Join Rob Statham as he discusses the hidden tax of Blame. Blame comes with a high price tag. Most organizations treat failure as a people problem or a process problem and then they spend a significant amount of time doing investigations that never really touch on the conditions that allowed it to happen in the first place. That burns cash and slows everything down. Discover how to increase your operational velocity easily.

Rachel Franco, Founder of Fail Smarter LLC, joins Rob to discuss how leaders can turn failure into a competitive advantage. They dig into psychological safety, productive failure, and the practical systems that help teams stop hiding setbacks and start learning from them—without the blame game. A natural conversation between Latent Cause thinking and the Fail Smarter approach.

Most organizations treat near misses as non-events — a close call, a sigh of relief, and then back to business. But what if that near miss was actually a gift?

In this episode, we explore why near misses are some of the most valuable learning opportunities available in any high-risk or complex operation. When something almost goes wrong, the system has already revealed a weakness. The only question is whether we are willing to receive the warning and act on it.

Drawing from Latent Cause Analysis principles, we examine:

• Why near misses expose latent conditions before harm occurs
• How a culture of blame causes people to stay silent
• Why the same disciplined, no-blame process used for major incidents should also be applied to near misses
• Practical ways leaders can turn near-miss reporting into a genuine strength instead of a neglected formality

Near misses are the system whispering. Incidents are the system screaming. The difference often comes down to whether an organization is prepared to listen.

If you lead safety, reliability, operations, or continuous improvement work, this conversation will challenge how you and your teams respond the next time something almost happens.