Lightning Talk: Whyhappn Instead of Whodunnit: Avoiding the Term “Human Error”

The talk argues against using the term 'human error' in classifying the reasons behind incidents and advocates for a blameless culture to achieve reliable and secure systems. It proposes looking at how highly resilient organizations handle the human component of failures from a systems thinking and organizational psychology standpoint.

• The term 'human error' is outdated and should be avoided in classifying the reasons behind incidents
• A blameless culture is key to achieving reliable and secure systems
• Highly resilient organizations focus on identifying all possible warning signs and maintaining a global view of all operations to prevent failures
• When a failure does occur, it is seen as a learning opportunity to improve how the organization works
• Building resilience to failure involves helping people cope with complexity under pressure and maintaining mindfulness or awareness at an organizational level

The speaker encountered a case where the term 'human error' was used for classifying the reasons behind an incident, which motivated them to propose this talk.

One of the keys to achieving reliable and secure systems is psychological safety, and this comes from having a truly blameless culture. In the past, I have encountered the term "human error" as the outcome of a "root cause analysis" process, and advocated within the company I was working for against its usage. This is the main motivator for proposing this talk. I would like also to gather some insights, from a systems thinking and organisational psychology standpoint, on how highly resilient organisations in different domains handle the human component of failures, as I think it is useful to have this perspective.Click here to view captioning/translation in the MeetingPlay platform!