Are you fully leveraging TapRooT®?
What does it mean to “fully leverage TapRooT®”?
Recently we had a client in the oil and gas industry tell us that he plans to introduce TapRooT® to his on-site medical center using our TapRooT® Patient Safety Course. His oil and gas site is remotely located, creating the need for an on-site medical center to take care of employees when they get sick or have an accident. This client is truly leveraging TapRooT® throughout the company.
TapRooT® isn’t just for safety, quality, or healthcare. TapRooT® is designed to be and should be used in all areas of an organization or company—such as IT departments (our own Chief Technology Officer uses TapRooT® religiously), housekeeping, maintenance, accounting, clinics, etc. Basically, TapRooT® is applicable anywhere people can and do make mistakes.
Why look for mistakes when they are going to happen anyway?
TapRooT® is powerful because it makes the user of the methodology an expert at Human Factors. As humans, we will always make mistakes. All of us will come to work some days distracted by personal issues, tired from long hours, overwhelmed with personal and professional responsibilities, and make a mistake that could potentially cause trouble. Optimally, TapRooT® should be leveraged to help companies identify and mitigate/fix precursors—minor incidents that could have been a major accident if one or more Safeguards had failed, if the sequence had been slightly different, or if your luck had been worse. Regardless, people do make mistakes and if an organization’s processes and systems don’t contain Safeguards that protect the business, people, and the environment from human mistakes, we will continue to have repeat incidents and continued frustration, at the very least.
Think of it this way . . .
Root causes are the absence of best practices and/or failure to apply the knowledge that would have prevented the mistake, error, or equipment failure, or that would have mitigated the consequences. Identifying the mistakes, analyzing them for the root causes, and fixing those root causes by introducing the missing knowledge or best practices into your systems is continuous process improvement. Root causes aren’t scary. They are opportunities to strengthen your organization and its employees, and insurance for the safety of both the organization and its people. Every root cause you fix could save a life, increase the bottom line, or protect the environment. What an opportunity you have when you correctly identify root causes using TapRooT®! The evolution of our root cause definition can be found here: Definition of Root Cause.
Anywhere people make mistakes, TapRooT® gives your team the expert human factor guidance needed
Let me repeat that and add to it: Anywhere people make mistakes, TapRooT® gives your team the expert human factor guidance needed to take any mistake through effective root cause analysis that finds the missing knowledge or best practice not currently being utilized in your systems or processes. Put TapRooT® to work in all your departments. TapRooT® also helps you introduce the missing knowledge or best practices into your systems and processes with our Corrective Action Helper®. (Note: The corrective actions you develop for a Precursor Incident could prevent a major accident.)
If this makes sense to you, let’s discuss how to introduce TapRooT® to your other departments so your entire company fully leverages TapRooT® to identify, analyze, and fix mistakes any of us could make any given day. The return on investment measured in lives, dollars, or effort will be well worth the commitment.
Email me at Marcus@taproot.com.
