PAPod 529 - Embracing the Imperfect Journey: A New Year's Reflection

Show Transcript

WEBVTT

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Hello, everybody. Did you miss me? I had a little teeny vacation.

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It was sweet. It was really fun. I had a great time.

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And now it all starts again. We'll be right back.

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Music.

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Hey everybody, Todd Conklin, Pre-Accident Investigation Safety Podcast. How are you?

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Man, it's 2025. Can you believe it? Yeah, I know. It's unbelievable.

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And it's exciting to be with you.

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I'm looking forward to another year of joy. This is our 11th year of the podcast.

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I don't know what that means, but I mean, that's, I don't know if I've done anything for 11 years.

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Seriously, that's not really true. I mean, that's, no, I had my job for a long time.

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I didn't intend to have my job for a long time. When I took my job,

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I remember thinking, I'll keep this three years, five at the max, at the max.

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And in many, many, many, many years past that deadline, I still had the job.

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So I guess I do have some commitment issues, but also some commitment potential.

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So I'm like two sides of the same coin.

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That's me. That's the depth I have. But no, 11 years on the podcast is kind of crazy.

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And it's been really a very fun ride.

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And this year promises to be just as exciting as a ton of other ones.

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I mean, I already have like really interesting stuff happening.

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Like I'm going to record a really interesting one this week that I can't even

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wait to get on board and play for you guys.

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I mean, that's how exciting my life is. And the holidays were great for me,

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and the break was amazing.

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I'm noticing as I get older, two things.

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One is I definitely appreciate breaks differently, probably much more.

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And two, it seems like as you get older, you realize that your priorities kind of change.

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Change and that whole idea

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of doing things that are fun and satisfying becomes more

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important or at least to me has become more important

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now I wouldn't say I had a big work-life balance issue I mean maybe I did I

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haven't thought much about this out loud but I will tell you that it's been

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super enjoyable to just kind of hang out and I've enjoyed that immensely seeing family and.

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You know, farting around. It's the weather's so weird in New Mexico this year

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that there was a surprising amount

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of bicycle riding that I didn't think would happen, but in fact did.

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So that was great news. I mean, that was amazing news.

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So that was fun as well. And now we're just going to, you know,

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zoom back into the pod and talk about some things and get some things covered

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and have a great adventure.

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So with that, why don't we kick into what we want to do?

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Because it's a good time to have that conversation.

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Music.

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So let me start today and our discussion into the new year, because the whole

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theme of today is this launching into the new year, to 2025.

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And let me start by giving you a Voltaire quote, which sounds super like heady and intellectual.

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Like, I don't know how often you normally in conversations have Voltaire quotes,

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but probably not that often, like for me, hardly ever.

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But in this case, I think it works kind of beautifully.

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And it's going to be a pretty important theme for us this year,

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Because I kind of feel we're in a position where our conversations around how

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this new thrust into doing safety and reliability and resilience differently

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has become a much bigger conversation.

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And part of that is the most recent plane crash in South Korea.

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It looks like there's just a lot of systemic factors, which is always true.

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I mean, that's not the smartest thing I've ever said, but there's a lot of systemic

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factors in that that I think are worth thinking about and contemplating and

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are going to become more and more apparent as the investigation proceeds and we learn more.

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But this Voltaire quote is a pretty good kickoff point.

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And you've probably heard this a bunch of times before, but I don't know if

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you knew that Voltaire said this way in deep history. Right.

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And that is that perfect is the enemy of good. Perfect is the enemy of good.

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Now, when you hear that, and you hear that, that's the kind of thing that people

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pop off in meetings all the time.

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You know, that's how you sit in the corner of the meeting and kind of look brilliant

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is by saying stuff like that.

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But I think it really plays into a conversation that we've been having for the

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last 11 years on this podcast.

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And it's really around the notion of zero or the notion of perfection,

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that we will do this perfectly, that our safety programs will be perfect.

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The comment, someday we'll work ourselves out of a job, this notion that zero

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is the only goal morally and actually to have for an organization.

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And it's really weirdly controversial.

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I mean, you know that because we still have conversations about this all the time.

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And that companies really hold on to zero tightly and that holding on to zero

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is actually probably much more dangerous than it is beneficial.

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But that's a hard sell. I mean, you're not going to have that.

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You're not going to convince somebody of that right away. And I'm not sure our

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job is to convince people anyway.

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I mean, I think we're probably not salespeople.

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Not that there's anything wrong with salespeople, don't get me wrong,

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but our job is not to convince our organization to believe something differently.

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Our job over time, through many discussions and conversations.

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Through opportunities to teach and to show and to learn,

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is to actually help the organization mature to a new and different idea of what

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success looks like, which we've talked about a bunch.

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And you could make a case to me, well, isn't that the same thing?

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I mean, isn't that selling?

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I can't even talk. Isn't that selling or sales-y?

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That was a combination of both those things. Well, maybe, but I think one of

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the places to start with is the belief that somehow our systems are perfect

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and our people are fallible.

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And so if we could just align our people to be perfect with our perfect systems,

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then we would have absolute predictability and the world would be stable and

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nothing bad would ever happen.

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And that's simply not true. I mean, that's never true. It never will be true.

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You don't live in a world that even offers that as an opportunity.

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And yet this idea of perfection is really strong. song.

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And so what happens is if we build this sort of notion that we have to be perfect,

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then we don't value the good that happens along the way,

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which is kind of what Voltaire must have meant when he said this many, many years ago.

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And our challenge is to really value the good that's happening every day in our organizations.

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So when I first started this journey a long time ago, one of the places that

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we went really early from my organization was to Atlanta, Georgia,

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to a place called INPO, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations.

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And they had a building, seems to me, if I remember correctly,

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this was a long time ago, it was kind of at the edge of a mall parking lot,

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you know, like the same place where Olive Garden would be, but yet it was an office building.

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And when you walked in the office building, it was a pretty traditional-looking

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office building, except in the lobby of the office building was a sculpture,

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actually a stone carving that had the word perfection carved into it,

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except that it wasn't completely finished.

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It was like perfection, and the ION part wasn't quite done.

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And it was really interesting because it was one of the first things we looked at,

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and I thought it was a very brilliant way to show the need to continually improve

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and that we never will have a stone sculpture that says perfection in the lobby

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of our organization. That won't exist.

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We'll constantly be striving towards becoming better and better and better,

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which is the spirit of improvement.

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But to get there, we first must realize that perfection itself cannot,

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or maybe better to say, does not exist.

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Now, that idea is a really important idea.

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And when we talk about it, like right now when you're walking the dog or driving

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your truck or whatever you're doing

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right now, it's pretty easy to kind of conceptually think about that.

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But then when we look at the way we measure and the way we monitor and our espoused

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goals for what we want our organization to do and have, we get a little confused.

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Because if we set our standard at perfection, we're always going to be disappointed.

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And good is not going to appear good.

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So improvement is an incremental journey. We're constantly getting better little

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by little, paso y paso, bit by bit.

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That improvement is really what we want to foster.

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It's what we want to monitor. And it's how we want to think about moving forward.

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The idea that we'll somehow reach the goal, that perfection will be completely

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carved in stone and we will have done it, is probably more dangerous than good,

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which was Voltaire's point.

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Perfect is the enemy of good.

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And to think about that as a challenge for the new year, I think is a pretty

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important starting place for our discussions.

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And we have them a lot, a couple times a week. I mean, We're not afraid to have a discussion.

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But in order for us to do that successfully, one

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of the things we have to do is really think about the ability to monitor what's

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good in our organization or what's good in our lives or what's good in hanging

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out or what's good about vacation.

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And to think about improvement as a constant journey towards good,

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defaulting towards improvement. That's how I talk about it all the time.

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That when you're met as a leadership team with a decision and you have to determine

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what to do next, make that decision based upon this.

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Does this move us towards becoming better? Does this default us towards improvement?

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And when that answer becomes apparent, well, that's a really important way to

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think about getting better.

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2025 is going to be another year. Probably it's going to be filled with ups

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and downs, with good things and bad things.

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Our organizations will absolutely get better and get worse. They'll ebb and flow.

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That's inherent in the business we do.

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Organizations are constantly moving forward and then falling backwards.

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That's normal. The challenge is to incrementally understand that improvement

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happens one step at a time.

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Maybe not in a linear fashion. Maybe it doesn't follow a roadmap specifically,

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but we sort of move our organizations towards defaulting to getting better.

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And that challenge, I think, is what carries us through and allows us the ability to do our work.

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Good is excellent and should be monitored.

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Perfect is the enemy of good.

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Music.

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So that's the pod for the kickoff for 2025 short and sweet but i kind of wanted

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to set the tone pretty early because the issue that i keep seeing coming back

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again and again is our organizations are really struggling with what the target

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should be because we've told them for years the target should be zero.

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In fact, we have posters and jackets and hats and signs and banners that all

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say target zero, zero, zero, baby.

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And one of the things I think we're going to have to really tackle is what does

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that look like if we don't use zero?

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What does good look like as opposed to what does perfect look like?

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And I think that conversation is probably the right conversation to be having.

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We've been on this journey a long time, and we've built a vocabulary. We've built awareness.

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We've built sort of this surprising, at least to me, this surprising sort of

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body of knowledge out there.

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And lots of great people are doing remarkable things.

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Man, we can name them. That's how cool it is. The challenge is that now what

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we have to do is help understand what that target looks like for our organizations.

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And we know that we live in an imperfect world with imperfect systems,

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imperfect processes, imperfect procedures.

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We also know that we're striving towards improvement. We're constantly and continuously improving.

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Good is really an important factor. And as our systems get better and better,

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we really have to adjust our sensitivity so that we have a new way to sense

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the vector towards improvement.

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And that vectoring is really the way I think about it. We're moving towards improvement.

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Our challenge this year is to really focus on the good and to really focus on

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what incremental improvement looks like, knowing full well that we'll move forward

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and move backwards. That's just normal.

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And understanding that the more we leverage improvement, the better we will become.

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So that's the pod, short and sweet. Not a very long one, but I want you to sort

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of think about what we have to talk about because there's so much going on in the world.

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And it's a good time to do the job you do right now.

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Learn something new every single day. Have as much fun as you possibly can.

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Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Check in on one another.

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Have a great and prosperous new year, and for goodness sakes, be safe.

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Music.