The Basic Message
‘Mindful updating is facilitated by processes that focus on failures and simplifications, operations, resilience and expertise’ – the 5 key principles of Reliability
Karl Weick/ Kathleen Sutcliffe, Managing the Unexpected 2006
In March 2006, Angie Nisbet and Sarbjit Purewal, then members of the new Modernisation Agency produced a self assessment tool to help organisations undertake an indicative assessment through a number of questions for discussion based on Karl Weick’s five key organisational operating principles required to create an organisational infrastructure for reliability. These are in more detail:
- Preoccupation with failure –all potential problems or errors identified/analysed
- Reluctance to Simplify Interpretations-nothing taken for granted. Checks happen in multiple ways.
- Sensitivity to operations – all observe ops, have continuous communication
- Commitment to resilience- the ability/agility to respond to the unexpected.
- Deference to expertise – decisions are made away from formal authority toward expertise and experience
A ‘balanced scorecard’ for Reliability based on these key operating principles was developed along with a series of self assessment questions to enable organisations to give themselves an indicative reliability score and identify areas for improvement. This self assessment will be available shortly through Care By Design. To find out more contact us.