Reliability and Innovation

The culture of high reliability organizations in one paragraph:

There is considerable evidence, and much experience, that in conditions of great uncertainty or stress people tend to assume that events they want to happen actually will happen. This practice of relying on hope, rather than facing facts as they are – or as instruments show them to be – is responsible for many nuclear plant casualties.

-Hyman G. Rickover, Father of the Nuclear Navy

The culture of innovative organizations in one sentence:

To venture into the wilderness, one must see it, not as it is, but as it will be.

-Carl Becker, American historian

These two cultures are contradictory in theory but often combined in practice: Google is innovative and has reliable infrastructure; SpaceX is reliable and has innovative rockets.

Powerful organizations follow the data and live in the future. They view events as they are, not as they want them to be. They make the world they want to see, not the world that happens to be.