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,
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
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
Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You are amazing. This week discusses how not to be Brent (Static work vs Generative work), plus great resources on autonomy, pedagogy, nursing, software engineering and human factors. Static Work vs Generative Work,
Provan’s “safety of work” and “work of safety” are two different ways of thinking about occupational health and safety (OHS) in the workplace. While both are essential, understanding their differences and how they interconnect with modern theories like HOP and
Westrum’s Cultural Typologies Dr Ron Westrum wrote in the BMJ Quality & Safety Journal in 2004 about The Three Typologies of Organisational Culture. He was looking at how information flows through an organisation, and he considered that because information flow is influential and indicative of other aspects
Psychological safety, power, and Mary Parker Follett Power dynamics are closely intertwined with psychological safety. We’ve highlighted power types and addressing power gradients in other pieces, but I wanted to dive into it a bit more this week. Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933), writer, social worker,
Whether organisations like to admit it or not, toxic work culture is still a major problem. A study from the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that any workplace, which holds some form of toxicity and hostility, will likely see
“You should know that already.” “Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.” “Who’s to blame for this?” “We cannot get this wrong.” “There will be zero mistakes on this project.” *eye roll* “Don’t be so negative.” “You don’t need to
Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You are amazing. This week discusses sales teams, game theory and the Agile Prime Directive. If you enjoy reading this newsletter, please share it via your social networks and/or forward it to other people
Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You are amazing. This week discusses making work visible, and rockstar employees. Making Work Visible Dominica DeGrandis is the author of the excellent book “Making Work Visible“. It’s a fantastic book, and covers
Weaponisation of Psychological Safety This week was a bit rubbish to be honest. We had a nasty experience when we were the victims of a rather sophisticated fraud attempt. It could have been awful, but with the help of various
Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You are amazing. This week discusses how speaking up sounds different for everyone, and psychological safety looks different to everyone. We also have learning from incidents, post-mortems, inclusion and diversity. If you
Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You are awesome. This week discusses command-control management, a lot of LEGO, autism, trans inclusion, and speaking up. If you enjoy reading this newsletter, please share it via your social networks and/or forward it to
Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You are awesome. This week is all about psychological safety at work and in the workplace, with content about Ron Westrum and Grace Hopper, inclusion, succession planning, whistleblowing, management practices, silence,
Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You rock. This week includes the Fox, Owl, Donkey and Sheep, Inclusion, Open Source, Language, Eurofighter Typhoon pilots, and champion skateboarder Rodney Mullen.Enjoy, and have a fantastic day! Blameless post-mortems are a
Why do you want to foster greater psychological safety in your organisation? To improve employee retention? To increase productivity? Reduce risk? Improve innovation? Or simply because it’s the right thing to do for people? I often talk about the business
Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You’re awesome. This week includes proof that people like you more than you think, Transactional Analysis, teaching, post-mortems, Russ Ackoff and cloud transformation! Enjoy, and have a beautiful day. If you enjoy
Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You are awesome. This week has anti-racism, neurodiversity, digital transformation, UK politics, and some excellent engineering principles from the team at Artsy. Enjoy, and have a wonderful day. Also, if
Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You rock. This week we have psychological safety at Apple, disability data, Relational Security and Thinking Tools. Enjoy, and have a great day! If you have some time, please take a minute to answer
Creating psychological safety at work, in your team or in your organisation may seem like a very daunting task, and it can be hard to know where to start. Here are ten things you can do right now that will
The Psychological Safety Book Club Updated November 2025. We love nothing more than reading fantastic books that help us to understand (and explain) concepts around psychological safety even better. The list below includes many of our current favourite books about
Psychological Safety in the workplace is the belief that the environment is a safe place where you can take an interpersonal risk as a group. This means that the team can speak up, especially when there’s a problem present in
