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Excellent insight on conterfactuals in the context of (some of) the analysis of that latest AWS outage (emphasis mine): Counterfactuals are seductive. They tidy up messy stories . “If only we’d done X.” “If only they’d noticed Y.” They sound analytical, but they’re fictional . As the saying goes, “If my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a bicycle.” Once we start changing the facts, we’re not talking about reality anymore: we’re imagining a different one that didn’t happen. It’s easy to laugh at Joey, but we all do it. Just look at all the hot takes on the large AWS outage this week. We look back at a failed project, a near miss, an incident or accident, and feel the seductive pull of “they should have..” or “they shouldn’t have…” because we crave causality and coherence. When something goes wrong, we want to believe that there was a single point of failure that we can fix for next time, reassuring ourselves that it won’t happen again. But as Dekker reminds us,  “…[counterfactuals] ...

Came across this inspiring post by Psych Safety on Ikigai last week, and I immediately felt I had to save it here, if not for the sake of better interiorising it by writing about it. The post immediately resonated with me because it captures exactly how I felt, many moons ago, when I came across the Internet, around 1996. I felt that the internet, with its rebel, distributed architecture would have changed the world, and for the better. I wanted to be a part of it because I thought I would be good at it, I would enjoy it and I could earn an income at the same time. 25 years later I still find that it's the same combination of things that motivates me the most deeply and ultimately allows me to be effective: Am I good at this (or willing to improve)? Does this benefit others and have a positive impact on the world? Will this help me make a living (or am I consciously choosing to do it for free)? Does it feel good? Do I love it? If I had to point at something that I feel is missing ...

While there are many summaries of practices that foster Psychological Safety there is a recipe that I've picked up recently which I believe is supremely powerful both at work and in life (especially with children). The recipe allows us to gracefully handle the delivery of negative news, negative feedback, or general disagreement creating an environment which encourages open and honest communication. The reasoning is that open and honest communication will allow us to get the heart of the problem, and then, hopefully tackle it. It is surprisingly simple and boils down to framing our response in these terms (in order): Thank you for sharing it with me I believe you Tell me more

My motto (has been for a while): There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers