Failure, preoccupation with

Slips and lapses occur when a person knows what they want to do, but the action does not turn out as they intended. Slips relate to observable actions and are associated with attentional failures, whereas lapses are internal events and associated with failures of memory. Slips and lapses occur during the largely automatic performance of some routine task, usually in familiar surroundings. They are almost invariably associated with some form of distraction, either from the person s surrounding or their own preoccupation with something in mind. When Charles Darwin went to the wrong tea caddy, he had a lapse of memory. If, on the other hand, he had remembered where the tea was but had been momentarily distracted and knocked the caddy over rather than opening it, he would have made a slip. 

A different example of inattention to local failure is a curious replay in the Columbia disaster of the inversion of logic first seen in the Challenger disaster. As pressure mounted in both events, operations personnel were required to drop their usual standard of proof, prove that it is safe to fly, and to adopt the opposite standard, prove that it is unsafe to fly. A system that insists on proof that it is safe to fly is a system in which there is a preoccupation with failure. But a system in which people have to prove that it is unsafe to fly is a system preoccupied with success. 

To summarize, in a culture that is less mindfiil and more preoccupied with success, abstracting rarely registers and preserves small deviations that signify the possibility of larger system problems. Doubt about the substance that underlies abstractions is removed. If the can-do bureaucracy is preoccupied with success, it is even more difficult for people to appreciate that success is a complex accomplishment in need of continuous reaccomplishment. A preoccupation with failure implements that message. 

The fragmentation of problem-solving also illustrates Karl Weick s points about how effective organizations exhibit a deference to expertise, reluctance to simplify interpretations, and preoccupation with potential for failure, none of which was in operation in NASA s organizational decision-making leading up to and during Columbia (Weick et al., 1999). 

It is applicable to the energy-barrier model, HRO theory, and resilience engineering. The Captain was getting stuck in outdated behaviors, which is a failure of ability to anticipate in resilience engineering. It can also be explained by mindfulness of HRO theory because it is a lack of preoccupation with failure. Lastly, it promoted high speed in ice field and therefore weakened the barrier of spot iceberg and avoid collision . 

The First Officer of the Titanic ordered Hard a-starboard right after he was informed of the iceberg which ran completely contrary to accepted procedure. The action was much more likely to cause collisions than to prevent them (Ward, 2012). It is relevant to the energy-barrier model, HRO theory and resilience engineering. The frantic action of the First Officer can be explained by the ability to respond in resilience engineering and preoccupation with failure and sensitivity to operations of mindfulness in HRO theory. It influenced and weakened the barrier of spot iceberg and avoid collision . 

Preoccupation with failure, and detailed analysis of failure as essential for organisational learning... 

Given the available data, it is extremely important that clinicians evaluate patients with major depression for features of psychosis, because the failure to do so may result in inadequate treatment for the patient. A practical problem encountered by clinicians, however, is the subtlety of delusions. For example, it is not unusual in geriatric depression for patients to present with a somatic preoccupation that borders on delusional. These so-called near delusions may put the patient into the arena of psychotic depression. Some evidence exists that patients with depression with near delusions may respond more favorably to combinations of antidepressants and antipsychotics or ECT. Once the presence of both major depression and psychosis is determined, other psychotic disorders including bipolar disorder and schizophrenic spectrum illness must also be ruled out because this may influence long-term treatment decisions. 

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