Use a Postmortem Without Blame

After something goes wrong, the instinct is to find who's at fault. A better instinct: find what in the system allowed it to happen. Blame shuts people down — they get defensive, hide information, and stop contributing honestly. A blameless postmortem asks different questions: what did we miss, what would we change, what safeguard was absent? The goal isn't to let people off the hook — it's to actually fix the problem so it doesn't happen again.