Blameless problem solving

Making mistakes is an inevitable byproduct of doing innovative work. But at Etsy, we strive to create a blameless culture where it’s safe not only to make mistakes, but to speak up about them. After all, mistakes can be valuable and rich sources of learning.

After a significant incident or accident--instances where we were surprised by the outcome of an event--we hold a Blameless Post-Mortem. In these meetings, employees debrief on the incident, collectively create a timeline of the events that led to it, distill lessons learned, and develop recommendations for how to make things work better in the future. You can read more about Post-Mortems in this post from our Code as Craft blog.

Our intention is not just to learn from our mistakes, but also to cultivate a mindset where everyone is continuously unearthing new opportunities for improvement. We’re building scalable internal processes, training more facilitators, and implementing practices that encourage a healthy and just learning culture. We hope to eventually open-source these resources with our community.