"[S]uccess and failure have the same origins, only the outcome can distinguish one from the other." #readingToday

Instead of seeing successes and failures as two separate categories of outcomes brought about by different processes or 'mechanisms,' we must agree with Resilience Engineering that they are but two sides of the same coin. As the physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach noted in 1905 'knowledge and error flow from the same mental sources, only success can tell one from the other.' We should therefore try to understand the sources of performance rather than just the sources of failure. To extend the scope from individual to organisational performance, we may paraphrase Mach to say that success and failure have the same origins, only the outcome can distinguish one from the other.

The ETTO Principle, Erik Hollnagel