Daniel Hummerdal and Rob Cousins of Open Change run workshops that help health and safety practitioners try small experiments in place of big top-down programmes. They call it the Trojan mouse.
Daniel comes from aviation safety and Rob from organisational change and Arctic expeditions. Both have psychology in their backgrounds. They find most of their new ideas outside safety, in fields like education, social work and family therapy. We talk about why a safety culture can't be imposed, giving people a real say in the decisions that affect their work, building the risk register with the group and why a small trial beats buying something off the shelf.
What we cover in this episode
- Borrowing ideas from outside health and safety
- Why culture can't be imposed
- Giving people a real say in decisions
- Building the risk register with the group
- The Trojan mouse: small experiments that create evidence
- Asking better questions
- Why so many practitioners feel isolated
- Breaking down silos
Episode chapters
- 0:00 Introduction
- 1:05 Borrowing ideas from other fields
- 4:18 Psychology in safety
- 7:25 Culture can't be imposed
- 9:31 What Open Change does
- 13:42 Giving people a say
- 17:54 Building the risk register with the group
- 22:07 Small experiments over big purchases
- 28:32 The maturity scale
- 29:33 Mission-based thinking
- 33:48 Isolated practitioners and community
- 36:55 Asking better questions
- 38:01 The Trojan mouse
- 42:18 Breaking down silos
- 48:45 Wrap up
Connect with Daniel Hummerdal and Rob Cousins
Find Daniel Hummerdal and Rob Cousins on LinkedIn.
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This episode sits in the Leading people and culture collection. Browse every episode or follow the show on Spotify so you don't miss the next one.
About the host
Matt Jones is the founder of Advanced Safety and a HASANZ-registered health and safety consultant. He's a Professional Member of NZISM, holds a Graduate Diploma in Occupational Safety and Health and founded the New Zealand Health and Safety Professionals community. His book is Raise the Standard: Why Good Organisations Go Blind and How Leaders Restore Visibility.
Guests share their own views and experience. This page is general information, not legal advice. Latest update: 13 November 2026
