Safety on Tap

I was asked to be a judge of these awards.  I declined.  Later on was asked to help present the Young Safety Professional of the Year award, by way of a video interview since the awards were virtually presented, which I did do, which is kind of peripheral to this episode, but if you stick around after the music at the end I share a few reflections on why I said yes to that very intentionally.    I...

As professionals, as subject matter experts, we think we are in the business of knowing.  This is one of the greatest traps we can fall into, and it blinds us to arguably an equally if not more important idea - what we don't know.  And actually, we aren't at all in the business of knowing.  How often do you say, 'I don't know', or some variation of that? Questions need immediate, complete, and cor...

I talk a lot about learning because it's the key to performance improvement for all of us.  Today, the previous guest Ron Gantt and I compare and contrast how each of us has been putting social and experiential learning into practice for hoards of people like you amidst the Coronavirus disruption.  Through this, we created something called the Dialogue Manifesto, which I talk a little about in the...

The past few months have been hard, for everyone. Like it or not, we leaders who are working on improving health and safety, are inevitably closer to current challenges in business than many other professionals. I don't work on the frontlines of health and safety. My work and my impact happen a little further back, away from the spotlight, supporting people like you to be more effective, to grow,...

Many of us would have heard a saying like "health and safety professionals have a little hand a big S". If this is true for you as it is for me, then you might have also found the H has felt smaller than ever as the world is gripped by the Covid-19 public health crisis. Similar but different, the public health perspective reveals some interesting insights beyond what an OHS perspective brings, to...

Many of us would have heard a saying like "health and safety professionals have a little hand a big S". If this is true for you as it is for me, then you might have also found the H has felt smaller than ever as the world is gripped by the Covid-19 public health crisis. Similar but different, the public health perspective reveals some interesting insights beyond what an OHS perspective brings, to...

What if we spent more time improving work, would health and safety also improve as a result? What if we did that using many of the principles built into safety thinking, but not calling it safety? What if people have been doing exactly that for almost half a decade, with great results? They have, and that's what we're chatting about today.  My guest today is Ian Borges.  Ian is one of the founders...

I went out three weeks into the real craziness of the coronavirus. I have collected hundreds and hundreds of data points from people like you giving me an insight into what you are facing right now. And the opportunities that adversity brings two things are emerging, which are the focus of today's conversation with Dr. David Provan, the tension between feeling safe versus being safe. And the need...

I am planning to still bring you regular podcasts.  But we can't ignore what's going on in these coronavirus times.  To distinguish these podcasts from the regular ones, I thought I would number them C1, C2, but then I realised, coronavirus is not defining who I am and my response right now.  What is defining me, is togetherness.  So this is episode is not C1, its T1, T for Togetherness.  The firs...

Today's guest brings so much learning to you today. A safety concierge, a career with laser-focused intent, not fitting into a box, and understanding where the real value lies in customer interaction. You're in for a treat. Cameron is a career health and safety professional, with health and safety experience across many sectors with roles from the frontline into senior leadership in high-risk indu...

I usually try to make episodes that are as timeless as possible, in as much as you might listen the day it comes out, or a year or two later. Today's episode is both very timely today, because it is the 17th of March 2020, amidst the exponential growth of the coronavirus, or COVID-19, or SARS-COV-2, NCOV, or any other name people give it. But even if you are listening to this in a years time when...

Five times in the past week, I have had business card ceremonies.    You know those moments, not very long, a second or two, the cultural practice repeated millions of times every day across the business world, the moment in time for the passing of a little piece of card from one person to another.    I don't want your business card, and I don't think anyone else wants yours or mine either.  And I...

Many of you will know Professor Erik Hollnagel. Erik said he doesn't like long introductions, so I'll do it in the intro here before the actual interview. Erik is Senior Professor of Patient Safety at the University of Jönköping, Sweden. You may have heard of Erik from his prolific writing, with well knows books including Safety I and Safety II, the Past and Future of Safety Management, and Resili...

In this episode we're continuing our recent theme of looking at the future.  Previous guest and friend of the show Kobi Simmat, CEO at Best Practice, shares a couple of big business trends he is seeing, which are relevant to all of us, we dig into some of the key business skills which might help you become the next CEO, and hear about an awesome live event he is putting on with a phenomenal line u...

It's great to bring you another listener question. These kinds of podcasts are designed to help you bridge the gap between hearing and knowing something, and putting it into practice in real life. I can tell you all the stories under the sun, but there is something special, and simply enlightening about a specific person with a specific goal and you hearing it in the first-person. This is from Cli...

Being future-ready and future-relevant means that we need different skills than what got us here. Not only that, today's guest today sees tensions businesses experience between competing goals, tensions we need to see and wrestle with to be future-ready and future-relevant. My guest today is Sheri Greenwell, a health and safety leader and what I would call a neogeneralist. Sheri is passionately en...

A sunk cost is the bias in many animals, humans and pigeons included, to continue with a course of action or commitment on the basis of costs already incurred.  These costs might be time, money, energy, or even social capital (being seen to be committed).  The more we perceive that we have invested, the more likely we will continue down the same path even in the face of contrary information, chang...

Can we learn better about our operations? What if we learned, to learn better? My guest today is Andy White, a superbly intelligent, caring, and insightful safety professional.  An engineer by training, he morphed into safety given what he learned about managing actual safety managing construction projects.  Andy is a lifelong learner, in both the experiential sense and the academic sense.  He has...

Every episode of this podcast finishes with these same words: Until next time, what's the one thing you'll do to take positive, effective or rewarding action, to grow yourself, and drastically improve health and safety along the way?   What does that action look like? Because there is a good action, and there is not so good action.

This one is a melting pot of ideas and perspectives. Learning about microlearning, learning from gifted kids, and all of this from a chemical engineering Ph. D.My guest today is Kirstine Hulse. She is a chemical engineer, who ended up in a really diverse range of roles including health and safety. And she is a leader in the field of gifted kids education. She is currently the General Manager of He...

In that sense, I am not the flower flourishing but the gardener, carefully helping prepare soil, to sow new seeds of ideas and challenge, to water and fertilise the growth of others. But events can be a flash in the pan, superbly energising and flourishing in the moment, which often fades away quickly. I will be supercharging this hybrid combo approach to learning in 2020.  

For how long did you and your partner date? How long before you and your partner made some significant decisions, like meeting each other's family, going on holiday together, getting a dog, sharing bank details, moving in together, or maybe (call me old fashioned), getting married? We are all in sales now.  To sell is human.  Maybe you might spend some of your reflection time in the holidays think...

Here at Safety on Tap, we spend a lot of time looking forward to new ideas, innovation, and a future-focus.   But, as you know, reflecting on our experiences, and making sense of that socially with each other, is one of the most powerful sources of learning right under our noses.  Today, my guest reflects on a career of insights, to fuel your growth.  I'm chatting with Russel Skilleter.  Career he...

Here is our first taste, bringing the Safety Color Concept to an entire conference room, most of whom who have never heard it before, live from the South Australian Safety Symposium. It describes the nature causes problems and effects of Safety Cutter. Dave Provan and I started Collaborating a little while ago to bring the Safety Cutter problem and solutions to life, out of academia and into pract...

My guest today is Professor Andrew Sharman, President of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health.  Many of you listening will be IOSH members or might have done training which was delivered or accredited by IOSH.  Andrew is the CEO of international culture and leadership consultancy RMS, with qualifications in health and safety law, industrial psychology and organisational behavior.  And...