Henry Petroski’s failure treatise cites a useful taxonomy of failures from Thomas McKaig’s “Building Failures”…
- Ignorance – inadequate knowledge, lack of precedent
- Economy – cutting corners in building or maintaining
- Lapses – negligence, carelessness
- Unusual Occurrences – eg. earthquakes, meteors, tidal waves
Such distinctions are helpful in our embrace of failure to understand better what exactly we are dealing with and how best to interpret and respond.
Leadership and Management / Turning Adversity to Advantage 