The Fail-Safe Principle

The Fail-Safe Principle

Implementing fail-safes will help ensure that your decision is executed according to plan.

Imagine standing on Mount Everest, just fifty meters from reaching the very top. Your entire body is aching. Your mind is numb. It feels like no matter how hard you breathe there’s just not enough oxygen. You’ve been training for years, spent $60,000 on guides and travel, sacrificing time with your family and friends in the process. You’ve told everyone today is the day you’ll make the attempt. Everything you’ve worked for is right in front of you. You can see your goal. You’re nearly there. But you’re thirty minutes behind schedule, and oxygen is running low. Do you turn around or push forward?

The world’s best Sherpas know that the most dangerous part of summiting Mount Everest isn’t reaching the peak; it’s the descent. So much energy is spent getting to the top that even if climbers are running out of strength or oxygen, they keep pushing themselves to the summit. They spend so much of their resources getting there, they neglect to account for the ordeal of getting back. Lost in “summit fever” they forget that the most important thing isn’t making it to the top, but making it home. You can’t win, after all, if you don’t survive.

For those of us outside the situation, likely with no plans to climb Everest, the idea of summit fever seems a bit ridiculous: reaching the summit isn’t worth someone’s life! But for those on the top of the mountain, turning their backs on a dream that’s so close they can see it is much harder. Plus, the incredible amounts of energy spent climbing the mountain stresses the body and impairs the mind—conditions that the defaults use to subvert your carefully laid plans and prevent you from reaching your true objectives.

Climbing Everest is a dramatic example of why it’s important to implement execution fail-safes to ensure your decision gets executed as planned. Is it finally time to bail when you’re running out of oxygen? Should you stay the course even though your other equipment is on its last legs? Execution fail-safes leverage your thinking when you’re at your best to protect you against the defaults when you’re at your worst.

The idea of an execution fail-safe is well illustrated by the Greek myth of Ulysses. Ulysses was the captain of his ship. He and his crew were navigating close to the island inhabited by the Sirens, dangerous creatures that lured sailors to their deaths with their song—a song so beautiful that it drove crews mad with longing till they ran their ships against the rocks trying to reach its source.

Ulysses wanted to hear the Sirens’ song without risking the lives of his crew. Now, I’m not saying that Ulysses made a great decision here. If he’d really thought through his options using the principles and safeguards I’ve outlined, he would’ve steered clear of the island. But that’s not the part I love about the story. What I love is that Ulysses implemented fail-safes to ensure his decision was executed as planned.

He stuffed the ears of his crew with beeswax so they couldn’t hear the song as they approached the island. And to prevent them from changing course, he had them tie him to the mast so that no matter what he said or did in the madness of the song, he couldn’t influence them or change the decision he’d already made. He also instructed them that the more he struggled and insisted on changing course, the tighter they should bind him.

Ulysses’s clever implementation of execution fail-safes allowed him to hear the song while ensuring the safety of his crew. Of course, fail-safes are indispensable in a lot of other contexts too.