This past week Tom Hermanns, our APM Leadership Development Director, Mike Grotton, our APM Lead EHS Manager, and myself attended the Global TapRoot Summit in Knoxville, TN. We were introduced to TapRooT by our EHS colleagues at GE Renewables, and will be adopting the TapRoot root cause analysis / problem solving process. We will discuss that more later this year. For now, I wanted to share an insight that Tom, Mike, and I shared from the week.

From Mike:

The TapRooT training provided me with another opportunity to refine my skills associated with post-incident investigations and learn a new way to evaluate and establish root causes. Additionally, the use of this tool will help us establish better corrective actions. A better understanding of the root causes, paired with more efficient corrective actions will help us improve our overall EHS performance with APM. The consistent message from the TapRooT team was simple - “Trust the process” which was echoed throughout the entire week. Additionally, attendance of the TapRooT summit provided us an opportunity to learn enhancements by attending focused sessions, interact and ask questions to peers who use the TapRooT process and receive feedback of their experience.

From Tom:

The TapRooT training was very good at explaining the TapRooT process, demonstrating the process, and allowed us to complete an incident root cause analysis through TapRooT’s software. Although the process/software takes a longer time commitment, the results are meticulous, thorough, and undisputable. Leveraging a tool like this will help us ensure that all Causal Factors have been identified and the proper corrective actions are revealed. … Although the summit had several tracs to it, the sessions I attended talked about how important it is to understand and trust the process from the top down, and how documenting the entire series of events and the circumstances/conditions (no matter how small) can play a huge part in successful root cause analysis.

From Jake:

I too took away this repeated phrases, “Trust the process.” It is a phrase you hear more and more these days. The Philadelphia 76ers and start Joel Embid have use the mantra for a few years now. Marcus Lemonis, from MSNBC’s The Profit, has a webpage dedicated to the concept. So what does “trust the process” mean?

We could break down the phrase, or opine on the concept, but rather I want to use an example we are all familiar with – the STA or green card process. We are all familiar with the process – define the task in specifics, identify the risks in detail, commit to actions to eliminate or mitigate the risks, and reflect on our performance for learning and reinforcement. If we trust the STA process, we are confident any task will be completed safely and successfully.

My observation is that we have lots of good processes – processes that are developed by experts and tested by time. Yet we often don’t trust the process, and we tend to skip steps by finding exceptions and deviating. Sometimes that is appropriate, ex: data may tell us the process is broken and needs a fix. Yet more often we don’t feel like the process meets our particular situation, that somehow we are different or unique, the process shouldn’t apply to us, or some portions are just too specific / meticulous. With more discipline on following the steps and trusting the process, it will lead us to better outcomes, more confidence, and more time to develop and implement actions for continuous improvement.

I will be looking in the mirror over the next few weeks as we adopt TapRoot and asking some questions. I ask you to join me.

• What process am I not trusting? Why?

• When I seek an exception or deviation, am I relying on data? -or- Am I seeking an excuse to be different or unique?

— Jake