OK, now what? Best practices in RCA facilitation

Scenario: You've just had a major incident.  You need answers and you needed them yesterday.  Who do you put on this?

These are typical thoughts when developing a team to investigate a problem.  Who should be on the team?  In today's environment, most employees perform many tasks and are responsible for various activities, or in other words wear multiple "hats" - so how will they react to being assigned yet another task?

RCA investigations are often eye opening, and when performed correctly very effective at preventing problem recurrence.  Most RCA team members take great pride in participating in an analysis, and value the company's decision to include them on such a pressing issue.  Putting together an effective team is crucial to the success or failure of an RCA analysis.

There are usually 2 basic roles in an investigation; a facilitator and a participant.  Here's a look at what these are and the differences between them:

Facilitator - This is the person leading the group.  Ideally this individual is knowledgeable of the incident, but would not be considered the "expert" on the issue.  However, the facilitator should be proficient in the RCA method being applied to the analysis.  Having an education on the corporate process involved in the incident is extremely helpful, but often not a requirement. Managing a team is the responsibility of the facilitator, and the rest of the team looks to the facilitator for direction and guidance on what to do in the investigation.

 

Participant - A participant is an individual selected to be actively involved in the investigation.  An effective team is generally made up 4-6 participants with different roles.  Industry or corporate experts are usually involved, and offer information on the process and equipment involved in incidents.  Other participants include individuals with direct knowledge of what happened and outside personnel with no direct knowledge of the incident or process.

You might ask "why have someone in the room with no expertise or knowledge of the problem?".  It is important to have someone that has no vested interest in the causes or solutions, other than self-preservation (i.e. employment).  You need someone to ask what experts might say are "dumb" or "ignorant" questions, because those questions are valuable when conducting an analysis.  Thoroughly identifying the causes of an incident include those simple causes that experts might not even consider as they might have already dismissed those as contributing causes.  As the old saying goes "there are no dumb questions" is true when applying those questions to an RCA analysis.

Another attribute of an effective RCA team is the diversity of the group.  We've briefly discussed the roles of the investigation team and what value they bring to the investigation, but having a diverse group both in education and background also helps contribute to an effective team.  You never want a team made up of similar educations and backgrounds because these similarities could contribute to the old "group think" mentality.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is: mix it up.  Expertise is great, but creativity in a group can be just as valuable.

What are your thoughts?  Have you had any successful RCA teams? What were some of the attributes of the team you found intriguing and worth mentioning?

Marcus McCoy - Apollo Account Manager/Investigator

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