3. Structural and Psychological Safety

What happens if I speak up?
What happens if I screw up?
Maybe I’ll just do nothing instead.

The ability to innovate, learn, and adapt depends on people feeling safe to take risks, share ideas (especially when those ideas are countercultural) and admit mistakes. Safety is a feeling or cultural attribute and it requires concrete structures and practices that protect and enable vulnerable behavior. Without both psychological and structural safety, even the best-intentioned organizations, teams, and individuals will struggle to unlock their full potential.

Psychological safety, as defined by Amy Edmondson, is “a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.” But this belief must be anchored in real organizational structures that make such risk-taking possible. Structural safety manifests as codified organizational mechanisms that protect member status, resource access, and decision rights regardless of role or circumstance. While psychological safety operates at the behavioral level, structural safety embeds these protections into the organization’s operating system through explicit process, policy, and protocol. When these protections are firmly in place, they create the foundation that makes psychological safety sustainable rather than situational. Members can take meaningful risks knowing their organizational status is secured by process rather than personality.

This is not easy work, but it is essential.

When this pattern isn’t in place, people default to self-protective behaviors that privilege individual survival over collective flourishing. They withhold critical information, avoid smart risks and good spending, deflect accountability, and optimize for appearance rather than impact. These defensive routines become deeply embedded in organizational culture, creating what Chris Argyris termed “skilled incompetence”—the art of avoiding threat while appearing highly capable.