The Strategy Skills Podcast: Management Consulting | Strategy, Operations & Implementation | Critical Thinking

In this week’s Strategy Skills episode, we spoke with Ben Swire, author of Safe Danger and former leader at IDEO. His thesis is trust and psychological safety aren’t byproducts. They’re designable conditions. And when designed correctly, they create room for calculated risk, creativity, and deeper collaboration. Below are a few insights that stood out: 1. Experiential culture > Instructional culture “There’s a difference between handing someone bullet points on how to build trust and giving them a space to practice it.” Swire’s workshops deliberately use low-stakes emotional challenges to normalize openness and risk-taking. The result: teams that critique, challenge, and share more effectively. 2. The right environment for growth is neither ‘safe’ nor ‘dangerous’, it’s both “Safe danger is the space where people feel secure enough to step outside their comfort zones.” This is about systematically building tolerance for uncertainty, while preserving respect and inclusion. 3. AI makes human insight more, not le