High Reliability Oranisation Principles

Silcar uses the five principles of High Reliability Organisation to inform work systems, role definition and performance measures.

In their highly recommended book, ”Managing the Unexpected – Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty” (2007, John Wiley and Sons, San Francisco), Professor Karl Weick and Professor Kathleen Sutcliffe identified five principles of High Reliability Organisation (HRO). The first three principles are principles of anticipation, aimed at foreseeing the unexpected. The final two are principles of containment aimed at providing the resilience to handle any situation, to limit the losses from unexpected events, to recover quickly and to learn.

1. Preoccupation with Failure
• a relentless hunt for lapses, errors and incongruities with well developed processes for reporting near misses, service provision upsets and small and localised failures of all sorts
• wary of the potential liabilities of success including complacency, the temptation to reduce margins of safety and the drift into automatic processing

2. Reluctance to Simplify
• underlying state of mental functioning distinguished by continuous updating and deepening knowledge and understanding of context, potential problems and remedies
• ability to pick up weak signals of potential trouble and interpret from them any significant meaning

3. Sensitivity to Operations
• keen awareness of what is actually going on
• practices that keep people informed about operations as a whole, about how the system can fail and about strategies for recovery

4. Commitment to Resilience
• ability to absorb strain and preserve functioning in the face of adversity
• ability to recover from unforeseen events

5. Deference to Expertise
• authority migrates to the people with the expertise to deal with complex situation
• preparedness to allow people with expertise to make quick decisions when the situation demands.