# Safe to Fail

*Tom Geraghty · Complexity & Systems, Interpersonal Practice*

Introduces safe-to-fail experiments as the right unit of action in complex systems. Distinguishes between safe-to-fail (bounded, reversible, cheap to learn from) and safe-to-succeed, and shows how defining what's safe to fail reshapes how teams approach risk.

- **This page:** https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/safe-to-fail/
- **Read the full article on psychsafety.com:** https://psychsafety.com/safe-to-fail/
- **Interactive map:** https://explore.psychsafety.com/?node=safe-to-fail

## Connected concepts (16)

- [How Complex Systems Fail: Being a Short Treatise on the Nature of Failure, How Failure is Evaluated, How Failure is Attributed to Proximate Cause, and the Resulting New Understanding of Patient Safety](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/cook-1998.md) (paper)
- [Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/rittel-webber-1973.md) (paper)
- [Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/juarrero-1999.md) (paper)
- [The New Dynamics of Strategy: Sense-Making in a Complex and Complicated World](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/kurtz-snowden-2003.md) (paper)
- [Complexity](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/complexity.md)
- [HOP](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/hop-human-and-organisational-performance-training.md)
- [Individual Involvement and Intervention in Quality Improvement Programmes: Using the Andon System](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/everett-sohal-1991.md) (paper)
- [Knowledge Transfer and International Joint Ventures: The Case of NUMMI and General Motors](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/inkpen-2008.md) (paper)
- [Safe-to-Fail Wargames](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/the-importance-of-safe-to-fail-wargames.md)
- [Three Horizons of Strategy](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/the-three-horizons-of-strategy.md)
- [Everything is an Experiment](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/everything-is-an-experiment.md)
- [Experiments, Bets & Probes](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/experiments-bets-and-probes.md)
- [Guardrails & Failure](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/psychological-safety-84-guardrails-and-failure.md)
- [On Understanding Software Agility: A Social Complexity Point of View](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/pelrine-2011.md) (paper)
- [Safer to Fail in Teaching](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/making-it-safer-to-fail-in-teaching.md)
- [Static vs Generative Work](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/psychological-safety-91-static-work-vs-generative-work.md)