I recently attended Comma-Con, Facebook's global content strategy conference where we share information about our work, develop best practices and get to know each other better. It's basically Comic-Con, minus the cosplay. But this note isn’t a Comma-Con recap, but instead about one specific concept: high reliability organizations.
Our final keynote speaker was Facebook’s very own Kate Berardo, Head of L&D. She outlined what a high-reliability organization (HRO) is, thoughtfully shared her experience of being married to a firefighter, and made high-level connections between the HRO operations and the tech industry.
I’m hoping to relay how HROs are able to succeed, and how product teams can adopt HRO principles to ensure holistic longevity for the company.
What’s a HRO?
First, let’s breakdown the concept. At its core, a HRO is one that has minimized wide-scale issues and has systems in place to prevent future errors, despite having increased risk for failure. They don’t usually appear in the news for catastrophes, but when they do they’re focused, proactive and upfront. And despite any issues, they’re able to bounce back.
To make it easier to digest, HROs can be associated with 5 key principles (basically what they do differently than other orgs):
There is a preoccupation with failure
There is reluctance to simplify
Focus is on sensitivity to operations
Commitment to resiliency and learns from mistakes
Leaders defer to expertise
I’m sure you can infer a lot, as these principles are intentionally clear and simple. However, I don’t want anything to get lost in translation. Let me break these down further, just so we’re all on the same page.
Preoccupation with Failure
At first glance, this could be read as pretty negative. And that’s honestly not completely wrong. In fact, this has more to do with anticipating potential negative outcomes and identifying them as a systematic problem, not a lone issue for a single team or person. The skinny on this principle is that when an HRO spots a problem, they prioritize prompt fixes. This is embodied through employees who constantly think about breaking points and stress cases. HROs ensure everyone has the proper tools and a shared language that adds transparency and breaks down information.
Reluctance to Simplify
This almost seems counterintuitive, since simplification is synonymous with making things easier to use. But this reluctance isn’t about making things harder to use. In fact, HROs deliberately keep things explicit and often question broad explanations. Resisting simplification means identifying the root cause and continuously asking questions to get more information. It also means challenging existing perceptions, and being OK with being wrong. HROs take time to understand concepts and never take shortcuts.
Sensitivity to Operations
For me, this principle was less obvious to understand. Being sensitive to operations, however, means continuously being conscious of changing conditions and relying on constant reevaluation of processes. Breaking it down a bit further, you can relate this to situational awareness (recognizing perception, comprehending the situation and anticipating how things will play out–and then acting based on all three). HROs know that ICs are closer to the work
than leadership, and create an environment that encourages open feedback and creates system-wide changes based on that feedback.
Commitment to Resilience
Arguably the easiest principle to understand, HROs are focused on being resilient and learning from their mistakes. Being able to identify, solve and move past issues is key. It’s far too easy to become paralyzed by PR disasters, but with preparation and timely response, HROs are able to mitigate negative impact and are able to swiftly solve problems. Basically, being a resilient organization means working collaboratively and preparing a systematic response, and then bouncing back together.
Deference to Expertise
Deference? It’s not a well-known term, but it’s basically the same word as “defer,” or to pivot to someone else for an answer. And HROs are successful because they defer to people with expertise to solve problems. Instead of focusing on structural hierarchy and titles, HROs know that people with deep knowledge or skill are much more capable of identifying solutions than leaders who are more removed. During times of turmoil, HROs defer to folks at the “front line” and constantly find ways to make voices heard. The key takeaway is that leaders listen to subject matter experts, and they’ don’t assume they know best.
How can teams embody HRO principles?
While your company might already be doing a great job of focusing on finding areas of opportunity, on keeping things transparent and somewhat detailed, on being sensitive to operations, on being fairly resilient, and on deferring to expertise, I think team culture always has room to improve, and room to ensure people have a great experience.
Here’s a few areas to better align with the 5 HRO principles:
Celebrate QA and quality efforts more
Encourage clear communication at every level
Ensure everyone is aligned and included at kickoff
Commit to serving people first, business-needs second
Give more weight to and seek out XFN feedback
Celebrate Quality Assurance
Preoccupation with Failure: Building quality products and services is paramount. We know this, and we all strive to make sure this happens every day. And while we’re all focused on making sure things meet “core metrics,” we sometimes forget to go the extra mile. We need to be ensuring that our services are quality for everyone, including those with cognitive impairments, those without sight and those with less tech-savvy skills.
Accessibility (AX) and usability shouldn’t just be a thing to consider before launch, but should be ingrained in the process from the start. We should continuously check-in and ensure that our products are providing the same level of high-quality performance no matter who’s using them. And we can start by highlighting and rewarding past and current AX efforts.
Encourage Clear Communication
Reluctance to Simplify: Shared knowledge and clear communication should be higher priority. Tech jargon and endless acronyms are a huge issue in our vast world of ambiguity. We all come to the table with our own personal understanding of terminology, but we rarely acknowledge it. But we can change that by level-setting, over communicating and clarifying when people seem confused.
Being explicit about your objective at the top of a meeting is a great place to start. Try explaining what acronyms mean after first use. Consider and understand that we all want to do great work, but we need shared meaning to make it happen.
Ensure Alignment and Inclusion
Sensitivity to Operations: Far too often do I hear people getting left off invites. It’s easy to do, especially when you support multiple disciplines across teams. I also often hear people aren’t sure of product direction or what tests are active. That’s going to happen occasionally, but it doesn’t need to be status quo.
Before shipping, making decisions or exploring product work, gather your team and make sure there is consensus. Make your kick-off public in a shared calendar, and encourage people to add themselves to build accountable inclusion. Don’t assume a particular discipline might not want to attend, but instead send an invite with an agenda.
Serve People First
Commitment to Resilience: This is a tough one. We’re all employed by a business, and we need to make sure we can sustain ourselves. We need to make money, we need to appease shareholders and we need to be effective. But that all rides on public perception and reputation. If we don’t pay attention to what people are saying and feeling, we risk losing our users.
When deciding on product direction, don’t only consider business objectives–consider perception. It’s true that we sometimes need to just focus on getting something shipped, but it’s pointless if we’re not fixing problems that already exist. We’ve got to face existing people problems and solve them.
Seek Out XFN Feedback
Deference to Expertise: We hire people for a reason; let’s lean into that more. A collaborative team involves working across more than engineering, product design and growth marketing. It involves including legal counsel, running things through research, analyzing data, working with content strategy and getting feedback from all our peers.
We can’t simply dismiss feedback as a wish, or close an open task if we think there isn’t an issue. We need to ensure we’re doing everything we can to listen to what people are saying. Again, we were all hired for our skill, expertise and experience, so take advantage of that and use it to improve what we build.
Making Realizations Reality
Sitting in the crowd of content strategists last week was incredible. Being surrounded by talented designers, writers, strategists, information architects and empaths reminded me of the incredible power of collective force. I’m glad I was able to hear from peers and experts, and be able to learn new concepts that I can practically apply.
When we ended the conference with Kate’s keynote, it got me thinking. The entire idea of a high reliability organization hadn’t ever really crossed my mind. I took for granted the basics behind truly successful organizations, and am sure I’m not the only one.
Hopefully you took something away from this note. Hopefully you’ll feel empowered to align your team’s work to HRO best practices. Thanks for reading, and thanks to the organizers of Comma-Con.