Developing a High Reliability Organization

When Prevention Is Not Enough By their very nature, errors, accidents, and unexpected events are hard to fully anticipate. As geophysicist Richard Sears notes: > *"You can't manage these risks to zero. They are always there."* The final two HRO principles — **commitment to resilience** and **deference to expertise** — focus on *containment*: minimizing the impact of negative events when they do occur and ensuring a swift, appropriate response while maintaining mindfulness. Commitment to Resilience Resilience is about two things: 1. **How a system continues to operate** even when some of its parts are failing 2. **How a system bounces back** after failure and improves itself based on lessons learned A resilient organization doesn't just survive a crisis — it adapts, learns, and emerges stronger. Real-World Example: FedEx FedEx provides a compelling example of built-in resilience. Despite being responsible for delivering products safely and on time, FedEx regularly faces more shipments than anticipated, plus external disruptions like weather and airport delays. To protect the system, FedEx deploys what they call a **"flex fleet"**: each day, 20–25 FedEx planes across the United States depart for the central processing station in Memphis with **40% of cargo space still available**. These planes can stop to pick up excess cargo along the way — as long as they arrive in Memphis by the 1:30