There’s a dangerous assumption still deeply embedded in many workplaces that if people would just follow the rules, incidents wouldn’t happen. But what if that thinking is actually making safety worse?
My conversation with Jake Mazulewicz challenged a lot of conventional thinking around human error, procedures, investigations and safety leadership. Drawing on experience from firefighting, emergency medicine, military operations and human reliability, Jake shares a practical and refreshingly honest perspective on how people really make decisions under pressure, why experts don’t simply follow procedures, and how resilient Organisations learn from mistakes rather than punish them.
This was one of those discussions that makes you stop and rethink how safety is approached day to day. Plenty of practical insights throughout that leaders can apply immediately.
Highlights from the conversation:
- Human error: Signals for learning, not failures to punish
- Safety rules: Why too many procedures can reduce reliability
- Decision making: The four layers experts use under pressure
- Resilience: Building systems that tolerate inevitable mistakes
- Investigations: Looking beyond who touched it last
- Psychological safety: Encouraging honest reporting and learning
- Near miss reporting: Making learning simple and non-punitive
- Work as done: Understanding how work really happens safely
Resources and actions:
- Sign up for a future Safety Roundtable: https://safetyroundtable.co.uk/
- Connect with Jake on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-mazulewicz/
- Check on Jake Book (Seven Practical Steps: How to Build Reliability, Safety, and Trust in Technical Teams): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FPFQ65GX
- Connect with Christian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-harris-slip-safety/
