The traditional approaches to managing human performance may not be highly effective. Most of this is driven by performance goals, oversight and feedback. One of the underlying reasons is that the established goals and metrics are set without a thorough understanding of the impact these may have on other aspects of performance and results. There is a vast array of reasons for underperformance. One of the insidious reasons is human error. This is a "newer" area of study of human factors, and until recently, its causal analysis and interventions has been more an art than a science.     Performance has to be reliable, and the management system has to be robust. That means that the human-task interface has be free of error, and the system has to be tolerant of unexpected conditions should they arise. 

Another aspect of performance is resilience. The system has to be able to recover and return to a steady state without much difficulty or delay. Human error is inevitable and occurs for many reasons. The reasons may reside with the individual or the organization's systems. This mismatch may be due to a misunderstanding of the task, task demand, capability, knowledge, motivation, goals, information, communication, politics, human dynamics, supervision, climate, culture, and leadership to name a few. It also is impacted by the ability of humans to perform the task in a myriad of different ways or break (often unintentional) an "unbreakable" system. This is one of the reasons why some of the implemented protective systems sometimes are breached.