October 18

‘Well,’ Bobbie, thought to herself, ‘here we are.’

She picked up the stack of reports and headed over to Xavier’s office to start handing out the final versions of the risk assessment. And although she preferred a paperless office, there was something satisfying – something meaningful – about having a paper copy of the final report. Handing these out felt much more conclusive than sending an email, plus she knew that Xavier and a few others still preferred to read longer reports on paper.

Xavier was busy so Bobbie stopped to chat with Debbie for a few minutes, realizing she hadn’t had much of a chance to just sit and talk with people while the assessment had been going on. Debbie caught Bobbie up on who was sick, who was moving on, who had a new baby and all the small bits of news that she’d missed these last three weeks. She managed to fend off Debbie’s attempts to force her to take another cookie and headed off to deliver copies of the report to the other members of the leadership team. 

It was still early in the day so Bobbie grabbed her safety equipment and headed over to the fabrication area and workshops. She hadn’t been here as often as she would have liked these last few weeks and, when she had, she’d been in a hurry to complete her visits to let her get back to whatever assessment deadline was looming. It was nice to be able to take a leisurely walk around the site and to stop and chat as she went. There was nothing of concern from a safety perspective which was a relief. She’d had a nagging feeling in her mind that she might have been missing things on her shortened visits but the place still looked as good as it had when the client had come to conduct their site inspection.

‘That feels like it was at least a year ago,’ she thought to herself.

But as she walked around, catching up with folks here and there, seeing what the different departments were up to and how various projects were progressing, she now saw XYZ Co in a different light. 

She could see where the prioritization of one process over another was helping or hindering production. At the same time, she could also see things that were efficient for production but might not help Joe’s team service a priority client or project. That misalignment was a major risk that they’d identified. And, as she understood it, the source of an almighty bust-up in the workshop after she’d left.

She was more aware of the gap between the company’s more experienced workers, many of them within five years of retirement, and the younger staff. That concentration of expertise was one of XYZ Co’s strengths but also a significant risk unless they really accelerated the training and skills transfer for the junior staff members.

She looked at the sections of the lay-down yard and warehouse where parts from Janwick were stored. She imagined the complicated links between Houston and their facility in West Africa and all the things that could go wrong between them. She also had a much greater appreciation of how dependent XYZ Co was on Fred and his team and the challenges they faced.

As she wandered back to her office, she started to appreciate the usefulness of the risk assessment in much broader terms. She grabbed a coffee and headed back to her desk, still deep in thought.

While she had been working on the assessment it had been a process, a project, and one that she had wanted to do well. But even though she’d been clear on what Xavier wanted – to have a better understanding of the business’s risks – she could now see much broader benefits of the assessment.

She also had a far greater appreciation for being objectives-led rather than simply being hazard-based. Her previous assessments had focused on cause (the hazard or threat) and effect (the impact) starting with the cause. Those had been effective to identify and tackle hazards in isolation but didn’t allow you to consider these in a wider business context. 

The ISO definition – ‘the effect of uncertainty on objectives’ – was still written at the top of her whiteboard and she now saw how using an objectives-led approach forced you to put everything into an organizational context. Without that, she realized, she might not have caught the supply chain risks they’d identified or the challenges that the gap in staff age and experience presented.

‘Lots to take away,’ she thought and went to make a note to remind herself to conduct a review of the process before she forgot all of these lessons. But as she reached for her keyboard, she noticed a copy of the report lying on her desk with a Post-it stuck at the top.

Xavier’s writing was distinctive so the absence of a signature wasn’t a problem but the message was.

Great work, Bobbie. Love it! 

Urgent we discuss what’s next. 

Let’s chat.

She sighed, opened up her email and sent Debbie a note asking for some time with Xavier that afternoon. 

‘Here we go again…’ she thought to herself.