What High-Reliability Organizations Teach Us About Managing People

By Captain Shawn Kurbanali, C.Mgr. | Chartered Managers Canada

In high-reliability organizations, perfection isn’t the goal - awareness is. I learned that long before I ever thought about MBA coursework, sitting in the left seat of an aircraft where effective in-flight management becomes critical when systems fail. Whether in a cockpit or a control room, the principle is the same: the cost of complacency is high, so success depends on people who are disciplined, communicative, and humble enough to admit what they don’t know.

One of the first things that strikes me about high-reliability organizations, or HROs, is their constant commitment to mindfulness. These are teams that operate where mistakes carry weight; in aviation, healthcare, energy, or emergency response. They’re not built on the idea of never making errors but on detecting small deviations before they become critical. Managers in these environments learn to listen to quiet signals: a hesitation in tone, a small anomaly on a display, a colleague’s concern. It’s a culture that treats attention as a form of leadership.

That mindset also extends to planning and recruitment. Forecasting demand in an HRO isn’t just about scheduling people; it’s about ensuring readiness. Leaders anticipate operational cycles, shifts in workload, and even fatigue patterns. Hiring follows the same philosophy. Technical expertise matters, but so does temperament. The ability to stay composed, share responsibility, and perform under pressure. You don’t just recruit for skill; you recruit for reliability.

When it comes to performance, data and judgment share equal weight. Objective measures, like safety reports, compliance rates, or turnaround times, show what happened. But subjective measures, such as teamwork, adaptability, and clarity in communication, reveal how it happened. In high-stakes work, those softer qualities often determine whether an operation runs smoothly or unravels. Great managers understand that metrics tell only part of the story; the rest lives in observation, trust, and the everyday behaviors that keep teams aligned.

Through my own research and experience, one idea consistently stands out: learning has to move faster than failure. In an HRO, the real test isn’t how many mistakes are made, but how quickly the organization can identify, analyze, and respond when they occur. That requires psychological safety - the assurance that anyone can speak up, regardless of rank. In the flight deck, that might be a first officer challenging a captain’s decision. In business, it’s an analyst pointing out a risk no one else saw. The organizations that thrive are those that make learning everyone’s responsibility.

Another defining trait of reliability is continuity. Retention and succession planning aren’t administrative chores, they’re pillars of operational stability. Experienced employees carry context: the stories behind procedures and the judgment that only time provides. When leaders invest in keeping that knowledge alive and prepare their successors early, they safeguard the organization’s collective memory. In my world, we call that redundancy; ensuring the system keeps working even if one component fails. In management, it’s just good leadership.

The lessons from high-reliability organizations reach far beyond aviation. Every industry can benefit from cultivating mindfulness, encouraging open communication, and treating reliability as a shared value rather than an individual skill. The goal isn’t to eliminate error entirely; it’s to build teams resilient enough to recover from it quickly and learn along the way.

Whether you manage a manufacturing floor, a hospital unit, or a virtual project team, the same truth applies: reliability starts with people. Systems and checklists are important, but trust, feedback, and steady communication hold it all together. In that sense, managing human performance isn’t so different from flying. You navigate through turbulence, you adapt to changing conditions, and you stay alert for what might go wrong next. The difference between a smooth flight and a rough one often comes down to the same principle that defines every great organization: disciplined attention to the details that matter most.

About the Author: 

Shawn Kurbanali, C.Mgr. is an Air Canada Captain with nearly four decades of experience in commercial aviation. He is  currently completing his MBA in Aviation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, with a focus on leadership, human performance, and organizational decision-making in safety-critical environments. His professional interests center on how management systems translate theory into reliable performance in complex, real-world operations. To date, he has accumulated over 19, 500 hours of flight time, including over 10,000 hours in transoceanic and worldwide operations.