Why Are Some Organizations Better at Maintaining High Reliability?

The book “Managing the Unexpected” by Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe provides some rare insight into why some organizations seem to have fewer than their share of problems, despite functioning in very challenging environments.  Nuclear power plants and aircraft carriers are offered as examples of organizations that perform complex operations day after day, but don’t seem to suffer many accidents.  Weick and Sutcliffe observed that this feat is largely accomplished by nurturing a culture of “mindfulness.”  Mindfulness includes the following elements: preoccupation with failures rather than successes, reluctance to simplify interpretations, sensitivity to operations, commitment to resilience, and deference to expertise.  Sounds simple, right?  It might not surprise you that there is no quick fix to instill more mindfulness in your organization.  But Weick and Sutcliffe found that nuclear power plants and aircraft carriers do have a common method for creating the culture of mindfulness: root cause analysis.  These “high reliability organizations” perform detailed root cause analyses, or critiques, of anything that doesn’t go well, no matter how inconsequential the issue might seem.  These incident investigations have the clearly-communicated goal of improving the organizations’ processes, not blaming those involved.  The benefit?  A frequent reminder that finding and reporting problems is rewarded, that work process is important, and that everyone has a role in improving reliability.  Any organization can strengthen its culture and achieve high performance with root cause analysis, one problem at a time.