Normal Accidents Charles Perrow is regarded as a pivotal figure in the theory of why and how things fail. He served as a sociology professor at Yale and Stanford and was primarily focused on the influence of large organisations on […]
Human Organisational Performance (HOP)
Human and Organisational Performance (or Potential) is based on five principles, originally defined by Dr Todd Conklin, in his book, “The Five Principles of Human Performance“.
These five principles shape and influence the way organisations think, act, view success and respond to failure. These five principles are integrative and work together to change the way we think about work and how to improve it.
1. People make mistakes
2. Blame fixes nothing
3. Context drives behaviour
4. Learning is vital
5. Response matters
Statistical Process Control and Understanding Variation In a chat with a great client this week, we got talking about different approaches to measurement and metrics. I introduced the concept of Statistical Process Control (SPC), so that’s what this week’s newsletter […]
Local Rationality “People do reasonable things given their goals, knowledge, understanding of the situation and focus of attention at a particular moment.” A fundamental premise of psychological safety is the belief that you will not be punished for making a […]
A man goes out on the beach and sees that it is covered with starfish that have washed up in the tide. A little boy is walking along, picking them up and throwing them back into the water. “What are […]
Understanding and Implementing the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) This week we’re having a look at the new NHS Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF). Whilst this is clearly relevant to our UK healthcare readers, I believe that the […]
Causes of Disaster at Chernobyl: The Absence of Psychological Safety (See below for the complete article) In 1986, the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl in the Ukrainian SSR (the territory of modern Ukraine) suffered a catastrophic failure that directly killed […]
Everest, and psychological safety in the mountains Thanks so much to a client of mine, the excellent Paul Verrico at Eversheds Sutherland, I was lucky enough to attend the 70th anniversary of the first Everest ascent, at the Royal Geographical Society […]
If we think about how we can apply sociotechnical theory in practice, we realise that organisational change or technological change will fail if we focus on one component (social or technical) in isolation and to the exclusion of others. We must consider how people are affected by technologies, and likewise, how technologies affect the way people behave.
High Performing Teams & Psychological Safety at Work: Psychological safety is the foundation for team performance, whether we’re oriented towards consistent quality, innovation, adaptation, safety or a combination of all outcomes. When people feel psychologically safe, they feel more able […]
What is “Safe to Fail”? Recently, I failed a motorbike test. This might sound like a mistake, but I fully expected to fail. In the UK, you must pass multiple tests before you’re allowed out on the roads on a […]
Psychological Safety Behaviours: The Big List (updated March 2025) Psychological safety is a belief that the group is safe for interpersonal risk taking (Edmondson, 1999). There are many ways we can help to foster these environments, but it’s important to […]
Checklists I read Atul Gawande’s “Better” some time around 2008 and absolutely loved it, so when he published “The Checklist Manifesto” in 2009, I grabbed a copy immediately. The Checklist Manifesto describes the power of checklists in reducing human error and increasing effectiveness across various industries, […]
Psychological Safety, Aviation Disasters and Crew Resource Management This week I’ve been reading “Confronting Mistakes” by Jan Hagen. This is a fantastic book, focusing on the human factors behind a multitude of aviation incidents. Jan highlights how miscommunication and failures to speak up […]
Welcome to the Psychological Safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You’re amazing. Having tried switching to a biweekly pattern, I’m now experimenting with alternating short-form and long-form newsletters each week. This week is a short form newsletter and highlights Just Culture, […]
Providing constructive feedback is one powerful way you can help people excel, achieve their goals and be happier in their work. Done well, it can create psychological safety and help teams and organisations perform at their best. However, feedback can […]
Psychological Safety #101 What does Cognitive Load have to do with Psychological Safety? Psychological safety helps to reduce our cognitive load by allowing us to ask for help and worry less about the interpersonal risks we take. Conversely, high cognitive […]
What is Conway’s Law? This week we’re diving into the concept of Conway’s Law, and its relation to psychological safety. Conway’s Law essentially describes the “force” that means how a team or organisation is structured will affect what the organisation […]
Resilience Engineering Today we’re diving into the field of Resilience Engineering. This subject ticks a lot of my interest boxes: from complexity and sociotechnicality to psychological safety and leadership. I hope you find it interesting too! Resilience Engineering is a […]
1- Artefacts. These describe any overt, visible, describable aspects of the organisation. Think things like branding and logos, office design, dress code, policies and tools. Things that you can see.
2- Espoused values. This is how people would describe the organisation, in current or aspirational terms. These include missions, goals, value statements, and social contracts.
3- Underlying assumptions. These are unconscious, unspoken, hard to articulate elements of the organisation, particularly from within.
Work as Imagined vs Work as Done In last week’s newsletter about human error, we looked at why and how people make mistakes. One of the categories of error we explored was “violations”, where people don’t carry out the work as per protocol or procedure. This […]
Human Error We’ve covered failures before, but this week we’re focusing on errors. Failures can be preventable, complex, or “intelligent” – such as those resulting from experiments where we try something, intentionally, that might fail. However, errors, in this context, refer to the unwanted […]
Provan’s “safety of work” and “work of safety” are two different ways of thinking about occupational health and safety (OHS) in the workplace. The “safety of work” approach focuses on the risks and hazards that are inherent to a particular […]
Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You are amazing. This week discusses the way in which aiming for zero defects can actually result in more defects, not fewer. Zero Defects. I’m currently reading “Boyd, the fighter pilot who […]
Tuckman’s Model We’ve recently covered team size, Dunbars number, and the effect that team sizes has on performance and psychological safety. In this issue, we’re going to take a little look at team longevity, the difference between short-lived and long-lived teams, and how the […]
Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You are amazing. This week discusses failure archetypes, human factors, more Elon Musk, stinky fish and more. Human Factors & Categorising Failure In the past couple of issues, we’ve spoken about failure – how […]
Page 2 of 3
