Creating high reliability organizations using mindfulness

High Reliability Organizations (HROs) are organizations with processes that have extremely low failure rates, because the costs of failures are extremely high. According to Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld (2008) the key aspects of HROs are: preoccupation with failure, reluctance to simplify, and sensitivity to operations, among others. While we understand What the aspects of HROs are, we lack the understanding of How to implement HROs and Why they work. Using a soft research methods approach with Mindfulness techniques, this study demonstrates implementation of HRO in healthcare. In doing so, this research finds that Mindfulness techniques used with Soft Systems Methods provide an effective framework to create HROs. In doing so, this study also discovers a sixth aspect of HROs.