Insight on Quality
How to Audit Risk-Based Thinking
Change is exciting. Or frightening. Or both. The opportunities can be seductive, the risks can be daunting. But change drives us forwards, makes us grow, gives us purpose. This is true in business as in life. It’s especially true in quality circles where continual improvement is a common mantra.
So what kind of changes am I talking about? Consider these exciting/daunting prospects:
- New client
- New project
- New product
- New service
- New standard
- New stakeholder
- New supplier
- New material
- New technology
- New method
- New people
- New system
Change can happen anywhere in your supply chain or the outside world. You can probably add your own examples to my list. Whenever an exciting new scenario is under consideration, there is a risk that you will focus only on the opportunities. I’m saying you should also take the opportunity to focus on the risks.
Forget quality for a minute, this is basic due diligence. You might think it would be common sense. But common sense can be steamrollered by the excitement of change and the conviction that everything will be OK on the day. We need triggers to make us stop and think, look at both sides, make balanced decisions.
Major business decisions such as investments, mergers, acquisitions and capital project sanctions undergo a ‘due diligence’ process before pressing ‘go’. I’m advocating the same approach, albeit scaled down, for the kinds of changes listed above.
Due diligence can be as simple as weighing costs versus benefits, risks versus opportunities. Everyone does this subconsciously but we all choose different questions and make different assumptions when we answer them. A more structured and collaborative approach allows more possibilities to be explored, more diligence to be applied, better decisions to be made, and more likelihood that changes will be successful.
A structured and collaborative approach can be achieved simply by gathering a few sharp minds around a well thought-out checklist and analysing the outcomes in terms of costs, benefits, risks and opportunities.
All the above applies whether a change is generated from an internal decision or imposed from outside the business; whether it is permanent or temporary, planned or accidental.
So, if you are still struggling to come to terms with how to audit risk-based thinking in the latest ISO standards, take a look at how your organization makes big decisions and ask to see the analysis.
