A blog to help people create High Reliability

High Reliability Organizing (HRO) developed as a means to make an organization or unit stronger. In its natural state we historically found it in environments of danger or uncertainty such as military combat, firefighting, or business activities. While proactive components (plans and anticipation) and reactive components (after action reviews) are necessary parts of HRO, High Reliability itself derives from the ability of the organization and individuals to interact in real time with uncertainty or threat from the external environment.

The High Reliability Organization is commonly described as an organization that performs high risk work but without rare, catastrophic events. Researchers, as outside observers, have identified principles and characteristics to describe or characterize HROs but these tend to be distinct, and sometimes complex. Some of these principles are directed toward the organization’s structure and while some describe group interactions. Even more complex descriptions cover the processes of a crisis. While researchers attempt to describe how to move toward High Reliability they have not described how HROs originally formed. The overall research is unsettled to produce confusion between structural and functional principles, how to change people and organizations (most work describes imposed change), and the variety of the principles are assumed to be continuously connected. This has created confusion and gaps in our knowledge of HRO.

In the world today we deal with uncertainty and threat. This can be on the personal level of family or job, on the business level of the economy, or in geopolitics. High Reliability, evolved for optimal performance in an environment of uncertainty and threat, can strengthen a person’s performance, improve the function of a team, and move an organization forward through uncertainty.