PAPud 572 - The Stability Trap: Why Safety Success Can Lead to Failure
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.
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29:08
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29:08
PAPod 571 - Fail Fast, Learn Faster: A Conversation on Human Performance and Recovery
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.
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29:38
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29:38
PAPod 570 - Safety Differently Down Under: Todd Conklin in Auckland
Todd Conklin joins the Brisbane Safety Differently Book Lab in Auckland for a lively discussion about leadership, accountability, and learning from everyday work. The group explores why safety is the presence of control, how leaders should respond after incidents, and why learning is the new currency of safety.
Todd shares stories about writing his books, engaging with workers, and practical steps leaders can take to build confidence and capacity while fostering a learning culture.
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38:33
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38:33
PAPod 569 - PART TWO: 11 Seconds: How a System, Not a Nurse, Failed
Part two of the RaDonda Vaught story examines what emerged after the event: investigation details, system design flaws, communication breakdowns, and the tiny timing error that mattered. RaDonda Vaught recounts how normalized overrides, software defaults, and organizational assumptions created conditions for failure.
The episode explores the chilling effects of criminalizing mistakes, the human cost across patients and providers, and the case for shifting from blame to system-focused learning and improvement.
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30:31
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30:31
PAPod 568 - PART ONE: Charged for a Mistake: The Nurse, the Error, and a System That Failed
In this episode, nurse RaDonda Vaught tells the detailed, context-rich story of a medication error at Vanderbilt that led to criminal charges. She walks through the events, system issues (including a recent EHR rollout and medication-dispensing delays), distractions, and decision points that contributed to the mistake.
RaDonda describes how workarounds, unclear documentation in radiology, drug supply changes, and interruptions combined to produce a tragic outcome, and she explains the immediate clinical response. The episode sets up a follow-up discussion about what was learned and how systems can be improved.
Ireland