Too Many Investigations?

Complaint: We Do Too Many Investigations

I had a plant manager tell me this:

“If we investigated every incident,
we’d do nothing but investigations.”

He also said:

“What I really need is a way to prioritize my crises.”

I call that the firefighting approach. He doesn’t have time to prevent fires because he spends all his time fighting fires.

His problem isn’t that he is investigating too many incidents. His problem is that investigations don’t prevent future incidents.

His complaint is one type of complaint people have about performing “too many” investigations.

What else can cause people to complain about too many investigations?

• They don’t want to do the investigations because they have to do them in their spare time (and who has spare time).
• They don’t think the incident warrants investigation.
• They get punished (rather than rewarded) for doing an investigation. (Those who have completed an investigation presentation to management and thought it was one of the worst experiences of their career.)
• Why waste time on an investigation when it is unlikely that the corrective actions will get implemented? (They just get added to the backlog.)
• They hate doing investigations (even one is too many) because the result is always someone getting blamed.
• Doing an investigation means they will be the ones bearing bad news. (We’ve all heard of the messenger getting shot.)

That’s just a sample of the reasons people don’t want to conduct investigations and think there are too many investigations.

What is the Right Number/Type of investigations?

This question should be answered by the question of:

“How many investigations are needed to meet our goals?”

Are your goals to:

• Stop fatalities and serious injuries?
• Prevent major quality issues and rework?
• Eliminate environmental damage and fines from environmental regulators?
• Stop unscheduled downtime?
• Improve operational excellence?

The goals you set for these initiatives should help you determine how much effort to invest in root cause analysis, incident investigations, and corrective actions.

They should also help you decide the ratio of investigations into serious accidents, precursor incidents, and proactive audits and assessments.

What Do Alex, Ken, and Mark Have To Say?

Watch this video for a discussion of the “right number” of investigations to achieve your goals…

Would You Like to Learn More?

As Alex mentioned in the video, the 5-Day TapRooT® Advanced Root Cause Analysis Team Leader Course teaches the techniques you need to perform root cause analysis of major accidents, precursor incidents, and audit findings. To schedule a course at your site, contact one of our implementation advisors at 865-539-2139.

Or CLICK HERE to send us a message.

To see the dates and worldwide locations of our public TapRooT® Courses (including 5-Day, 2-Day, and 3-Day virtual courses), CLICK HERE.

And remember, our courses come with this money-back guarantee:

Attend a course, go back to work, and use what you have learned.  If you don’t find root causes that you previously would have overlooked, and if you and your management don’t agree that the corrective actions that you recommend are much more effective, just return your course materials, and we will refund the entire course fee.