This week I taught a 4-day course on Progressive Concepts in Program Management at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. One of the workshops used the NASA Columbia accident as an example (NASA report calls these things mishaps).
This video speaks to how we fail to address risks in the complex systems we work on. From the workshop, there are somethings applicable to all projects, we need to consider
Five Key Concepts of High-Reliability Organizations
- Sensitivity to operations. This involves preserving constant awareness by leaders and staff of the state of the systems and processes.
- Reluctance to simplify. Simple processes are good, but simplistic explanations for why things work or fail are risky.
- Preoccupation with failure. When near misses occur, these are viewed as evidence of systems that should be improved to reduce potential harm.
- Deference to expertise. This occurs if leaders and supervisors are not willing to listen and respond to the insights of staff who know how processes really work and the risks.
- Resilience. Leaders and staff need to be trained and prepared to know how to respond when system failures do occur.
And then Wayne Hall's 10 Lessons, that we need to apply to increase the probability of success
Thanks to John Driessnack USAF Ret (a colleague), who teaches at the Defense Acquisition University - summarized these 10 lessons with actionable outcomes
- It can happen to you - be preoccupied with failure
- Focus - problems come on the busiest days!
- Speak up - the organization can tolerate it
- You are not as smart as you think you are - you have 2 ears and 1 mouth, use them in that proportion
- Dissension has value - exam the problem in detail before taking actions
- Question conventional wisdom - but assess this in the context of principles
- Do good work - don't so less than your best for everything you do
- Engineering is done with the numbers - analysis is done with numbers. Do the analysis before everything you do
- Use your imagination - to search for all the possibilities
- Nothing worthwhile is accomplished without risk - but always know those risks, created by reducible and irreducible uncertainty, before taking any action involving risk
Watch the video and see if what Wayne talks about is applicable to your project, operating in the presence of uncertainty that creates risk, and how your organization handles that risk. We had a book handed to us when starting on the proposal for Crew Exploration Vehicle, Disasters, and Accidents in Manned Space Flight, David J. Shayler, just as a reminder that what we were working on is a mission-critical project
Remember ...
Risk Management is How Adults Manage Projects - Tim Lister
And as always ...
No Decision Can Be Made in the Presence of Uncertainty that Creates Risk without Estimating the Impact of that Risk and the Effectiveness of the Corrective or Preventive actions t reduce the Episentic uncertainty or the Needed Margin for the Aleatory Uncertainty
