Explicitly allow for productive failure (otherwise known as learning):
“The most important skill to master is that of framing the work” [1].
“They asked, “What do we need to do to create a work environment of care and respect?”” [1].
“Success in … business occurs through course correction — not through magically getting it right the first time” [1].
Cultivate meaningful participation:
“Two essential behaviors that signal an invitation is genuine are adopting a mindset of situational humility and engaging in proactive inquiry” [1].
“His strength as a leader was demonstrated by the immediate admission of his mistake. This increased the psychological safety in the team and bonded the group more tightly” [1].
Grow trust through meaningful response and followthrough:
"When people believe that performance reflects effort and good strategy, they are eager to try new things and willing to persevere despite adversity and failure” [1].
“The lack of simple cause-effect relationships in uncertain, ambiguous environments reinforces the importance of productive responses to outcomes of all kinds, but especially to bad news outcomes” [1].
“Failure is a necessary part of uncertainty and innovation, but this must be made explicit to reinforce the invitation for voice” [1].
Ways to measure
Implement a regularly occurring anonymous employee feedback survey that asks from 'strongly disagree' to 'strongly agree':
“My opinions count at work.”
“I can speak up without fear of damaging relationships.”
[5] ASSP Healthcare Practice Specialty, Blacks in Safety Excellence, and Hispanic Safety Professionals Common Interest Groups Safety Diversity: Perspectives and Experiences from Safety Leadership. (2023-02-08). Accessed: 2026-02-20. [Online Video]. Available: https://vimeo.com/797009963.
The five principles of high reliability organizations are [6]:
Deference to expertise
Preoccupation with failure
Reluctance to simplify
Sensitivity to operations
Commitment to resilience
Give decision making power to the experts:
“We are dealing with a lot of systems and operations, even processes. We have to really rely on the people who are managing those, the experts that are developing those so that we’re operating effectively and efficiently. When we’re trying to discuss maybe making changes to an operation, those people have to be a part of the conversation because they will know what impact those changes will have” [5, 13:36-14:19].
“These principles are not unique. … They also bring a lot of quality management ideas, thoughts into the whole program. They all work together. … There is no organizational hierarchy [that] determines the authority. … We need to give those people who have the expertise a room so they can make decisions. … We need to listen to these people with fresh voices because they have seen things that perhaps management doesn’t see. … Companies need to make workers comfortable speaking up. It’s not only the people on the top but the production workers also. Give them a chance, help them. … Share concerns, experiences with them. Only that way, everyone in the company can work together to find the best solution. … It’s a win-win situation for everyone” [5, 16:42-20:44].
Investigate failures to ensure future success:
“Whenever anything happens, we want to know what was the error, why did it happen. We try to make sure that everybody is part of the root cause to address the error, identify the error, and make the potential plan for avoiding that in the future. … It gives us an idea to what may be happening and that could happen and then allows us the opportunity to implement changes that could prevent those failures from happening. … We want to make sure that we have a plan and an opportunity to go in and make whatever necessary changes we need in order to protect the company“ [5, 23:30-26:15].
“Near misses are viewed as opportunity to learn about systems that could be improved. … But sometimes, people see that like a checklist, something else they have to do. … Everyone has seen the unsafe condition but nobody reports it. … Companies conduct corrective action when it reaches a high level of severity. This is a reactive reaction. So reporting near misses should be seen by everyone. … Companies need to engage everyone, let everyone know how to do this, and follow up. So it's everyone, everywhere, and everyday [5, 27:07-29:17].
Diligently investigate, do not accept simplistic explanations:
“Avoid simple answers for failures or near misses. … The question I have is: ‘Okay how will that help that company to mitigate the risk tomorrow’. … People who are doing those root cause analysis, they really have to be prepared, in knowing and asking why. … They have to always find out the reason why, keep asking, why. That’s the way you will reveal” [5, 38:43-40:41].
“The proper attitude towards … errors, you have to have that first. If the attitude is that ‘it should not have happened and we’re attacking people when it does happen’, we don’t get an opportunity to truly get to a root cause because that starts to push people away. … That’s where the resiliency comes in … if we can approach it from an aspect of: ‘find out what happened’, ‘let’s fix what caused it to happen’, and ‘let’s go back and help everybody understand what they can do to avoid this in the future’. … We don’t want to just go to the blame game. … It doesn’t say that something else won’t happen, but it says that we’re in a better position to respond when that happens, and as an organization we are able to move past it and move forward” [5, 51:24-52:50].
Engage operators to find solutions:
“Have regular safety meetings or huddles … so you can share information. Engage people in the process. … Companies must have established policies to recognize errors and make improvement opportunities. … You become more proactive rather than reactive by providing continuous feedback” [5, 44:19-46:41].
“Sensitivty to operations is [asking]: ‘what’s the impact of our decisions on the people that are at the operational level?’ … When it comes to compliance [make sure to] understand what the responsibility of the people are at the operational level and also what are the impacts on our systems if we don’t make those changes” [5, 46:50-48:26].
Resilience requires ongoing commitment:
“Commitment to resilience refers to accountability, from the top all the way down. It refers to the organization’s ability to recognize errors quickly and contain them, … having the proper attitude toward unexpected situations or failures” [5, 53:35-54:56].
“Leadership and the company’s mission when it comes to [environment, health, and safety] is very important, because if that one allows the risk to be high, then everybody is going to adopt that. You really do have to have everybody involved, all the way up the chain of command, that buys into averting risk. … I think whatever the environment is, is the environment that everyone is going to build into and feed into” [5, 34:00-35:00].
Ways to measure
Track the rate of failures due to known causes (should go down over time).
Track the rate of reported close calls (should go up over time).
Implement a regularly occurring anonymous employee feedback survey that asks from 'strongly disagree' to 'strongly agree': “My leadership consults me on decisions affecting operations before the decisions are made”.