Year’s call to focus on how we start conversations and work: start safe, be kind, and build cultures that help people succeed in difficult and high-risk environments.

In this episode Todd Conklin reflects on entering 2026 by urging listeners to focus on how we begin interactions—at work and in life. He explains how starting encounters from a place of respect, psychological safety, and proper planning increases the chances of ending safely and builds stronger, more resilient organizations. Practical takeaways include prioritizing pre-job readiness, shifting from compliance to capacity, and choosing kindness over division to improve culture, safety, and outcomes.

10. New Year’s Eve recap reflecting on a busy 2016 and the journey ahead into 2017. 9. Host shares personal travel highlights and experiments in gratitude and generosity. 8. Announces a 2017 focus on seeking and affirming the fundamental goodness in people. 7. Reviews safety’s evolution: from compliance (Safety One) to safety-by-design (process safety). 6. Explains the current phase emphasizing human performance and managing variability rather than blaming workers. 5. Notes that incidents have become rarer and traditional metrics are less predictive. 4. Discusses fatalities as outlier events that require different thinking and study. 3. Invites listeners to run small sociological experiments to improve everyday interactions. 2. Celebrates the collective progress in safety and the privilege of contributing to that change. 1. Ends with a New Year’s wish: be with each other, keep managing uncertainty wisely, and have a great 2017.

This special Thanksgiving 2021 episode shares one simple piece of advice: be grateful. It highlights the power of gratitude during hard times and encourages you to pause and appreciate what you have. When the world feels difficult, instead of meeting pain with pain, reflect on the people, support, and good things in your life. Gratitude helps you move forward with strength and perspective. Learn something every day, have fun, and be good to each other.

In this episode Todd Conklin uses the season of gift-giving to explain near-miss reporting: why it matters, how it shows whether controls worked or luck saved the day, and how organizations should respond with gratitude and learning—not punishment.

This episode shifts the safety conversation from continuous improvement to continuous capacity, introducing a practical dashboard of 10 operational indicators—five system capacities (exposure to unforgiving energy, robustness of safeguards, error tolerance/recoverability, detectability of variance, and recovery capacity) and five human capacities (sensitivity to variation, frontline insight, quality of learning, psychological safety, and supervisor load). Host Todd Conklin explains how these measurable and observable indicators link engineering controls with human and organizational factors, and why monitoring them regularly helps leaders improve resilience and manage high‑risk operations more effectively.

Todd Conklin talks with Brent Sutton and Jeff Lyth about the upcoming HOP Workshop in Vancouver (Jan 28–29, 2026), centered on Redonda’s powerful firsthand story of patient safety, complex systems, restorative justice and resilience — lessons that translate across industries. Day one features Redonda’s narrative and panel discussion; day two focuses on hands‑on learning and innovation. Please attend, this workshop will be amazingly good for the soul! For tickets and details visit hopconference.com.

This episode explores human performance and aviation safety, contrasting airline procedures with general aviation risks. Guests discuss building safety margins, the importance of planning vs. acting, and how economic pressures can erode resilience. Highlights include treating near-misses as learning opportunities, practical tips for pilots to increase recoverability, and real-world examples from naval operations and long-term flying experience.