Seven Practical Steps

How to Build Reliability, Safety and Trust in

Technical Teams - Seven Practical Steps

1. Take a Learning-Based Approach

Errors are signals, not failures.

2. Build Psychological Safety

You can’t fix a secret. (Clive Lloyd)

3. Lead After Action Reviews

Experts learn consistently from jobs that go well, not just occasionally from jobs that go wrong.

4. Transform Investigations

Blame is an addiction. Learning is the cure.

5. Apply Classic Defenses

We can’t change the human condition. But we can change the conditions under which humans work. (James Reason)

6. Improve Systems

We don’t rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems. (James Clear)

7. Build Resilience

The most reliable teams don’t try to eliminate every error. They make it so that errors don’t disable them. (Weick & Sutcliffe)