High Reliability Organizations (HROs) offer benchmarks for other organizations and systems whose missions are critical but operate in challenging high-risk environments. Successful HROs offer insights on operations, culture, performance, and evaluation that can be adapted to other organizations to…

High reliability organizations (HROs) operate within challenging conditions. Think of air traffic control, aircraft carriers, and nuclear power plants for clear examples of such conditions. Mistakes in these settings often have catastrophic consequences. Yet they seldom fail. HROs have…

The High Reliability Organization (HRO) is an irresistible topic. How can any organization (like an aircraft carrier) or organized system (like American commercial aviation) operate in a totally threat-filled environment without frequent catastrophic failure? How can any organization realistically…

High Reliability Organizations (HROs) achieve such a status through persistent and detailed efforts to improve outcomes, even seeking “perfect reliability.” But, how do you get there from where you are? Chassin and Loeb, writing about healthcare, have summarized the…

A High Reliability Organization (HRO) is one that achieves desired outcomes consistently, despite operating in a highly complex environment characterized by high risks. It learns from its failures, even those unanticipated, and uses them to improve over time. Could…