Why Learning needs Structure.
- David Yates
- Apr 28
- 5 min read
How high-performance organisations embed learning through failure
Failing Forward in Complex systems.
By the time a major failure occurs in any complex environment; an aircraft incident, a surgical error, a critical software bug. The real problem has usually been in motion for some time.
Warning signs were missed.
Small issues were brushed aside.
Mistakes weren’t discussed.
When we trace back through those events, we rarely find a single incompetent individual, more often we find systems that failed to learn.
High-reliability organisations have accepted a difficult but powerful truth: in complex systems, perfection is not possible.
There will be failures, because people will make mistakes. Its not a lack of diligence, it’s just a product of the human condition.
What matters is not whether failure happens, but how the system responds when it does. The best organisations don’t just tolerate failure they mine it for insight.
They use it to build stronger routines, sharper responses and more resilient teams.
This isn’t reactive.
It’s designed.
They fail forward not because they enjoy setbacks, but because they know that every mistake is a potential turning point.
Persistence over Perfection.
In safety-critical industries, learning from failure is a survival mechanism.
Take the example of test pilot Chuck Yeager the first human to break the sound barrier. Yeager didn’t approach that achievement with blind confidence, he and the team around him made calculated attempts, learned from failed trials and adjusted incrementally.
Each near-miss offered critical data, each adjustment improved their chances and without that iterative process, the breakthrough wouldn’t have happened.
The same was true for James Dyson, who built over 5,000 failed prototypes before perfecting his now-famous vacuum cleaner.
“There were 5,126 failures,” he said, “but I learned from each one.”
His success wasn’t a flash of brilliance it was a disciplined commitment to structured persistence.
In both cases, the outcome wasn’t flawless execution it was relentless refinement and the learning didn’t happen by accident.
It was deliberate.
The Swiss Cheese Model: Learning from Layers.
James Reason’s “Swiss cheese model” has become foundational in understanding failure in complex systems.
The metaphor is simple: every safety process is a slice of Swiss cheese. Imperfect, with holes. When the holes in multiple slices align, failure breaks through.
This model reframes how we talk about error.
It reminds us that failure is rarely caused by one person or one bad moment. It’s a chain and more importantly, it shows that learning must be aimed at the system, not just the individual.
If a problem passes through five layers, the lesson isn’t “who slipped up?” it’s “how did we allow this to pass through five defences?”
Organisations that embrace this thinking stop treating error as anomaly and start treating it as information. They build redundancy, review every near-miss.
They create routines for surfacing weak signals and they treat every slice of that system every checklist, every conversation, every decision point as a potential point for refinement.
From Error to Feedback Loop.
This kind of organisational learning isn’t just theoretical, it’s embedded in operations.
On U.S. Navy aircraft carriers, which operate as mobile airports under immense pressure, crews conduct detailed debriefs after every flight even when nothing goes wrong.
The process isn’t performative, it’s investigative.
What worked? What didn’t? What nearly went wrong, but didn’t and why?
This practice develops anticipatory awareness.
Small deviations get noticed. Near-misses are captured before they become incidents and systems evolve before they fail.
It’s not perfection, it’s vigilance.
Similar practices have transformed surgical safety, when hospitals adopted simple, aviation-style checklists for pre-surgery prep, post-operative complications dropped significantly.
Not because doctors became more competent overnight, but because they stopped relying on memory, started using standardised checks and made space for communication.
These were system changes that enabled better learning at every stage.
The Role of Cultural Discipline.
None of this works however. without cultural alignment.
Learning systems are only as effective as the behaviours that support them.
Pixar Animation Studios provides a compelling creative example. Their famed “Braintrust” meetings bring directors and writers together to critique early storyboards.
The key?
The feedback is honest, direct and focused on the work. No sugar-coating, no hierarchy, no personal defensiveness.
As co-founder Ed Catmull explains,
“The Braintrust is only effective if people leave their ego at the door.”
They mean it, it’s a behavioural norm that took years to build. The result is a studio where ideas are tested, challenged and reshaped constantly and where excellence emerges through iteration, not by accident.
This culture doesn’t just enable better films. It models what it means to fail well: fast, early and often but never.. wastefully.
Designing for Learning.
For organisations to embody this kind of learning, they need to ask hard questions not only after major incidents, but routinely:
Where are we treating silence as safety?
Where do we reward performance over insight?
Where do our systems invite honesty and where do they suppress it?
When something goes wrong, do we analyse the conditions, or do we look for someone to blame?
Learning can’t be left to good intentions.
It must be designed in through review cycles, transparent reporting, cross-functional debriefs and consistent leadership modelling.
With acceptance that mistakes and failure will happen, then the goal is to shorten the distance between failure and feedback.
Failing Well: A Learning Discipline.
What distinguishes high-performing systems is not that they make fewer mistakes it’s that they learn faster from the ones they do make.
Their resilience doesn’t come from avoiding pressure, but it comes from releasing pressure early, through honest reflection and iterative change.
This is the final evolution of the mindset we explored in Part 1, The Mindset behind the Mistake. It begins with individual willingness to face mistakes.
It grows in environments where candour is safer than silence and it becomes transformative when systems are designed to use failure as a feedback mechanism, not a trigger for shame.
When learning becomes institutionalised in rituals, in routines, in how leaders behave and how teams speak to each other failure is no longer a threat.
It becomes a signal and over time, a strength.
Conclusion: The System is the Teacher.
The best organisations don’t ask whether they will fail they ask how well they will fail. Will they catch errors early? Will they respond with analysis rather than blame? Will they share the learning widely? Will they adapt?
To fail well is not a passive trait. It is an active, learned behaviour and a system-level commitment.
Learning, in this context, is not a value to be aspired to, it is a discipline to be practised. It’s how organisations evolve.
It’s how people improve and it’s how the most complex systems in the world manage to remain safe, effective and innovative under pressure.
Failure is not the opposite of success.
It is the pathway to it, if we’re willing to learn.
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