The CTO Show with Mehmet Gonullu #528 Error Isn’t the Enemy: Eckhard Jann on What Aviation Can Teach Startups About Failure and Growth
In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, host Mehmet Gonullu sits down with Eckhard Jann — former commercial pilot, safety manager, author of Error One, and host of the Error One podcast — to explore how lessons from aviation safety can transform leadership, culture, and decision-making in startups.
Drawing from 30 years in the cockpit and years of investigating human error, Eckhard unpacks why mistakes are inevitable but manageable, how psychological safety shapes resilient teams, and why “error culture” may be the missing ingredient in modern business leadership.
⸻
👤 About the Guest
Eckhard Jann is a business consultant, author, and former commercial pilot with three decades of aviation experience. His bestselling book Error One and his podcast of the same name bring the science and psychology of human error to a global audience. Eckhard’s mission: to help leaders, founders, and teams build systems that learn before they fail.
⸻
💡 Key Takeaways
• ✈️ Aviation’s secret: Every procedure, rule, and checklist was “written in blood” — mistakes are teachers, not threats.
• 🧠 Error chains: Big failures are never caused by one mistake — they result from small, ignored signals that compound over time.
• 🗣️ Culture over blame: Teams must be empowered to talk about errors without fear; silence is the real danger.
• 🤝 Psychological safety: Great leaders invite criticism, feedback, and correction from everyone — even the youngest team member.
• 🚀 Startup relevance: Just like in aviation, startups thrive when they treat missteps as learning loops, not career-ending moments.
⸻
🎓 What You’ll Learn
• The concept of “Error One” and how to identify early warning signs in teams and organizations
• How aviation built a resilient safety culture and what startups can borrow from it
• Why blame culture kills innovation
• How psychology and systems thinking can prevent failure before it happens
• The role of human creativity in an AI-driven world where automation can’t anticipate the unexpected
⸻
🕒 Episode Highlights (Timestamps)
• 00:00 – Introduction and Eckhard’s journey from pilot to author
• 03:00 – Why aviation learned safety “written in blood”
• 07:00 – The inevitability of human error and how we grow from it
• 11:00 – The iceberg analogy: visible accidents vs. hidden small mistakes
• 14:00 – Spotting early signals: empowering teams to speak up
• 18:00 – The psychology of fear and building error-safe cultures
• 23:00 – What startups can learn from cockpit teamwork
• 30:00 – Leadership humility and feedback loops
• 33:00 – SpaceX vs. Boeing: two mindsets on risk and failure
• 35:00 – Why AI can’t replace human creativity in crisis situations
• 41:00 – Inside the Error One podcast and its most powerful stories
• 46:00 – Final reflections: separating the error from the person
⸻
🔗 Resources Mentioned
• 📘 Error One by Eckhard Jann — https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DM6Z16GL?dplnkId=c43308fc-bc40-4317-b5af-eebb9c49a3ea&nodl=1
• 🎧 Error One Podcast — https://open.spotify.com/show/09uOW1cp2kQ3Qx91kjQslG?si=4OIu_CbUS-qtdk_FkePsaA
Training: https://aviationinvestigation.com/en/willkommen-beim-aviation-investigation-training-english/
• 🔗 Connect with Eckhard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eckhardjann