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Blowing The Whistle
August 28, 2025
In this month’s Managing Safety Performance News Paul reflects on the investigations into Challenger and the Titan submersible. From Richard Feynman’s ice-water demonstration to the Coast Guard’s scathing report, Paul points out that history shows how truth can be buried, warnings ignored, and lives lost.
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Leading With Questions
August 18, 2025
In this month’s Flash, we look at the important role questions have in ensuring Followers understand hazards and safe work practices.
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Managing Success
July 31, 2025
In this month’s Managing Safety Performance, Bill Wilson explores the importance of analyzing and understanding success with the same diligence that organizations typically reserve for failures. He argues that leaders often overlook everyday successes, missing the opportunity to identify and replicate what works. He makes the case that by focusing on success organizations can focus resources on impactful initiatives, reduce waste, and improve long-term performance—ultimately making sustained improvement a strategic priority rather than a lucky outcome.
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Don’t Know What You Don’t Know?
July 17, 2025
In this month’s Flash, we take a look at one method that can help when it comes to discovering problems unknown to leadership.
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Complacency Arising?
June 30, 2025
This month, Paul examines the challenge of complacency for leaders and their followers. He asks the question when was the last time you read an investigation report that began, “The root cause of this terrible tragedy can be found in the simple fact that so many of those involved failed to treat things as seriously as they needed to be”? For some reason, it’s rare for complacency to be described as the cause of a safety event. He goes on to discuss what to do about the problem of complacency.
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Without Warning?
June 16, 2025
This month’s Flash is prompted by several high profile catastrophic failures. While they’ll be the subject of in-depth investigation, they immediately raise a vitally important question for anyone interested in safety: how to decide what “non-event” events to take seriously?
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The Critics Speak
May 30, 2025
This month, Paul focuses on the vital topic of hazard recognition, examining why failure to recognize hazards continues to show up in incident and near-miss reports. He underscores the reality that whenever someone is injured, a hazard is always present. Drawing on Dr. Daniel Kahneman’s psychological studies, Paul explores how human cognition impacts the way we perceive hazards. He concludes that leaders play a crucial role in fostering a culture where individuals feel compelled to take action when they detect a hazard or serious concern. The message is clear: if you see something, say something, and do something! This is an important read for any leader… and their followers.
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Assuming That Can Never Happen
May 15, 2025
In last month’s Flash we looked at one Fatal Assumption too commonly made, assuming “That will never happen to me”. This month Paul looks at a second Fatal Assumption, assuming “That will never happen.”
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About Those Details
April 30, 2025
This month Paul applies some of the key lessons he and Dr. Pete Robison explored in last month’s Managing Safety Performance News and the accompanying That’s A Darn Good Question podcast to a real case study involving two fatalities. He draws three very important lessons about execution that can make all the difference between going home alive and well at the end of the day… or not.
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