High Reliability

We have talked at some length previously about a process that allows you to obtain and employ the best people for your organization, being that of using accurate pre-employment testing.  This is a long process dictated by one single factor: attrition; unless you are willing to nuke your entire workforce and start all over, which will certainly speed the process up considerably.  Other than having to explain to authorities about the sudden vaporization of several hundred people, who all work for you, you could cut out a couple of decades of waiting.  If however, that type of abrupt action seems a little excessive to you, you should probably substitute nuking folks with some hard work by you, your management staff, and your workforce in finding out exactly how well your operation is organized and understood.

There is so much about our organizations that we usually do not adequately understand.  It doesn’t make any difference how good your employees are, if the business is not focused correctly and strategically, it will never achieve all that it could, or should.

As you look at the concepts of High Quality, Reliability and Confidence as it applies to your organization, what feeling are you left with?  What keeps you awake at night contemplating on, “What’s Going to Happen Next?”

The most important thing you need to determine is your current state.  This is more than just some Ho Ho test that you apply mentally.  How well does your organization currently execute its mission?  How well do you understand how each process, sub-process, element of sub-processes, sub-elements of sub-processes work, and how it is suppose to work and inter-relate to each other?

Where do you want to be in ten years?  What are the strategies you need to get to a new desired end state?  Are your strategies adequate and understood by all your employees?  Does the structure of your organization enable you to achieve the desired end state?  Organizations are comprised of many systems.  What needs to change in relation to your overall strategy.  Are common values shared by all your employees, and do they equate to your overall goals?  Is the skill set of your employees adequate to meet your end state, and if not, what do you have to do to improve their capabilities?

Our discussion is really about transforming your organization.  It requires well understood and agreed upon strategies, specific and achievable objectives that can be measured, a defined target, and initiatives and deliverables that will move the organization along the continuum of growth and improvement.

Many of our organizations would not survive certain events if they were to happen; however, these events are all preventable in an organization that is well understood and focused.  Major events, which you have direct control over, could shut down your operation for an indeterminate period of time, could result in catastrophic loss, and the possibility of non-recovery and financial destruction.  Other types of events, of lesser significance, would imply a loss of control, loss of confidence of management and/or the customer, and so forth, and they could significantly impact your operational capability.  Our goal is to avoid these types of problems.  Some examples might include, massive destruction of facilities and capabilities that are unique and not amenable to rapid reconstitution, fire and other catastrophic losses, loss of life, loss of specific mission critical data, loss of environmental permits, EEO non-compliance, criminal investigation questioning your organization’s credibility, and so forth.

Sometimes the events don’t have to be huge proportionately to have significant consequences.  Take a restaurant that has a couple of patrons fall ill to salmonella poisoning.  It wasn’t 40 to 100 poor creatures that you sent to the hospital or the morgue, it was just two, but the damage can be unrecoverable when you lose the confidence of your customer base.  You can go from having the most popular place in the community, to a ghost town, just by word of mouth.  The sad part is it was all preventable, but some part of one or more processes broke down.

What about the accounting or financial firm that came under criminal investigation for embezzlement by one of the federal or state authorities?  I’m sure Grand Ma Smith feels comfortable leaving her 200 bazillion dollars under your watchful care, not to mention the several thousand other folks that want their money back within the next few Nano seconds.  When processes don’t function as expected (and this example was preventable after the first, wrongful, deliberate act by the bad guy or gal) things can go South in a hurry with little hope of recovering the confidence of your customer base.

Hazards exist that every company must contend with to support its mission.  Unwanted energy or threats, whether its human error, failure of a piece of equipment or facility, natural disaster, or the very sinister “Mr. Unknown”, who by the way is very good friends with “Mr. I Don’t Know,” either transmit or allow the unwanted flow of energy to the hazard potentially resulting in a system accident.

Processes have to be so well understood, that for every conceivable place that the threat can come in contact with the hazard, a barrier (brick wall, sensor, procedure, engineering control, accounting control, etc.) is in place to ensure that unwanted outcomes or unauthorized interaction does not occur.  And by the way, the barrier has to work to be effective.

One of the most important things to remember about work processes is this, “It probably is not happening as designed, in some part of the process.”  When you sit in your corner office feeling confident that you have this bad boy nailed, you will soon be visited by, “Mr. Guess What Happened.”  That’s right, work as done usually does not equal work as designed.  The only thing that will adequately determine if every aspect of your work is performing as expected and accurately being done, is Barrier Analysis.

This is not a five minute drill.  Depending on the complexity of the operation and its inter-relationship with other processes, it could take an extended time.  However, with a properly motivated and trained workforce, you can get there much quicker, and at least you can sleep a little better at night.  High Reliability is something your organization develops and is a value embodied by every employee if you expect to achieve that level of High Quality, Reliability and Confidence in your operations.