There’s no shortage of things to add.
As risk managers, we can readily look at a program and find a million opportunities to add more to the risk management plan.
“Do more in-depth partner vetting,” or “add 6 new student screening questions.” “Train staff on this concept or this other skill…” the list goes on.
But, doing more isn’t necessarily solving the problem. Often, it only serves to relieve a symptom.
The biggest risk I see and hear about is workload capacity; programs and people are already stretched. Workload stress is also the hardest to address.
Financial margins are thin, and staff are constantly being asked to do more with less. There’s never enough time to review, inventory, and build in the off-season as we’d like (and to take much-needed downtime). Adding more to everyone’s plate will likely solve one problem, but it also contributes to another.
Over time, our risk management programs grow and evolve, and each new addition aims to address a specific problem, fear, or a lesson learned. But, when you zoom out and take it all in, and examine the behavior and effectiveness of the entire system, too often we find clutter, confusion, and inefficiencies.
This is called safety clutter.
But, safety clutter doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be refining and adding more. That is, after all, our jobs as risk managers and part of the continuous learning and improvement process.
Try this, instead. Next time you feel the urge to add more, pause first, and ask: “What can I remove?”
Get into the habit of asking staff in all departments these questions:
What’s the biggest thing the org wants or requires you to do that gets in your way?
What’s the biggest waste of your time or energy?
If this [task/procedure/requirement] didn't exist tomorrow, what would actually change about how you do your job?
Don’t get me wrong, these are scary questions to ask. But the feedback is priceless, especially if you get the same answer from many different people.
This week’s takeaway: Next time you feel the urge to add more, pause first, and ask: “What can I remove?”
Stu
P.S. Workload capacity is a significant driver of migrating work practices and drift, which I wrote about in my first blog post, about systems-thinking.
P.P.S. Safety clutter comes from a 2018 paper by Rae, Provan, Weber, and Dekker: Safety clutter: the accumulation and persistence of 'safety' work that does not contribute to operational safety. Policy and Practice in Health and Safety, 16(2), 194–211. https://doi.org/10.1080/14773996.2018.1491147