What Mistakes Are: Barriers or Opportunities

What Mistakes Are: Barriers or Opportunities?

By Adrian V Oprea

Although many of the discoveries that led to progress are due to errors or were made by mistake, we still consider mistakes or problems as obstacles.

Let's analyze two common ways to approach 'Mistake' (error) of a process, or in our daily life:

First (and most common) approach:

A. Is 'mistake' a problem for which we have to find the guilty person and punish him/her?

What is the benefit of this approach? Find and punish the guilty, but because the root cause of the mistake remains, the same mistake can be repeated by someone else!

How many times have you heard expressions like "Things go wrong so that those in the lower hierarchy (whatever name) aren't good and make mistakes?"

What follows this statement? NOTHING.

Things continue in the same way, with the same possibilities to make mistakes or, worse, with new ways to hide the mistakes.

The second approach is:

B. Is the 'Mistake' an opportunity to improve the system where we live or work?

I believe that this approach opens many opportunities for improvement. Approaching a mistake in "Today I had this problem. What can we do to not let it happen again?" create a system of continuous improvement and also avoid further losses due to that mistake.

But, this second approach requires work, commitment, respect for people, and desire to improve the working system (which is never perfect, by the way!). Actions that should be made to answer "What can we do to not let it happen again?" is recommended to follow this structure:

a) Analysis of the causes of the problem. After this analysis, the root cause of the problem should be identified. For this analysis the recommended methods are 5 WHY (personally prefer this method) or Ishikawa diagram (fishbone diagram);

b) Identify actions to eliminate root cause - identified at point a);

c) Implement the measures to eliminate the root cause;

d) Verify the results of the identified and implemented measures. If you will not have the required results, start again the cycle a-b-c-d (maybe the root cause wasn't correctly identified or the countermeasures weren't the right ones).

This is an approach that opens a self-perfectible system, where the signal for improvement is pulled from the open issues. At the same time, this way to treat problems increases the flexibility of work (by simply recognizing that what is good today, can be changed to be better tomorrow) and the degree of innovation of the organization.

Addressing to the 'mistakes' (problems) in this way, they are sources of ideas and endless opportunities for improvement.

Adrian Oprea, AVO Lean Consulting, A step forward every day, Avo Lean Consulting is specialized in eliminating waste and increasing the profits.

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