Punk Rock Safety Ben Goodheart, David Provan, Ron Gantt

Ben, Dave, and Ron talk about drift in this episode. We've drifted along this far. May as well keep going.

We talk about how things move away from a plan or expectation (you know, like how the quality of this podcast may have moved away from what you hoped. Sorry.).

It's actually a pretty good episode in terms of actual, useful discussion. Except for the part where we talk about models and just how good mid-80s Jim Reason looked.

There's a lot about drift, including what it actually means, that isn't all that clear. I'm not sure we've solved that in this episode, but it's a good discussion.

Holy shit, we have our first guest. We told John he was trying out as the singer of the band so we could get him here. Turns out he can't sing. But he's a helluva guy, and he's crazy smart.

John Wilkes is the Senior Director of Business Excellence at Novavax. If you haven't guessed, they're in a pretty high-stakes business. So, having John join us for an episode that touches on leadership was a no-brainer.

In the episode, Ben tells a super stupid story and suggests maybe it should have gotten him fired. Dave and Ron are more compassionate, which plays into the broader discussion on how leaders react when failure happens. To his credit, John takes it all in and offers sage advice to keep everyone on track.

Honestly, there are some pretty ok takeaways in this one.

What's the purpose of a leader; how do leaders shape safety; how can a leader influence culture; does safety start at the top? These questions and more are only partly answered in this wild ride.

Ron, Dave, and Ben discuss what it means to be a safety professional. Well, if safety professionals are even necessary in organizations; Ron's not sure. Ben can't figure out how to go to conferences, so there are some helpful hints about how to do anything useful there.

Maybe the podcast could replace a person? Probably not, but we'll consider it along with other options. Anyway, they should maybe be skeptical of their own importance. We share some ideas from other folks (Josh Kreger and John Greene are in that group) before we share our own.

There's some discussion about why safety folks are dismissed as irrelevant or unnecessary and how we might better spend our time.

And there's some generally childish banter, so we keep the streak alive. Episode 2 is maybe even more useful than Episode 1. You're welcome.

Fea (fea210.com) does the intro/outro music. Check them out. And keep an eye out for PRS merch someday, too.

It's the first episode, okay. We're not winning any awards for this one, but it's on the books. Think of it a little like a band doing a sound check. We talk about audits, some of our favorite punk bands, what it means to think about safety from a punk rock point of view, and some other stuff that made sense to us at the time. Big fat thanks to Fea (fea210.com) for the intro/outro music, too.