PreAccident Investigation Podcast PAPod 570 - Safety Differently Down Under: Todd Conklin in Auckland
Nov 1, 2025
Todd Conklin, a renowned safety thinker and author, lights up discussions in Auckland about leadership and learning in the workplace. He emphasizes that safety is about the presence of control and explores how leaders' responses shape improvement. Todd argues that everyday learning should replace incident counting, highlights the importance of humility in leadership, and offers practical steps to foster a learning culture. He shares engaging stories from his writing journey, revealing how to build systems that gracefully handle failures.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Leaders' Responses Determine Learning
- Leaders' responses shape whether an organization learns or shuts down after failure.
- Improving safety must be a deliberate strategy led by management to build confidence and capacity.
Convene Leaders To Build Confidence
- Bring the leadership team together after a fatality and acknowledge fear openly.
- Focus with leaders on building confidence and capacity to prevent recurrence.
Use Strategic Opportunism To Act Early
- Be strategically opportunistic: don't wait for a fatality to act, use near-misses and conversations to drive change.
- Frame incidents as losses of control to engage leaders before catastrophe.