by Laurin Mooney
Do your eyes glaze over when somebody says “High Reliability Organizing” or “HRO?” Do you find your body tensing, preparing for a recital of the “5 Hallmarks” that again leave you unclear on what “practising” HRO means?
Well, I am on a mission to counteract that experience because I believe the thinking and actions of HRO are 100% critical for success and safety in our increasingly complex and uncertain world. If you have been curious but not clear about HRO, my wish is this article leaves you more confident and convinced.
I have included quotes from Managing the Unexpected 2001, (first edition, yellow) by Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe because I can’t say it better, and I try to get everyone to read the book, it’s just that good.
1. Believing more is possible than we can plan for or imagine.
(If you are a Resilience Engineer reading this, please excuse this first paragraph I know I am preaching to the choir).
HRO flows from a humble but optimistic assessment of the realities of performing high-risk work in complex systems nested in a VUCA world. I sum up the HRO mindset like this:
- We don’t know everything, so, we can’t plan for everything.
- Because of that, our systems are imperfect.
- We are imperfect humans, so despite our best intentions, sometimes we will fail.
- We can’t imagine all the ways humans and the system can fail.
Sounds depressing, and negative I know, hence the “Preoccupation with failure” hallmark. However, the mindset shift from probabilities to possibilities allows us to recognize that something not very probable but totally possible is happening (think Twin Towers or Los Vegas shooting, the list goes on). It is believing something is possible that allows us to see it.
“The trouble deepens even further when I kid myself that seeing is believing. That’s wrong. It’s the other way around. Believing is seeing.” p46
Embracing the humbling, scary conclusion of vast possibilities is exactly what propels the attitudes and actions for success. Best of all, it forces the idea that instead of being the problem, people are the solution! Let’s look at what people practising HRO do to be the solution.
HRO means asking “what could possibly be happening?”
2. Seeing as much as possible
Accepting that more is possible than what we can plan for or imagine means we know unexpected and unclear situations will arise. The strategy here is this:
“HRO’s take deliberate steps to create more complete and nuanced pictures. They simplify less and see more. Knowing that the world they face is complex, unstable, unknowable, and unpredictable, they position themselves to see as much as possible.” p11
What are some deliberate steps to seeing as much as possible?
First, cultivating a culture where everybody knows it’s always safe to share a question, concern, or idea. High Reliability means “all voices on deck.” Silence stops HRO in its tracks. I call employee silence the elephant on the road on your high reliability journey. Why?
“People who refuse to speak up out of fear enact a system that knows less than it needs to know to remain effective.” p13
(Uh, oh…I think we have some work to do here…)
Second, is understanding, and improving individual and collective sensemaking, the process by which we come up with a plausible understanding of the information we are literally “sensing” around us. We are trying to figure out what something means. This process precedes decision-making and if it is not accurate, then there is a much greater risk of the decisions being ineffective or worse.
“Reluctance to simplify interpretations” means a mindful approach to news. in. People practising HRO are extremely careful to welcome new information. They don’t dismiss it by saying what I call the HRO no-no phrase, “it’s probably just…”
Instead, they stay open to many possibilities of what it might mean, invite diverse perspectives, and are willing to update their understanding when presented with new information. (There are many individual and group dynamics that get in the way of accurate sensemaking, but that’s for another day). Suffice it to say, they respect the process and are deliberate about removing the obstacles to it.
They ask “what could this possibly be…”
3. Acting as early as possible
How many times do we look back at a failure only to see people did act, but it was too late…? A third way HRO addresses possibilities is the speediness and vigor of their response to weak signals of possible trouble.
“The key difference between HROs and other organizations in managing the unexpected often occurs in the earliest stages, when the unexpected may give off only weak signals of trouble. The overwhelming tendency is to respond to weak signals with a weak response. Mindfulness preserves the capability to see the significant meaning of weak signals and to give strong responses.”
Engaging ambiguity or “acting to learn” by probing a situation immediately allows early learning so people can improvise solutions when the problem is small and can still be contained. Our natural dislike for uncertainty often leads to a weak response or delay in responding to weak signals. Training, cultural, and system support is needed to help people adopt curious and action-oriented behaviors. Improvisation and engaging front-line expertise wherever it is found is the norm.
They ask “what can we possibly do right now to learn more?”
In summary
Believing more is possible than we can plan for or imagine by embracing the challenges of complexity, positioning yourself to see as much as possible by creating psychological safety and improving sensemaking, and acting as early and strongly as possible in response to weak signals can all be embedded in our mindset and work practices.
For a free download of an infographic with questions to get you started Click here