Classify failures into three types before analysis…

When This Fires

• At the start of any failure analysis, post-mortem, or retrospective
• Before asking "what went wrong?" — the type determines the right question
• When a failure has occurred and the team is deciding how to respond
• During any learning-from-failure practice

Common Failure Mode

Treating all failures as preventable: "Someone should have caught this." This is only correct for Type 1 (process deviation). For Type 2 (complex), no one could have predicted the interaction. For Type 3 (intelligent), the failure was the expected possible outcome of a deliberate experiment. Defaulting to preventable analysis produces blame culture and kills both innovation and honest reporting.

The Protocol

At the start of every failure analysis: (1) Classify: was this a preventable failure (known process not followed), a complex failure (novel factor interaction), or an intelligent failure (frontier experiment)? (2) Ask the type-appropriate question: Preventable → "Why wasn't the process followed?" Complex → "What novel interaction occurred?" Intelligent → "What did we learn?" (3) Apply the type-appropriate response: Preventable → improve process compliance. Complex → improve detection and design. Intelligent → extract learning and continue experimenting.