June 13, 2001

Beware of 'error earthquakes'

In our society, a day without a problem is rare. What makes the difference is how we deal with each situation as it occurs, because the secondary effects may have a greater impact than the alerting problem.

In the case of a bank robbery, people in the bank may be traumatized, the robbers may flee in haste causing property damage or injury, and the police have to spend taxpayer money to develop their investigation. In the case of pollution, plants and animals may die, people may become ill and the polluted area may take years to recover.

Both of these scenarios present a chain of occurrences set in motion by the source event. I use the term "the ripple effect" to describe what occurs after these source events.

Ripples occur in business too, both for good and for bad. Negative ripples may cause schedule disruptions, on-time projects to be shunted aside, clients to become disillusioned and money to be lost. Many ripples occur beneath the surface, and cause disruption not immediately noticed. For example, when staff work long hours to tackle problems, loved ones may be inconvenienced and family arguments might ensue long after the work problem was fixed.

The second best way to prevent this is through "ripple containment," limiting the distance that the disruptive ripples travel. This is what most companies try to do when they spot a problem. By catching everything that is not right, and by carefully thinking through every single implication of those corrections, the ripples might be contained with little or no damage. But, sooner or later, because of human nature, and because of time pressures and distractions, some errors will not be caught, and thus the ripples will spread.

Sometimes the shock waves of this "error earthquake" will cause minor damage with minor inconvenience. At other times, the ripples from the "epicenter of error" will cause a lot of trouble, trouble that might take years to correct.

The best approach is to have no ripples at all. To do this, problem avoidance must be ingrained in a company; it needs to be an everyday affair. And when it is an everyday affair, everyone in the organization is simply doing the right thing at the right time, every time.

This is a system of prevention, rather than a system of inspection. If the corporate mind-set is fixed on "inspection," production staff forge ahead and get the job done, even if it is wrong, because someone else will fix it. This approach guarantees a damage-control culture in the company. And, as we have seen, the ripple effect is particularly potent because the later ripples are detected, the more widespread the damage. Some team members might not even be told that a problem has been detected up-line, and happily continue with their daily schedule until the ripple shock wave smashes into their work.

To make matters worse, ripple effect repairs may themselves initiate secondary ripples if they are not done thoroughly and in the correct sequence, resulting in additional damage. Even routine changes may initiate primary and secondary ripples if all of the implications of the change are not thought out and communicated in time.

If you are not sure how to set up a ripple-free system, get expert advice: ask your peers in other firms, ask your colleagues at work, ask a consultant, or set up an in-house group who have the sole responsibility to establish an office-wide system of profit enhancement through the reduction of the ripple effect.

Previous columns:

• Kim Hinckley: admired and inspired, 04-11-2001
• Does branding work in the A/E world?, 03-14-2001
• Chronic problems can cripple companies, 02-14-2001
• Tactical thinking for the new millennium, 01-10-2001
• Broader vision needed to fix Puget Sound traffic woes, 12-13-2000
• Management in the balance, 11-08-2000
• Timesaving tips for project managers, 10-11-2000
• In an era of mega-mergers, size and profit may not always be linked, 09-13-2000