An oft-quoted idea is that in a just culture, honest mistakes are not persecuted, whereas wilful disobedience of rules and procedures is not tolerated. This works to an extent, but as always there are shades of grey.
Even if money was no object, a business or other organisation still couldn't tolerate recurrent 'honest' mistakes if they were rooted in incompetence. To my way of thinking, I guess it comes down to:
- doing your best to recruit, train and mentor personnel with potential, as best you can;
- encouraging people to speak up honestly when they f*** up;
- dealing with those f*** ups by real efforts to find root causes and fixing them with changes to procedures / retraining / education rather than simply shooting the guilty bastard;
- notwithstanding the above, having proper standardisation systems and if someone isn't able to consistently maintain the standard, having ways to move them out while respecting their worth as a person.
It may not have happened everywhere in the RAAF while I was there, but the helicopter squadrons of the time did a pretty good job of an honest and I'd say just culture. Private enterprise is harder because the financial cost of a mistake is more starkly visible, and lines are more easily blurred. No matter what, management have to be fair dinkum about it or it'll never work.
(Edited to say pity I didn't set up a new account with a name like Mister Proach just to keep it consistent ...)