# How to Avoid Catastrophe

- **期号**: SRE Weekly Issue #162（2019-03-03）
- **作者**: Catherine H. Tinsley, Robin L. Dillon, and Peter M. Madsen — Harvard Business Review
- **链接**: https://hbr.org/2011/04/how-to-avoid-catastrophe

## 简介

How to avoid catastrophe: pay attention to near misses. This article makes an incredibly compelling point that we need to make a conscious effort to pay attention to near misses, and explains how cognitive bias will tend to make us do the exact opposite.

## 正文

## Summary.

Reprint: R1104G Most business failures—such as engineering disasters, product malfunctions, and PR crises—are foreshadowed by near misses, close
Most people think of “near misses” as harrowing close calls that could have been a lot worse—when a firefighter escapes a burning building moments before it collapses, or when a tornado miraculously veers away from a town in its path. Events like these are rare narrow escapes that leave us shaken and looking for lessons.