… the “High Reliability” school

Yesterday I posted about the “Resilient Organisations” school of thought from New Zealand. One of the quotes I like from their material is this;

Resilience is not something you do … it is something that you are.

Today I wanted to build on that thought by looking at the High Reliability Organisation (HRO) school and how that complements the overall thinking on resilience.  Here is the link to explain the background to HRO on Wikipedia.

I first came across this thinking by reading this book by Weick and Sutcliffe, and later this by Perrow.

Weick and Sutcliff introduce a concept of “mindfulness”.  The authors break this down into the 5 principles of High Reliability organizing that contribute to mindfulness. Mindful organizing helps maintain resilience through ‘anticipation’ and ‘containment’. Anticipation includes elements 1-3, Containment 4&5.

1. Preoccupation with Failure
   • Encourage reporting errors and near misses
   • Compare this to organisations we all know about where reporting bad news (or failures) is penalised!
2. Reluctance to simplify interpretations
   • When we simplify less we see more
   • Don’t let labels and cliches stop you from looking deeply into events
3. Sensitivity to Operations
   • in some ways deals with the inter-dependency issue that arises in other thinking around resilience
4. Commitment to Resilience
   • Three components to their model of resilience
     • Absorb strain and preserve your functions under adversity
     • Maintain the ability to return to normal service
     • Learn and grow from previous incidents.
5. Deference to Expertise
   • authority and decision making migrates to the people with the most relevant experience
   • not based on positon in the hierarchy
   • this reflects the need for different models in BAU compared to a Crisis.