Add post on high reliability organizations

posts/high-reliability-organizations.org

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+---
+title: "High reliability organizations"
+date: 2022-06-01
+tags: management, social science
+toc: false
+---
+
+[cite/t:@dietterich2018_robus_artif_intel_robus_human_organ] is an
+interesting article about how to make /robust/ AI. High risk
+situations require the combined AI and human system to operate as a
+high reliability organization (HRO). Only such an organization can
+have sufficiently strong safety and reliability properties to ensure
+that powerful AI systems will not amplify human mistakes.
+
+* Reliability and high-reliability organizations
+
+The concept of high reliability organization (HRO) comes from
+[cite/t:@weick1999_organ]. Examples of HROs include nuclear power
+plants, aircraft carriers, air traffic control systems, and space
+shuttles. They share several characteristics: an unforgiving
+environment, vast potential for error, and dramatic scales in the case
+of a failure.
+
+[cite/t:@weick1999_organ] use the concept of "mindfulness", a kind of
+"enriched awareness" (which I interpret as "awareness with explicit
+processes"), consisting of the five elements listed below. This
+mindfulness leads to the capacity to discover and manage unexpected
+events, which in turn leads to reliability.
+
+* Characteristics of a high reliability organization
+
+An HRO is an organization with the following five attributes.
+
+** Preoccupation with failure
+
+There are many possible failures, most of them extremely
+rare. Consequently, HROs study all forms of failure and near misses
+with extreme carefulness and attention to detail. They also study the
+/absence/ of failure: why it didn't fail, and the possibility that no
+flaws were identified because we weren't attentive enough to potential
+flaws. HROs encourage reporting all mistakes and anomalies by anyone.
+
+** Reluctance to simplify interpretations
+
+HROs avoid having a single interpretation for a given event. They
+encourage generating multiple, complex, contradicting interpretations
+for every phenomenon. People are encouraged to have different views,
+different backgrounds (important for [[id:cdfc701f-7b6e-40ec-be94-db64a74aef0d][Hiring]]), and are re-trained
+often. To resolve the contradictions and the oppositions of views,
+interpersonal and human skills are highly valued, possibly more than
+technical skills.
+
+** Sensitivity to operations
+
+HROs rely a lot on "situational awareness". Basically, we have to
+check that there is no emergent phenomena (cf [[id:cabacd0d-2d40-450d-bbba-85c3539ff939][Complex systems]] and
+[[id:65e2d955-ab29-432f-9f48-30605e3f688f][Compositionality]]): all outputs should always be explained by the known
+inputs. Otherwise, there might be other forces at work that need to be
+identified and dealt with. A small group of people may be dedicated to
+this awareness at all times.
+
+** Commitments to resilience
+
+HROs train people to be experts at combining all processes and events
+to improve their reactions and their improvisation skills. Everyone
+should be an expert at managing surprise. This can include rapid
+formation of ad hoc teams to improvise solutions to novel problems.
+
+** Underspecification of structures
+
+There is no fixed reporting path, anyone can raise an alarm and halt
+operations. Everyone can take decisions related to their technical
+expertise. Information is spread directly through the organization, so
+that people with the right expertise are warned first. Power is
+delegated to operation personal, but management is completely
+available at all times.
+
+* HROs vs non-HROs
+
+Non-HROs increasingly exhibit some properties of HROs. This may be due
+to the fact that highly competitive environments with short cycles
+create unforgiving conditions (high performance standards, low
+tolerance for errors). However, most everyday organizations do not put
+failure at the heart of their thinking.
+
+Failures in non-HROs come from the same sources: cultural assumptions
+on the effectiveness or accuracy of previous precautions measures.
+
+Preoccupation with failure also reveal the couplings and the complex
+interactions in the manipulated systems. This in turn leads to
+uncoupling and less emergent behaviour over time. People understand
+better long-term, complex interactions.
+
+* Reliability vs performance, and the importance of learning
+
+An interesting discussion is around the (alleged) trade-off between
+reliability and performance. It is assumed that HROs put the focus on
+reliability at the cost of throughput. As a consequence, it may not
+make sense for ordinary organizations to put as much emphasis on
+safety and reliability, as it may cost money.
+
+However, investments in safety can also be viewed as investments in
+learning. HROs view safety and reliability as a process of search and
+learning (constant search for anomalies, learning the interactions
+between the parts of a complex system, ensuring we can link outputs to
+known inputs). As such, investments in safety encourage collective
+knowledge production and dissemination.
+
+Mindfulness also stimulates intrinsic motivation and perceptions of
+efficacy and control, which increase individual performance. (People
+who strongly believe they are in control of their own output are more
+motivated and more efficient.)
+
+HROs may encourage mindfulness based on operational necessity in front
+of the catastrophic consequences of any failure, but non-HROs can
+adopt the same practice to boost efficiency and learning to gain
+competitive advantage.
+
+Additional lessons that can be learned from HROs (implicit in previous
+discussion):
+1. The expectation of surprise is an organizational resource because
+   it promotes real-time attentiveness and discovery.
+2. Anomalous events should be treated as outcomes rather than
+   accidents, to encourage search for sources and causes.
+3. Errors should be made as conspicuous as possible to undermine
+   self-deception and concealment.
+4. Reliability requires diversity, duplication, overlap, and a varied
+   response repertoire, whereas efficiency requires homogeneity,
+   specialization, non-redundancy, and standardization.
+5. Interpersonal skills are just as important in HROs as are technical
+   skills.
+
+* References