When chance determines whether we are courageous, decisive, or reckless at work

We live in a culture that likes to believe we are in control. But the truth is that much in working life is beyond our power: who we encounter, what happens to us, the conditions we work under – and whether we were alert on the day something serious occurred. Therefore, serious incidents in high-risk professions rarely result from a single mistake. They often arise from a combination of many factors, with our own judgments being only one part of a bigger picture.

Many near-miss events are never recorded – precisely because they ended well. Only when something goes wrong do we see how narrow the margins really were.

When luck goes unnoticed – and misfortune becomes blame

If we don’t acknowledge the role of chance, it’s easier to develop a skewed view of ourselves and others. When things go well, we may overestimate our own skill because we fail to recognize the conditions that were also at play. And when things go wrong for others, we risk – often unintentionally – mistaking misfortune for incompetence.

This is where both privilege blindness and second victim blaming can creep in. We can become privilege-blind when we start believing that a positive outcome is primarily due to skill – forgetting how much was also beyond our control. And we can end up in second victim blaming when a professional is made the scapegoat for an outcome that, in reality, was also influenced by factors outside their control.

Acknowledging misfortune fosters agency

As an executive team or leadership group, you might fear that a shared focus on luck and misfortune will lead people to shirk responsibility or become resigned. Intuitively, that fear makes sense – but often, the opposite happens.

When someone’s experience of misfortune is acknowledged – for example, when a doctor says, “This is not your fault” – it can bring calm and energy to focus on what they actually have influence over. Acknowledging misfortune can therefore be a prerequisite for agency, as it reduces self-blame and hindsight bias – making it easier to learn and move forward. Recognizing both luck and misfortune requires that we don’t only ask: “What went wrong?” but also: “What did we know at the time we acted, and based on that, why did we act as we did?”

If we only learn from mistakes, we learn too little

When something goes wrong, many teams react quickly: What happened? Who did what? What should we learn? This is important. But if we only learn from what went wrong, we learn too little. The most resilient workplaces also examine what went well – because a positive outcome may result from skill, but also from favorable circumstances. Just as a negative outcome can be caused by mistakes, but also by misfortune.

That’s why it becomes essential to distinguish between different types of errors. Some mistakes are preventable. Some arise from complexity. Some are “intelligent,” occurring when we try something new. And then there are pseudomistakes.

Pseudomistakes are not “real” errors, but hindsight rationalizations: judgments that are labeled as mistakes afterward, without regard for the information that was actually available when the decision had to be made. Often, this occurs under time pressure and on a limited basis. Pseudomistakes are dangerous because they can easily lead us to assign blame to someone who, in reality, made the best decision they could at that moment.

Understanding luck and misfortune is about distributing responsibility fairly

Talking about luck and misfortune is not about shirking responsibility. It’s about distributing it fairly. When we become better at seeing what we could control – and what we couldn’t – we improve our ability to learn accurately, support each other properly, and prevent future issues.

It’s also important to create space to be acknowledged and witnessed: a place to process what cannot be fixed. This can be in collegial spaces where there is room to be human – and where the focus is not always on doing, but also on being.