High Reliability Organizations (HROs) and
Leadership
Karlene H. Roberts
Haas School of Business
Center for Catastrophic Risk Management
University of California, Berkeley
karlene@haas.berkeley.edu
510.642.4700 (fax)
Agenda
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The unexpected happens
Defining a High Reliability Organization (HRO)
Importance of resiliency and adaptation
The leader’s role in a HRO
In reality almost all of us deal with
interdependent departments or
interdependent systems of organizations
• Different system components
• What kind of leadership works best for teams?
Agenda, cont.
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How does transformational leadership work?
Challenges in team leadership
Common responsibilities of team leaders
Four roles for team leaders
E-leadership
What makes E-leadership work?
When anyone asks me how I can best
describe my experience in nearly forty
years at sea, I merely say, uneventful.
Of course there have been winter
gales, and storms and fog and the
like, but in all my experience, I have
never been in any accident of any sort
worth speaking about.
I never saw a wreck and never have
been wrecked, nor was I ever in any
predicament that threatened to end in
disaster of any sort.
You see, I am not very good material
for a story.

Edward J. Smith, Captain, RMS Titanic
© 2005 Christie's Images
Swiss Cheese Model
Person
Organization
Person
Accident
trajectory
What is a High Reliability
Organization (HRO) ?
• An organization
– conducting relatively error free
operations
– over a long period of time
– making consistently good decisions
resulting in
– high quality and reliability operations
The Leader’s Role: Cultivating
Resilience and Adaptation
• Anticipate trouble spots.
• Develop employee capability to improvise.
• Improve organizational capacity and resources
to:
– Do quick studies
– Develop swift trust
– Engage in just-in-time learning
The Leader’s Role: Reluctance to
Simplify Interpretations
• All organizations must ignore many things.
• Doing so may force them to ignore key sources
of problems.
• Help employees restrain temptations to
simplify.
• To do this establish checks and balances,
adversarial reviews, and multiple perspectives.
The Leader’s Role: Preoccupation
with Failure
• Worry chronically and help employees worry
chronically about errors.
• Assume each day is a bad day and help
employees assume each day is a bad day.
• Realize that what you’re doing is difficult to
do.
• Help develop collective bonds among
suspicious people.
The Leader’s Role: Sensitivity to
Operations
• Pay close attention to operations but don’t
micromanage.
• Make sure everyone values organizing to
maintain situational awareness.
• Use resources so people can see and
comprehend what is happening.
The Leader’s Role: Organize Around
Expertise
• Let decisions “migrate” to those with
expertise to make them.
• Avoid rigid hierarchies.
Recap – The Leader’s Role
• Cultivate resilience and adaptation by:
– Helping people avoid simplifying interpretations
– Helping people to be preoccupied with failure
– Helping people to be sensitive to operations
– Organizing around expertise
Components of a ‘System’
Operators
Structure
Organizations
Interfaces
Procedures
Hardware
Environments
Components of a ‘System’
Department
N
Department
1
Department
2
Interfaces
Department
3
Department
5
Department 4
Components of a ‘System’
Org N
Org 1
Org 2
Interfaces
Org 3
Org 5
Org 4
Components of a ‘System’
Org N
Org 1
Supplier
Interfaces
Regulation
Legality
Org 2
What Kind of Leadership is Best?
Transactional?
• Contracts exchange of
reward for effort
• Promises rewards
• Recognizes
accomplishments
• Watches and searches for
deviations from rules
• Intervenes only if standards
not met
Transformational?
• Provides vision and sense of
mission
• Instills pride, gains respect
and trust
• Inspires motivation
• Promotes intelligence and
careful problem solving
• Gives personal
attention,coaches
How Does Transformational
Leadership Work?
• Be creative
• Encourage employees to be creative
• Be familiar with and agree with the
organization’s strategic goals
• Encourage followers to pursue ambitious goals
• Believe organizational goals are personally
important
• Have vision
Providing Team Leadership:
Challenges
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Learn to share information
Learn to trust others
Learn to give up authority
Understand when to intervene
Common Responsibilities of Team
Leaders
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Coaching
Facilitating
Handling disciplinary problems
Reviewing team/individual performance
Training
Communication
Four Roles for Team Leaders
Liaisons with External
Constituencies
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Upper management, other internal teams, etc.
Represents the team to other teams
Secures resources
Clarifies others expectations
Gathers information from outside
Shares information with the team
Troubleshooter
• When team has problems team leader sits in
meetings and asks for assistance
• Help team talk through problems
Conflict Manager
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What’s the source of conflict
Who is involved?
What are the issues?
What resolution options are available?
What are the advantages and disadvantages
of each?
Coaches
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Clarify expectations and roles
Teach
Offer support
Cheerlead
Do whatever is needed to help team improve
performance
Today’s Leadership Often Means
E-Leadership
• This is very important in industries like the
energy industry
• We have obvious examples
• Almost all leadership research examines faceto-face interactions
How to Make E-Leadership Work
• Carefully choose words. In e-leadership harsh
words can’t be softened by non verbal
communication – a smile, a gesture, etc.
• Structure appropriately – phrases are likely to
be received as curt
• Make sure message tone reflects the emotion
you want to send
• Choose a comfortable style – emoticons?
abbreviations? etc.
Wrap up: What we Talked About
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The unexpected happens
Defining a High Reliability Organization (HRO)
The leader’s role in a HRO
Interdependent departments or systems of
organizations
Different system components
Transformational leadership
Responsibilities of team leaders
E-leadership