The Empty Risk Register

Deming

“Fear is the enemy of good data,” Edward Demings said.  Deming is my consulting hero. In his System of Profound Knowledge and his “14 Points” he wrote, “drive out fear.”https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?&q=Deming+14+points&qpvt=Deming+14+points&mid=A7AADFD3BCA1DA302D8FA7AADFD3BCA1DA302D8F&&FORM=VRDGAR

   When ISO standards are being applied there is, a concept called the risk register. ISO Managers document in columns; customer complaints, shop redo’s and other chafing points on this register.

  The column headings are; description, frequency, how much and impact.  Everybody automatically defaults to wanting to understand the money piece.  But you have to be a cost accountant to determine costs in the middle of a process. I believe the risk register is more interesting and useful if you look at the impact of the risk.

No one wants to indicate that they’ve received a lot of complaints or had a lot of redo’s.  Reluctance amplifies in a fearful engineering department or shop floor.  Burying data becomes job one. Leading by blaming, shaming, guilting and scapegoating.  The company slogan becomes “I have no problems.” If a problem does surface it becomes the direct fault of another department.

 Acknowledge that there are problems in every business and if you want to improve or reduce problems you have to first be aware of them. Make the work of studying risk internally visible.  The longer the list the more potential for improvement.

The Parachute Story

The great World War 2 story of women sewing parachutes.  Production needed to increase to meet the D-Day landing deadline.  Everyone was keen to take advice or change technique. There were no ideas from management.  They brought in a consultant.  But he had no ideas. Finally, someone asked a woman sewing. She said, “more light.  Threading a needle is a little bit difficult.”

They turned up the lights and production went up. More production was still required.  A second time, they added lights, the third time they were lacking for suggestions to increase production and someone misunderstood an instruction and inadvertently turn the lights down.  Production went up.

The message is; when people are being studied, they do their best work.  When someone cares to examine your work, you have better output.

 Looping back to risk registers with no entries. The lack of data to study or perform a root cause analysis is a red flag management are not using available tools. Make a reward for someone making an entry on the risk register. http://www.omegafinancialinc.ca

#ISO #riskregister