The minute a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse.” - Collins, Good to Great.

Embracing the Possibility of Failure to Reduce the Occurrence of Failure

My decades-long fascination with error, harm, and failure has left me humble about the complexity of these topics. The mix of factors—technology, psychology, management, systems—means none of us can master every aspect of the relevant knowledge to feel “we’ve got this.” But a few simple practices have emerged from my work that can help prevent complex failures. With these, we all have the power to make that kind of difference—in our own lives and in the organizations we care about.

There are lots of safeguard strategies, though. My favourites include prevention, creating rules for yourself, making checklists, shifting your frame of reference, and making the invisible visible.

It’s easy to underestimate the role ease plays in decision-making. Since behaviour follows the path of least resistance, a surprisingly successful approach is to add friction where you find yourself doing things you don’t want to do.

Safeguard Strategy 4: Putting in Guardrails