Show Notes
Join Todd Conklin in this insightful episode of Pre-Accident Investigation, where he reflects on the moral duty and challenges faced in the safety industry. Discover the importance of allowing workers the ability to succeed in complex environments, even when achievements can't be measured.
Show Transcript
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I don't know how much you've thought about the long-term ramifications of what
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you're doing for a living.
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I mean, I really don't know how much you think about this because it's tough.
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It's really tough. It's hard to measure something that doesn't happen.
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We just know that. Every engine in the world, every single one of them should
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be comforted by knowing that you can't measure something that doesn't happen.
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And yet our job pretty much is a job that if we're doing the work we need to
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be doing and helping our workers be successful in a complex environment,
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then our reward for that is that nothing measurable will take place. We'll be right back.
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Music.
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Hey, everybody. Todd Conklin, pre-accident investigation safety moment.
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First of all, great thanks, muchas gracias, for my friends in Colombia.
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I had the best time on my little Colombian journey.
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Someday, when we have a lot of time, I'll tell you how it all ended up.
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I was in Colombia, but I was there, and I had a great time, and I met with some
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dear friends, and we talked about safety. We actually talked about safety specifically
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in Colombia, for sure, but really throughout Latin America.
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And one of the things that's coming up is it looks like there may be a Proyecto
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Eque for Latin America. That's all I'm going to say. I'm not going to say anything else.
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You'll have to go look that up if you don't know what I just said.
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You can look up those words. They're available.
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But it's exciting. But I think the big part of what I want to talk about today is the moral –.
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Duty. That's probably the best word I can think of for the job we have.
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And in fact, I want you to think about the fact that the work you're doing,
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even though it's frustrating and difficult and bureaucratically laden,
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and I don't know, you know,
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especially your work, but I'm relatively certain I can guess what it looks like
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because it probably looks just like mine.
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Even though there's lots of autocratic, bureaucratic crap, reports and attention
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to detail and regulators,
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ultimately, I want you to remember that what you do matters,
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even though it can't be measured.
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And so that moves us from kind of an engineering statistic to a moral duty.
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Now, don't take this too wrong because this can be kind of freaky to your leaders,
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but there's a moral imperative that we do what we do.
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There's a moral imperative that we listen carefully to what workers need to
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be successful in a rapidly changing world and then allow them the ability to succeed,
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allow them the ability to do the work they need to do in an incredibly complex environment.
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And you'll never be able to measure what didn't happen.
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And I guess maybe my advice to us, and I'm saying this just as much to me as
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I am to you, is that we got to be okay with that.
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But more importantly, we have to help educate our leadership that the results
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they're looking for are the results that they can't measure.
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It's what didn't happen that makes a difference.
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And that what didn't happen part, that's a huge part of what we want to talk about.
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When bad things happen, and they do, and they will, it's a complex world.
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Well, we'll do our best to understand and explain how that bad thing happened.
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But mostly our goal is to not avoid repeat occurrences.
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Our goal is to ensure that normal work happens normally. And that is a world
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that we want to be a huge part of.
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That is, my friends, the safety moment for today. It was a simple one,
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but it's kind of a good one for us. I mean, it's one we can all learn from.
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Learn something new every single day. Have as much fun as you possibly can.
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Take care of each other. Be kind. And for goodness sakes, be safe.
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Music.
