Teams whose members believe they can raise problems without being punished report more errors and make fewer of them.
Edmondson's hospital study found that the better-performing nursing units reported more drug errors, not fewer, which inverted the expected relationship. Investigation showed the difference was in willingness to report rather than in rate of error. The construct that emerged names the belief that candour will not be punished, and it predicts learning behaviour across settings.
In practice
- A unit with the cleanest incident log is often the one where reporting is career-limiting.
- A team where the junior member contradicts the lead in a meeting is not dysfunctional; it is the one that catches mistakes.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Organizations & Bureaucracy
- Essay
- How organisations behave when nobody is steering