PreAccident Investigation Podcast

In this episode, Todd Conklin joins Amir Shahzad to discuss human and organizational performance, resilience, and how to design systems that allow failures to be caught and recovered before they become disasters. They explore the gap between work as imagined and work as done, the value of learning from everyday work, and practical steps leaders can take to create safer, more resilient workplaces. They also cover cultural change, the role of procedures, adaptive behavior, and the potential—and risks—of AI in safety, all delivered with a mix of practical advice and light-hearted rapid-fire questions.

Hosts Todd and Brent discuss an upcoming restorative workshop centered on RaDonda Vought's account of the Emory Hospital event. The episode highlights how normal performance variability can combine into serious failures, the value of storytelling, and the importance of learning and building resilience across complex systems. The workshop in Santa Fe (March 31–April 1) invites healthcare and high‑risk industry professionals to move from “what” happened to “how” to apply lessons in practice. For more information or to register, contact officetoddconklin@gmail.com.

Host Todd Conklin interviews fatigue expert Mark Rosekind, PhD about his path from sleep research to roles at NASA, the NTSB, and NHTSA, and how sleep science applies across transportation and safety-critical work. Key takeaways: think of sleep like a bank account (sleep debt), "start in the black" before major schedule changes, the benefits of strategic naps, and systemic ways organizations can reduce fatigue to improve performance, health, and safety.

Todd Conklin discusses VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Adaptation) and argues that innovation and safety improve when organizations embrace uncertainty and gather more diverse information and perspectives. He mixes personal travel and Olympics anecdotes, touches on aviation and healthcare examples, and invites listeners to a hands-on workshop to explore these ideas further.

In this clip from the Pre‑Accident Investigation Podcast and Punk Rock Safety, Todd joins Ron, Ben, and David to debate why safety innovation is stalling, where new ideas are coming from, and who’s pushing practice forward. They explore barriers like regulatory pressure, the pull of “normal,” and the difference between improving safety and redesigning work. Using examples from pediatric intensive care and other domains, the conversation highlights pockets of progress, the danger of idea corruption, and the need to embrace experimentation, rethink systems, and find the next generation of thinkers to advance safety practice.

This episode tells the real-life story of how the Society for Patient Safety and a network of children’s hospitals used learning teams, proactive safety huddles, and simulations to reduce unplanned extubations in neonatal ICUs — cutting rates by 60% and preventing thousands of deaths. It covers the data, the frontline-led solutions, the narrowing of racial disparities, and an invitation to a small conference in Santa Fe to learn and share improvement practices.

This episode previews a small workshop in Santa Fe where Todd Conklin, Ann Lyren, and guest ReDonda Vaught will explore a tragic patient safety case. They frame accidents as the unexpected combination of normal performance variability and discuss how to learn from such incidents. Listeners will hear about the meeting goals (March 31–April 1), opportunities to chart the event, and practical tactics for organizations to identify and respond to accumulating risks, with cross-industry lessons and a focus on improving safety culture.

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.

Jay Allen interviews Todd Conklin about his new book, The Stability Trap, exploring why even safe, stable organizations can fail. They discuss the "drive to zero," complacency, pressures on middle management, wearables and data, and lessons from aviation and the pandemic. The episode also covers how AI was used to reorganize the book’s ideas and help craft its ending, and offers practical reframes: treat safety as a capacity, see workers as system monitors, and retool systems to match capacity with risk. The book is available now.

Host Todd introduces his new book, The Stability Trap, and shares a sneak peek episode created with an AI-generated interview. The episode explores why organizations that appear safe can still experience accidents and how success itself can erode safety capacity. The discussion outlines the core ideas: safety as the presence of capacity, the three R's (redefine safety, reframe the worker, relearn investigation), and a five-stage practical blueprint for leaders, safety professionals, frontline workers, supervisors, and system integration. Short and practical, the episode is a teaser for the book and invites listeners to reflect on whether their organizations maintain the resilience, confidence, and systems needed to recover when things go wrong.

In this episode Todd Conklin joins Jowanza Joseph to explore modern safety thinking: why human error is normal, how context shapes behavior, and why leadership response and system recoverability matter more than blame. They draw on examples from Los Alamos, AWS outages, SpaceX and everyday technology to show how organizations can design systems that tolerate failure and learn from it. Listeners will get practical insights into the five principles of human performance and how to build resilient systems that fail safely and recover quickly.