You know, you're never going to discipline yourself into better safety, right? I mean, you guys got that? Why does this topic keep coming up over and over and over again? Hey, everybody, Todd Conklin, Pre-Accident Investigation. How in the crap are you? I hope you're doing good. So for those of you that don't know, we're in the midst of the giant snowmageddon storm that's about to start. I think it actually will start the day this podcast comes out. So it's very interesting to talk to people because they're saying things like, I've got to go buy more milk. And I always wonder if what happens is people get a lot of milk and then they come home and it snows. I mean, I'll give you the storm. It happens. And then they realize, you know, I just don't drink that much milk. It's not something I drink. And so they have a lot of excess milk. So they find themselves making milk things like milkshakes. I'm for that now. So that's sorry that that's that's big on the news agenda for me right now. I'm trying to think what good I have. I have the most interesting podcast coming up. I'm so excited to buy this. It is a cool breeze interview about somebody who's been robbed, was robbed. This is past tense, obviously, by Bonnie and Clyde. Oh, I'm sure it doesn't really fit into human performance and safety. But gosh, I really wanted to capture this story and save it. And so I recorded it. And then as I recorded it, I thought, I'm going to put this on the podcast because this is the most interesting. Any story that involves croquet mallets, I'm interested in. And that's all I'm going to say because that's coming up. So you'll have to wait for it. Keep listening. That's a part of what's happening. The other thing is, remember I told you we were in that position where we had to move a meeting that was going to be held in Vancouver? Because there's just a lot of crap going on. Just weird crap. I don't even know how else to describe it. We have successfully moved it. And the meeting with Redonda Vote and really the SPS folks, the people from patient safety, especially for pediatric hospitals, and myself, it's kind of a three-person meeting. We've moved it. It's going to be in Santa Fe, New Mexico on March 31st and April 1st of this year, which is kind of a short deadline. but it's because we're sort of scrambling a little because we had these difficulties in getting speakers across borders. Then now we're in a position where that problem goes away because we're not taking anybody across a border, but you're welcome to come if you want to. I do think they're going to hold the numbers to a smaller workshop group. And basically we're going to go through the case study of Redonda's case in Vanderbilt Hospital which if you heard that interview, you know it's an interesting case. And then we're going to look at that through the lens of sort of an organizational failure and do some real-time mapping and do some real-time condition identification. And then out of that comes a pretty interesting discussion on tactics and application. It's certainly a cool meeting if you're in the medical profession. It's kind of also a cool meeting if you're not in the medical profession. It's going to be an interesting meeting if you want to bring somebody to sort of introduce them to some of these ideas, because Redonda's story is super, super compelling. And she tells it quite amazingly. But I mean, it's her story and it involves, you know, courts and jails and district attorneys and liabilities and accountabilities and culpabilities. And it's just a really interesting opportunity to learn. And so the learning opportunity is something that we ought to be thinking about in the best way we can. And to me, I really wanted this meeting to happen, not because the first one had to be postponed. God bless the guys that were doing the first one. I mean, they were working hard to make it happen. But because I think it was leaving the story unsaid, and I think it's a story you're going to hear much more about. The amazing thing to me is as we talked about having this meeting with the medical patient safety people they said how common this is and how common the errors in medicine create outcomes that create organizational responses that are not really aligned towards improvement but are in fact aligned towards culpability So long story short, I'm just kind of talking now. I don't really know other than I know the dates and I know the place. It's in the Hotel Santa Fe, and it's March 31st, April 1st. If you can sneak away, that'll be a pretty good time to come to Santa Fe. And if the weather's good at all, we'll go on a bike ride. How's that sound? Does that sound like something you want to do? Because I'm there for you if it comes to the bike ride. So let's talk for a brief moment about a topic we've talked about bunches of times before. And I guess I would start by saying I understand exactly why organizations are fixated on establishing, understanding, discussing, desperately holding on to this notion of accountability. But I think what's most interesting to me, and we'll talk about accountability versus discipline, when accountability makes the most sense. I promise we'll get to all that today because I guess today's a refresher podcast. But I think what I find most interesting is why are those questions being asked is maybe the first part of the discussion we want to kind of delve into. Because when an organization or leaders within that organization are hyper fixated on holding workers to account, what that tells me almost immediately, and I mean this in the nicest way I can say it, I don't mean this to sound nearly as damning or as predictably finger-pointing as it probably does, but what it tells me is that you're probably now interfacing with an organization that truly believes the worker is the problem, and that if these workers would just try harder, or care more, or be more obedient, none of this crap would have happened. And what they're really saying, again, in the most loving way I can say this, is that safety is not my problem. It's the worker's problem. Now, I challenge you, as you listen to this walking the dog or whatever, shoveling snow or whatever it is you're doing, I challenge you to think about that. because if that's true, and I think it kind of is, I sure spend a lot of time having this discussion, then what that means is, is that we collectively in industry throughout history, so that's everybody, we've done a really bad job at helping people understand who truly owns this idea of operational resilience, reliability, safety, and stability. Because if we're farming out all the responsibility for stable operations to the workers, I guess the question I'd ask you is, what are we doing as leaders? Are we managing the more important stuff? Like, I don't know what that is, but it must be sales or something or toilet paper or logistics. I mean, I'm not sure that's the case. But yet, as I say that, I understand completely this idea of dividing power, of actually creating opportunity, of distributing responsibility throughout the organization. Because one person can't run everything, especially as our operations get more complex and as our organizations get larger, as the geography of control increases and the span of control and the technological advances in control. And AI is not going to make this better. I'm not sure it's going to make it worse, but I don't think it's going to make it better. I think we have to go back to the very first principles, kind of the non-Tayloristic, Frederick Taylor, but the non-Tayloristic principles that say there's some division between working and leading. I'm not sure that division is as clean and as crisp and is as large as we thought it once was. Because I can tell you as a leader in your organization you have just as much stake in the game for operational resilience reliability stability and safety as anybody on the production floor You do You just are as involved and as exposed as everybody else in the organization. Now, production workers may not have a big stake in strategic leadership, or at least we may not think they do. I think the ability to influence an organization from the bottom is oftentimes quite easily found. We can talk about that later. That's a different podcast. But trust me when I tell you, if I need a new stapler and you won't give me a new stapler, I will find a way for the company to give me a new stapler. That's a sidebar. Don't fixate on that. But that idea that somehow the organization is cut in half, is bifurcated between those who do the work and those who manage the work, and if the people who do the work would be safer, then the people who manage the work would have a safer organization, that's probably no longer incredibly helpful. And if you remember the book that Jenny Long and I wrote, I think it's called Workers Aren't the Problem, They're the Solution, or something like that. What we learned when we talk to workers is that, in fact, that's simply not the case. That workers now are no longer nearly as strongly identified with our organizations as they once were, and that they really don't have a long-term sense of commitment to your success. And part of that is because they will look you right in the eye and tell you that they don't feel like you have a long-term sense of commitment to their success. Now, that's probably not true, but that certainly is a prevailing feeling that we saw, and it seems to be getting more. So where do we go and how do we think about this? Well, step one is I think we have to understand that there's a sense of shared fate. And we can use the old Los Alamos definition of accountability, which we spent months on, months, months with really smart people. Accountability is a partnership. Workers or leaders create an environment where workers can be successful, right? That's a pretty darn good definition of accountability. But what that counts on almost immediately is the belief that there's this sense of shared fate. We're all in this together and collectively we will make the improvements happen. Individually, I'll work as hard as I can to improve, but collectively we'll make the improvements happen. That takes us really to understanding that difference between accountability and discipline. The craziest thing, and I might add, I think we're getting better at this, but the craziest thing to me is somehow the belief that accountability and discipline are interchangeable. They're not. They're very different. Accountability really talks about who will do what, roles, responsibilities, and authorities, discipline is actually used to manage performance. And the most interesting thing to me is that safety management is not the same as performance management. They're different. And one thing I can almost guarantee you as a leader is that you'll always have to do performance management. I mean, in my leadership career, I never was in a position where I didn't have to manage performance. I always had some situation, something, positive or negative, where I had to manage performance. I had to help an employee grow and improve and develop. That's a big part of performance management. I mean, that's a big, I had to help employees that maybe weren't a good fit for their job find a place where they were a better fit for their job. That's performance management. But near as I could tell, none of that really directly has to do with the way we lead, understand and manage high risk, highly reliable operations and safety. And so understanding there's a clear division between the two, that's pretty vital. Even though over time we've made performance management kind of wonky and difficult to do, so oftentimes we'll use safety infractions to solve performance problems. But when that happens, that's actually a bad sign. And if we have data that says that took place, that's an indicator of problems deeper inside the system. And we should probably respond to that indicator because it is an indicator of problems deeper inside the system. So understanding there's a clean definition between accountability and discipline really says to the organization there's a clean definition between safety management and performance management And then the third part which I think is pretty vital is when do we engage this accountability discussion Well the quick answer is there really only one time to engage the accountability discussion and that is before something bad happens So if you have not had the accountability talk before an accident takes place, you sure as crap don't get to have it after the accident takes place. Because if it's after the accident, it's no longer an accountability discussion. It's a culpability discussion. It's a blame discussion. It's who did what. And I would suggest to you that accountability and blame are pretty different too. Accountability before something bad happens, Eric Holnagel's notion of what's happening when nothing bad's happening, right? That accountability discussion at that point is way more of an act of clarity in a complex, adaptive, constantly uncertain operational environment. Anything we can do to create clarity is warranted and celebrated. And that's exactly what accountability discussions do. Who is accountable for what? And when that conversation happens before something takes place, that's a really good conversation. And so the timing for this accountability discussion can't be after the accident takes place. It can't be after we already have the profound knowledge of retrospect, because, you know, retrospect makes us all super smart and good looking. Accountability has to be the discussion that happens while we're still facing uncertain outcomes. And what accountability does is help us make those uncertain outcomes at least a tiny bit more certain. This discussion is an important one, and I can't believe we're having it again. But if you can't tell, I got taken to school pretty hard by one angry dude who wanted to tell me that if we give up accountability, what we've given up is leadership. and I'm not sure, A, we're giving up accountability and B, relatively certain, as hard as I've tried in my career, I haven't figured up a way to give up leadership yet. I wanted to find it. I looked for it desperately. They're different things and different things require different approaches. Accountability is an act of clarity. Accountability is the discussion you have before something bad takes place. Accountability is not blame. Accountability is different than discipline. Accountability is not performance management. What accountability is, is an act of clarity. Accountability really shows kindness and concern and a recognition that not every system will end perfectly and that our world is filled with uncertain outcomes. Accountability assumes failure can happen and makes room for a discussion around how we'll recover. What capacity lives in the system? How much margin is there for us to play with? Accountability is an act of clarity. Holy crap, you guys. It's another 20-minute podcast. What is wrong with him? I'll tell you what's wrong with him. He's busy. No, I've got a bunch of stuff going on. And so I knew I wanted to have this conversation. And you get to a point where you're like, 20 minutes is pretty good on this. I mean, we could go 30, but I'd be saying the same stuff over and over again. And near as I can tell, I already said the same stuff over and over again in the first 20 minutes. So it'd be like the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth times for saying the same stuff. But trust me and trust the world when I say, once we sort of crack the code on improving communication, learning earlier, and having the accountability discussion before something bad happens, we will live in a better, safer, more reliable world. I promise you, it's that simple. But we just got to make it happen. I'll see you at this Redonda vote meeting on March 31st and April 1st. You want to hang out with me on April Fool's Day because that is pretty much one of my highlight days of the year. Until then, learn something new every single day. I bet you learned a teeny something new today. I bet you did. We'll see. Tell me if you didn't. Write it in the comments. Have as much fun as you possibly can. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Check in on one another. And for goodness sakes, you guys, be safe. Thank you.
