Anticipation: Preoccupation with Failure

High reliability organizations do not consider failures as things to avoid at all cost.  Rather, HROs believe that failures represent opportunities to learn and improve their systems.  As Thomas Watson, founder of International Business Machines (IBM) once said, "If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate."  Individuals in HROs report their mistakes, even when nobody else is looking!  HROs do not punish individuals who make mistakes.  On the contrary, in many cases, individuals who report their mistakes are often rewarded!

Here is a list of all the posts in which the main (or at least a major) theme is "Preoccupation with Failure":

1. "HRO: Preoccupation with Failure" (October 26, 2016)
2. "Always try to keep the number of landings you make equal to the number of take-offs you've made..." (February 6, 2019)
3. "Murphy's Law, the U.S. Navy SEALS, and High Reliability Organizations" (March 10, 2022)
4. "The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts..." (April 5, 2022)
5. "The failure of foresight" (October 6, 2022)
6. "Imagine the worst" (October 10, 2022)
7. "10Xers" (October 29, 2022)
8. "Six blind men from Indostan" (January 13, 2023)
9. "Is it really a surprise if there were plenty of warnings?" (May 17, 2023)
10. "Practice makes perfect" (December 1, 2023)
11. "L2M" (May 9, 2024)