Building Success Through Fail-Safe Culture in Autism Transition to Adulthood Programs

Why I Started Asking the Hard Questions

Hi, I’m Mike Carr, and in our latest podcast episode, I shared something crucial that every parent needs to know when choosing autism transition to adulthood programs. After years of working with families and starting John 13 (J13.org), we’ve discovered the one keyword that separates exceptional programs from the rest: fail-safe culture.

Key Points:

• Fail-safe culture treats challenges as learning, not expulsion.
• Great programs stay sensory- and neurodiverse-friendly.
• Productive failures build skills and keep inclusion.
• Ask: “What happens when things go wrong?”

Understanding Fail-Safe Culture in Autism Programs

When I talk about fail-safe culture, I’m referencing insights from Aaron Edgell’s July 10th Forbes article. He defines it as “a culture where leaders build psychological safety by normalizing small low risk failures.” In our autism transition to adulthood programs means creating an environment where teams learn to view failure as feedback, not something to fear.

This approach is revolutionary for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and autism because it acknowledges that challenging behaviors will happen, and when they do, our response determines whether families stay engaged or get pushed out of yet another program.

When Everything Goes Wrong at the Bowling Alley

So we’re at Uncle Buck’s Fishbowl and Grill up in Round Rock – you know, that place with all the ocean theming? Sharks on the walls, blue lighting, the whole nine yards. A really cool spot, and everyone was having a blast.

Then out of nowhere, one of our guys – let’s say it’s your son – just loses it. I mean completely lose it. He goes after one of our staff members, and I’m talking aggressively. Really aggressive.

Our senior staff jumps in, tries to get him outside to calm down. But he’s not having it. He scratches her face, her neck. Then punches her so hard she thought she was gonna have a black eye. This is a woman who’s been doing this for twelve years, has her master’s degree, knows this population inside and out. And she had to take days off work to recover.

You get that phone call no parent wants: “Come get your son. We can’t calm him down.”

Here’s Where Most Programs Fail

In 99% of programs, that’s it. Game over. Your family gets the boot, and you’re back to square one trying to find someone else who’ll take a chance on your kid.

But that’s not what happened.

What We Did Instead

Our whole team stayed late that day. We sat down and went through everything – and I mean everything. What was everyone doing? What did we miss? What signs were there?

No finger-pointing. No blame game. Just honest conversation about what went sideways.

And you know what we figured out? We screwed up. Three different ways.

First, the place was way louder than usual. Wait times were longer. We weren’t keeping things autism-friendly like we should have.

Second, sensory nightmare. All that noise, the crowds, the chaos – we missed all the warning signs because we weren’t thinking about sensory needs.

Third – and this one really got to me – our staff took away his iPad. His voice. And when he asked for it back the right way, we didn’t give it back fast enough. We failed to be neurodiverse-friendly when it mattered most.

The Real Test of Character

Here’s what happened next, and this is where you see if a program really gets it:

Your son didn’t get kicked out. Not even close. Because we understood this wasn’t about him being “bad” – this was about us not doing our job.

Our staff member didn’t lose her job either. She wasn’t being mean or careless. She was trying to connect, trying to have fun with him like she’d done successfully with other folks before.

And here’s the big one – we called you immediately and told you exactly what happened. No sugar-coating. Not trying to make ourselves look better. We owned it.

Why This Changes Everything

See, most programs operate from fear. They’re scared of lawsuits, scared of complaints, scared of anything that rocks the boat. So when something goes wrong, their first instinct is to protect themselves.

Fail-safe culture flips that script. Instead of asking “How do we avoid blame?” we ask “How do we learn from this?”

Your kid gets to be human. They get to have bad days, struggle with regulation, make mistakes – all while staying part of the community where they belong.

What to Look For

When you’re checking out autism transition to adulthood programs, don’t just ask about their activities or their credentials. Ask them this: “What happens when things go wrong?”

Listen to their answers. Really listen.

Do they talk about behavior plans and consequences? Red flag.

Do they mention “zero tolerance” policies? Run.

Do they light up and start talking about learning opportunities and problem-solving together? Now you’re onto something.

The Science Backs This Up

I’m not just making this stuff up. Amy Edmondson – she’s got a PhD, teaches at Harvard Business School – wrote this whole book called “The Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well.”

Her research shows we need to avoid the harmful failures that actually hurt people, but we should totally embrace the productive failures that teach us something. In our world, that means creating space to better understand your kid’s needs and figure out how to support them better.

What This Looks Like Day-to-Day

At our summer camps, we work with about 20 different families, and let me tell you – stuff happens. But because we’ve built this fail-safe culture, our team doesn’t walk around terrified of making mistakes. They’re focused on understanding each person, staying curious about what works and what doesn’t.

When someone’s having a tough day, we don’t immediately start thinking about documentation and liability. We think about what’s different today, what might be the cause of stress, and how can we adjust.

Our staff gets better because they’re not afraid to try new approaches. Their families trust us more because they know we’re not going to bail on them when things get rough.

The Bottom Line

Let’s be real—transitioning to adulthood is hard enough without the constant fear that one bad day will get your kid kicked out of another program. What you need is a team that sticks with you through the rough patches, learns from the setbacks, and keeps moving forward with you.

Fail-safe culture isn’t about lowering standards or accepting dangerous behavior. It’s about creating space for real growth, real learning, and real community. It’s about replacing fear with curiosity and blame with partnership.

That’s what we try to do every single day at John 13, and honestly, it’s what every family deserves. When you find a program that truly gets this – that sees challenges as opportunities instead of problems to eliminate – you’ll know you’ve found the right fit.

Until next time, keep advocating for what your family needs. You’ve got this.

Transcript:

Mike Carr (00:08):

Welcome back this week to another episode. This is actually our third episode on transitioning to adulthood and aging out your school system. And last episode we talked about any transition program needs to offer parents hope. We started John 13, J13.org to do exactly those things. We just entered summer camp, we serve 20, 20 different folks during those camps periods, having fun, getting out into the community. Now that our community program started back up, I wanted to go back to the question I left everyone with last time was, what’s the one phrase, right? What’s the one keyword you need to look for in any transition program? And there was an article last month on July 10th in Forbes Magazine by Aaron Edgell. And Aaron talked about this phrase, and I thought it was interesting to reference this article. Include the link in the show notes and the phrase is a fail safe culture.

(01:03):

So what’s a fail safe culture, right? Fail safe is sort of an interesting word. Well, here’s how Aaron defines it. It’s a culture where leaders build psychological safety by normalizing small low risk failures. What does that mean? Normalizing small low risk failures. It goes on to say teams learn to view failure as feedback, not as something to fear. So in the setting of our community, in transitioning to adulthood out of school, what’s fail safe culture mean? So here’s a real story and imagine this is your son in our program, this actually happened. So I want to sort take you through the story and then how we handled it. So your son was having a great time at a bowling alley. So we took all the guys out to a bowling alley, guys and balls in this particular bowling alley was Uncle Buck’s, fishbowl and Grill and Round Rock, Texas, which is a suburb just north of Austin.

(01:59):

And it’s really cool. It’s got these lanes and the whole ambience is the ocean. So you’ve got sharks and big fish and pictures and the lighting is sort of fun and gives you that sort of aqua vibe, that ocean vibe. And he was having a great time. And then all of a sudden he stands up and he goes after one of the staff in a very aggressive man. He is like, oh my gosh, what’s going on? And so the senior staff member intervened and got your son. Let’s say this was your son outside. But in the process of trying to get him to calm down, your son scratched the staff member in the face. This actually happening on the neck and ended up punching her in the face to where she thought she was going to have a full back eye. It’s like, oh my God, what’s going on here?

(02:46):

And so what happened was ultimately you get the emergency phone call, mom or dad gets the emergency phone call, Hey, we can’t calm your son down. You need to come get him at the bowling alley. And so the rest of the crew went back in the van like we normally do. But staff had to spend time with your son waiting for you to show up and explained to you, man, this was awful, this aggressive behavior. And it’s like you’re thinking, oh my gosh, what happened? Is this some kind of new medical condition? My son hardly ever does this. It’s just like, oh, I’m so sorry. And you’re going to get kicked out on another program. Well, that’s not what happened. Here’s the key. So the entire team stayed after hours that afternoon and they went through a postmortem, what up to this behavior, what caused this?

(03:37):

And everyone shared openly and honestly what they were doing. And that’s part of the fail safe culture, right? We’re not talking about blaming, we’re just talking about understanding. We have to be able to address this ahead of time before it devolves into punching and scratching because this staff member, quite frankly, had to take a couple days off after this event and she’d been dealing with this population for over 12 years. So she was very seasoned. She is very seasoned. She’s got a master’s in this space, worked with lots of folks. She had take a few days off to just heal physically. These scratches hopefully healed without leaving scars. And emotionally, this was a big deal, as you can imagine for anybody. And so we were trying to figure out what in the world happened. We discovered three things. The team discovered three things that led to this event, not keeping it autism friendly, not keeping it sensory friendly.

(04:35):

And the third one was not keeping it neurodiverse friendly. That was taking away your son’s iPad, his voice, and then not returning it quickly when he asked for it back appropriately was ridiculous. So bottom line was your son did not get kicked out of the program for this aggressive behavior, even though that kind of aggression would’ve gotten kicked out of probably any other program. And the staff member did not lose her job because there was no malice in what she was doing. She was trying to have fun. She was trying to joke why she had done with other individuals, other community members. And then we informed the parents this idea that, look, we’re not going to try to hide anything. This was our mistake. We failed and we want to let you know that we did fail and how we failed and then we were learning from it.

(05:26):

These are all things that fail safe culture is really all about. And so lemme just recap what in our minds we’ve tried to do at John 13 and what you should look for in any kind of transition program, recognizing ahead of time that everyone’s going to fail more than once, not punishing anyone for failure. That was an honest mistake without any malice and being honest and upfront about what really happened from everyone’s perspective. Talk it through. What did you see? What was going on? Well, it was too noisy. The weight lines were longer than normal and not trying to hide anything from other team members, you might lose your job. Or from the parents who might be upset, let’s be honest. Let’s share with them exactly what happened, why it happened, and what we’re going to do to fix it next time. So you learn from the failures, right?

(06:17):

You can’t eliminate all of them, but you can certainly mitigate. You can be more aware. So we’re trying to improve our training. We’re trying to improve each team member’s situational awareness. We’re trying to be more proactive, right? And alleviate that stress, eliminate those challenges before someone boils over and has a meltdown. Now, if you’re still not convinced, fail safe culture is the right way to go. There’s a variety of stuff out on the web. One of the books you might want to get by Amy Edmondson, and she’s an industrial psychologist, has a PhD, is a university professor. And the book’s titled The Right Kind of Wrong, the Science of Failing Well, failing Well. And so I’ll put a link to the book in the show notes, in the blog post. But basically I think what she’s talks about in the book is we want to all avoid the harmful failures.

(07:11):

The failures that can really create some damage or some safety issues. But at the same time, we want to tolerate and maybe even encourage productive failures where we can learn from them. We can all grow for them. We can better understand your son or your daughter’s specific needs and how to work with them in a very positive way. Might still be challenging, right? Might not be easy. They’re going to grow from it and our team’s going to grow from it. And so any transition you seek out, we think should support that fail safe culture, a culture that encourages try new things that replaces blame or that shame or that fear with curiosity, with growth, with excitement, and with fun. That’s what we try to do every day at January 13. And we hope you can find a transition program that does the same for you and your kiddo. Until next week, have a great one. See you.