2025 Community of Human and Organizational Learning 31st Annual Conference

Failsafe Network was founded in 1985 to help organizations and people learn from things that go wrong.

In this presentation, we discuss the need for an effective, repeatable process to help overcome three significant barriers to organizational learning. Each of these barriers involves people.

One significant barrier is the tendency to assign blame. The larger the problem, the more likely we are to do so. Blame is inversely proportional to understanding and has no place in our organizations. However, it’s a human tendency that’s difficult to eliminate. Blame is toxic, breeds shame, and erodes trust, which is the foundation of all healthy relationships, whether at work or home. To address this, we must take focused action using an effective repeatable process.

Another barrier is the tendency for individuals not to recognize their part in a problem and not learn from it. At the end of the day, everyone in an organization plays a role in both the good and bad outcomes. However, it can be difficult to see the role each of us plays in something that goes wrong. True change will only occur when individuals understand their part in the problem, which also requires a process.

A third barrier exists within our culture. Latency, a small but significant aspect of our culture, directly contributes to our problems and cannot be ignored. Though veiled and difficult to discern, latency profoundly influences human behavior. It shapes our tendencies and the decisions that lead to incidents. Therefore, we must have a process to identify and address latency, or it will manifest in other incidents.

The goal is to help organizations continuously improve by addressing latency, developing a culture that will not tolerate blame, that will embrace understanding, and take ownership of our roles in the challenges we face.