Outmaneuvering Complexity : Creating Safety by Engineering Resilience

Failure is due to brittle systems, not human error.

Systems operate successfully due to sources of resilience, usually hidden or under-appreciated.

Ironically, brittleness plagues systems due to new capabilities that increase and hide interdependencies, and therefore complexity is the source of the threats to safety as well as to long-term financial viability of organizations.

This book uncovers the story of complexity, brittleness and resilience in human systems that perform difficult activities under pressure to be highly productive and ultra-safe.

Contrasting cases from many industries - health care, defense, transportation and different episodes of change (eg technology for autonomous vehicles) - show: a)