How a company communicates and prevents its problems is a reflection of its culture. Every problem really can be an opportunity to improve if the organization chooses to use the information. Like any other endeavor, if you don’t put the effort in, you don’t get the results. Companies that aren’t very good at investigating and preventing problems have plenty of them. Likewise, organizations that are effective at dissecting their issues and rooting out solutions have fewer problems. The latter organization has higher reliability.
Problem solving at work is really about problem prevention. Companies are either trying to prevent a problem from occurring again or from occurring in the first place. To understand what can be done to prevent a problem it must be broken down into specific cause-and-effect relationships. Companies usually review their problems using general terms like procedure not followed or training inadequate. Just like the proverb, the devil is in the details, the solutions are there too. Root cause analysis is an investigation approach for digging into what’s beneath the surface. Continuing to pull the top off the weed just creates a recurring problem. To prevent the weeds in your business from growing back you have to get to the root. This discipline for dissecting a problem doesn’t change from one department to another or from big problems so small ones. The cause-and-effect principle can be applied consistently across all types of problems including injuries, delays, failures, outages, defects and rework.
Highly reliable organizations anticipate problems as part of their daily operations. They know little things are going to come up within the hundreds or thousands of tasks performed across a company in a day. The challenge is to keep all the little things little. This is the essence of risk mitigation. Highly reliable organizations begin with the premise that people sometimes make errors. A company can’t expect its people to be perfect. It is possible, however, to define work processes that prevent minor errors from becoming major incidents. Zero incidents don’t require zero risk.
Clearly defining work processes, conducting thorough and accurate investigations (root cause analysis) and identifying specific solutions isn’t a secret for improving operations. What is unique about this approach is the focus on principles instead of terminology, acronyms or the program of the month. Keeping it simple and being consistent makes the implementation that much easier. Having success also doesn’t require a corporate wide roll out. This entire approach can be evaluated by investigating just one problem.
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