Today on the Salience podcast we’re diving deep into the complex world of health systems—and the concept of synergy . As demands on health systems grow, leaders are often caught in the tension between delivering day-to-day services and driving systemic change. So how do they balance it all? Joining us to unpack these challenges is Helena Harnik, co-founder and Program Executive Director at The Synergist . With a background spanning global corporations and a passion for collaborative innovation, ...
Apr 16, 2025•45 min•Season 4Ep. 12
In this episode of The Salience Podcast , we dive into the complex world of nutrition—where even the basics of what we should eat are hotly debated. From carnivore to vegan, low-fat to keto, the conflicting advice can be overwhelming, often driven by ideology or profit rather than science. The result? Declining health, rising chronic disease, and a society that still prefers quick fixes—like pills—over the simple (but not easy) work of eating real food. Our guest today is Dr. Jessica Turton. Jes...
Apr 01, 2025•53 min•Season 4Ep. 11
In this episode of the Salience Podcast, we explore health and the relationships between personal agency and systems. As a society, we under-invest in preventative health in favor of big pharma and a medical model that focuses too much on remedies. Many people would rather take a pill than make the effort to eat healthy whole food and move well. Our guest today is Dr. Anita Shankar from John Hopkins Department of International Health within the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Anita researches...
Mar 18, 2025•51 min•Season 4Ep. 10
On this week’s Salience Podcast, we explore the benefits and pitfalls of role clarity through the lens of the Chief of Staff. A Chief of Staff is a relatively new addition to the C-Suite, with an express function to enable the rest of the C-suite to shine. Our guest is David Hesse, who until recently was Chief of Staff at Kitman Labs. David describes how a Chief of Staff can unblock bottle necks and enable faster decision making. For more information about The Salience Podcast and Frontline Mind...
Feb 17, 2025•48 min•Season 4Ep. 9
On this week’s Salience Podcast, we explore safety through the intersection of human factors and systems. Our guest is Gareth Lock, founder of The Human Diver and bestselling author of the book Under Pressure: diving deeper with human factors. Before becoming a safety educator with a focus on diving, Gareth had a 25-year career in the RAF. As he started diving more and more, Gareth recognized he could apply what he learned in the RAF to diving. In particular, he realised that safety and performa...
Feb 03, 2025•53 min•Season 4Ep. 8
On todays episode, we will be discussing what it is like to support the transformation of a 100 year-old institution with close to 100,000 employees across different countries. With me today is my friend Ian Macdonald. On top of being an amazing person to work with, Ian has over 25 years of experience in areas spanning entrepreneurship, communication, leadership development and strategy. He also has several creative specialties such as advertising, photography and design. Ian is currently part o...
Jan 14, 2025•53 min•Season 4Ep. 7
In this episode, we will be discussing what it means to facilitate strategic dialogue to work on intractable problems. With me today is practitioner of strategic dialogic methods, Marco Valente. Marco is currently a Consultant and member of the executive team at Cultivating Leadership. In this role, he is working primarily as a coach with both individuals and teams, and as a facilitator of executive teams to help them make meaning of their most pressing challenges. He uses a complexity-informed ...
Dec 09, 2024•59 min•Season 4Ep. 6
On this week’s Salience Podcast, we explore anthropology, sensemaking and complexity. Our guest is Ellie Snowden. For those familiar with the Cynefin framework and its developer Dave Snowden, well Ellie is his daughter. Apart from an enormous requirement for personal resilience being Dave’s daughter, Ellie has developed her own deep competency in the field of anthro-complexity and sensemaking. Ellie leads the Cynefin company's work on health and healthcare with her experience of supporting centr...
Nov 21, 2024•58 min•Season 4Ep. 5
On this episode of the Salience Podcast, we turn our attention to the relationship between human factors, systems, and analysis of safety incidents and accidents. As you might imagine, a company with a name like Frontline Mind is intimately involved with frontline action. The agencies and people we specialize in work in fast-paced, complex, and at times high-risk environments. Inevitably, there are near misses, incidents and accidents. How we best learn from these is not straightforward. In fact...
Nov 04, 2024•58 min•Season 4Ep. 4
On this episode of the Salience Podcast we return to cross-domain mapping, exploring how tactical leadership and decision-making taught in the military can be applied to start-up and scale-up challenges for business and as a way to accelerate change in frontline agencies. One of the biggest challenges for military-trained leaders is adapting to the radically different power structure of civilian organisations. For starters, command and control just doesn't work the same way. I often see veterans...
Oct 21, 2024•53 min•Season 4Ep. 3
On This episode of the Salience Podcast, we explore risk and decision-making and consider what we can learn from fatal mistakes. In a number of our interviews, we have stressed the importance of safe to fail experimentation. This is of course the preferred way to learn. However, we can also learn from critical incidents that are not fatal to us. In today's interview we discuss one such profound experience that inspires me to remember some important aspects of human factors in decision making. To...
Oct 06, 2024•55 min•Season 4Ep. 2
On this episode of the Salience Podcast , we are exploring feedback and feedforward in the complex space of policing and investigations. We are joined in this episode by Lou Hayes, who is a 26-year veteran Police Officer & Detective for a suburban Chicago police department. Some of his assignments have included: Patrol, Field Training Officer, Criminal Investigations, Firearms & Tactics Training Unit, Crisis Intervention Team, and SWAT. His current roles are with a regional homicide unit...
Apr 10, 2024•57 min•Season 3Ep. 10
On This episode of the Salience Podcast, we return to our origins unpacking the patterns of behaviour of extreme high performers, learning what we can to apply in everyday life work and the rest of life. We are joined by Sara Stone. Sara is a professional sailor, and has sailed everything from dinghies to ocean racing yachts. She is currently in Barcelona preparing for the women's americas cup later this year. Our interest in Sara though is as much about her high level sailing as work experience...
Mar 15, 2024•41 min•Season 4Ep. 1
On This episode of the Salience Podcast, we explore feedback and feedforward in the context of design and innovation. We are joined today by Tom Kerwin. Tom has 25 years of experience as a leader in design, research and innovation. He’s co-founded two successful startups and worked both agency-side and in-house, coaching cross-functional teams to innovate. Tom is also the author of Innovation Tactics, the deck of cards from Pip Decks that’s packed with pragmatic methods for making things people ...
Feb 19, 2024•58 min•Season 3Ep. 9
On this episode of the Salient podcast, we journey into the world of mapping and explore the role of feedback and feedforward in navigating complexity. We are joined by Marcus Guest. Marcus is originally from the UK and is one of the small number of people actively developing adaptive strategy using Wardley maps. What's interesting about Marcus is his solid grounding in the science of complex adaptive systems. In his past life, Marcus worked in organisations in Europe and Asia, overseeing the ra...
Jan 25, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Season 3Ep. 8
On This episode of The Salience Podcast, we journey into the world of superyachts to continue our explorations of feedback and feedforward. We are joined by Amanda Hewson-Beaver. We met relatively recently after Amanda reached out to collaborate on Resilience training, and we’ve just started a joint venture together. Her story of adventure on the high seas reads like an inspirational novel. Amanda literally ran away to sea as a youngster, before sailing the 7-seas in everything from small dinghi...
Dec 28, 2023•48 min•Season 3Ep. 7
On The Salience Podcast today, we continue our explorations of feedback and feedforward as a means of learning. Today I am joined by Joe Byerly. Joe has had a long career in the US Army, he’s an active duty Battalion Commander, he was a non-resident fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point, and has provided strategic advice on warfare. Joe is also Founder of From the Green Notebook, which is where I came across Joe. The background to the green notebook idea came from Joe’s desire to crea...
Dec 13, 2023•58 min•Season 3Ep. 6
On the Salience Podcast today, we are exploring feedback and feedforward in the complex space of international development. Joining us in this episode is Milica Begovic, the Head of Strategic Innovation at the United Nations Development Program Millie and her colleagues are pioneering new ways of doing development that build countries’ capacity to deliver change at scale. She has been involved in a number of bold initiatives such as the Accelerator Labs (which recently grew to 90 countries globa...
Nov 29, 2023•52 min•Season 3Ep. 5
On this episode of the salience podcast, we continue to explore feedback and feedforward. Feedback is the flow of information about past events. It is the opportunity to review and learn from decisions and actions. Feedforward is the anticipatory preparation for future events, it is the opportunity to orient ahead of time and to set up to test assumptions and biases through observations in real-time as situations unfold. Both feedback and feedforward are central to taking a strategic approach to...
Nov 16, 2023•1 hr•Season 3Ep. 4
On this episode of the salience podcast, we continue to explore feedback and feedforward. There are several different ways to create an effective feedback-feedforward loop, especially using different patterns of visualisation, with deliberate use of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person perspectives. As I started reaching out to various experts to interview for this season, I realised that no one uses 1st, 2nd, and 3rd better than my co-author of our book Resilience by Design and guest today Mike Weeks. Mike...
Nov 03, 2023•57 min•Season 3Ep. 3
On this episode of the salience podcast, we explore feedforward. A form of preemptive scenario testing and preparation to avoid events going wrong and to develop systemic resilience ahead of events going wrong. In a return to learning from military leadership, I am joined by retired Navy Commander, Brady Turnage. Brady had a 20-year aviation career that culminated as the Commanding Officer of a carrier-based jet squadron. Currently, Brady is an instructor at ‘The Program’ - a US veteran leadersh...
Oct 06, 2023•50 min•Season 3Ep. 2
Today, on The Salience Podcast we begin Season 3 with an in depth exploration of feedback and feedforward.Feedback is the flow of information about past events. It is the opportunity to review and learn from decisions and actions. Feedforward is the anticipatory preparation for future events, it is the opportunity to orient ahead of time and to test assumptions and biases through observations in real-time as situations unfold. Our guest today is Murray Hopkins. Murray has over 35 years experienc...
Sep 22, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 3Ep. 1
On this episode of The Salience Podcast, we conclude Season 2 with a deep dive into quitting. Our guest today is Annie Duke. Annie is a former world champion poker player and the best-selling author of Thinking in Bets , How to Decide , and her most recent book, Quit, the Power to Know When to Walk Away . Tune in as we discuss managing exit risk from sticky or downright deadly situations when attempts to Quit could have major or even fatal consequences. These are the sorts of choices that frontl...
Sep 05, 2023•49 min•Season 2Ep. 14
In today’s episode of The Salience Podcast, we explore more of the tough topics of surviving workplaces with a deep dive into office politics. Our guest is bestselling author Niven Postma. Niven is an expert in organisational politics and the author of “ If you don’t do politics, politics will do you – A guide to navigating office politics ethically and successfully ”.She is a visiting lecturer at Henley Business School and a Harvard Business Review Contributor, and has had a wide and varied exe...
Jul 12, 2023•42 min•Season 2Ep. 13
In this episode of The Salience Podcast we explore risk and culture and consider what we can all learn from the avalanche forecast industry.. Our guest today is Drew Hardesty. Drew has over 20 years experience as a backcountry avalanche forecaster at the Utah Avalanche Center, and 15 years experience as a Climbing Ranger in Grand Teton National Park. Drew is widely regarded as a thought leader in the industry and his philosophical musings in his newsletter Life, Not After Death, But Before are r...
Jun 26, 2023•50 min•Season 2Ep. 12
In this episode, we discuss Culture Studies as a topic. We speak with researcher and visual artist, Nurul Huda Rashid who is currently pursuing her PhD in Cultural Studies in Asia at the National University of Singapore. Nurul’s research explores the role of algorithms in the study of Muslim women images. Her current project, Women in War, is a survey of images of women in war, critiqued through lenses of gender and violence, politics of the visual, and the roles of the algorithm and archive as ...
May 31, 2023•58 min•Season 2Ep. 11
On This episode of the Salience Podcast, we explore the relationships between culture and change and the importance of curiosity. We speak with our good friend Nina Bressler, Global Head of Societal Learning at Novartis. Nina leads an aspirational program to help Novartis achieve their vision of Reimagining Medicine. Nina’s focus is to deliver sustainable learning outside the company, by supporting key partners and networks to build skills that strengthen the healthcare system and improve health...
May 18, 2023•38 min•Season 2Ep. 10
In this episode of The Salience Podcast we explore the impact of culture on domestic and family violence, and what men can do to change culture. In Australia, around 1 in 3 women and 1 in 10 men have experienced physical and/or sexual violence, and a woman is murdered by her partner or former partner roughly every week. These sobering statistics are not unique to Australia. Gender-based violence is a global problem. It’s a problem that mainly affects women and LGBTIQ+ communities. Whilst men are...
May 04, 2023•36 min•Season 2Ep. 9
On this episode, we speak to David Lee, a global change and business transformation executive and advisor with over 25 years of experience in leading change in organisations ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 to the public sector. He is currently a managing consultant and lead trainer at Prosci Singapore, a leading provider of expertise and capacity building in change management. David has engaged in organisational change as an executive sponsor, adviser, and instructor for a wide range of or...
Apr 19, 2023•52 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Today on the Salience Podcast, We discuss the issues with industrialised healthcare’s culture of control, and how we can move from a more pathogenic culture of seeking to “control” chronic diseases, to one that recognises the variability of patient lives, and encourages salutogenesis - or, the sense of coherence that patients can seek by cultivating their ability to understand their own condition, manage and respond appropriately, and to also create meaning around their experience. Our guest is ...
Feb 15, 2023•57 min•Season 2Ep. 7
