Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve. ~Mary Kay Ash – Entrepreneur
Almost 40% of people according to surveys say their work and jobs make little difference to the organization, customer or marketplace. OK! So why do these jobs exist in VUCA time? Great question.
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We see the value of enterprise risk management everywhere we look. We see it in the news, we can see it in our customers’ success, We can even see it on the roads in speed limit signs. We know that risk management is deeply enmeshed in both the success and failures of the corporate world and beyond.
However, as you lobby for the support your ERM program needs, you may find yourself battling a more skeptical outlook. When we think about how to justify risk management, we’re often reminded of an old saying: “How many ships have I saved by erecting a lighthouse?” It’s hard to quantify the value of a preventative measure, which is exactly what a risk management program does.
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People conclude what is expected of them is based on cues received from the forces that they face daily. These forces drive what they believe and how they should behave – in either constructive or defensive ways. These behaviours can either enables or inhibits effective risk management.
These forces also influence how people:
The attitude towards risks and risk management varies from person to person, from unit to unit, and from stakeholder to stakeholder. It can also be influenced by social context and surrounding culture.
[Read more…]The system is not working. That is how a paradigm shift begins: the established way of seeing the world no longer functions.
Matthew Fox – American Actor
COVID has created some big business winners. But, post-COVID it’s the end of many companies as we know them:
“The Coronavirus pandemic brought the global economy to a screeching halt this spring (2020), sparking fears of a corporate bloodbath. As the year ends, it’s clear that the crisis has rewired the economy in surprising ways and served up unexpected opportunities for some big businesses to prosper.”
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Recently the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) released the 2021 certification numbers. Oxebridge Quality Resources did a good analysis of the 9001 numbers. This piece looks at the results from all the certifications and provides comparison in key certifications between China and the United States.
In October 2021 I discussed the results of the 2020 certifications numbers. (1) Until last year, ISO certification numbers for the dominate certification 9001 were on a downward trend. In 2020 the number of 9001 certifications increased. The increase was due to two primary factors. One was organizations which had not previously reported certifications reported them. The second was the growth in Chinese certifications.
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Project documentation; the bane of some people’s lives, for other’s their raison d’être. Documentation is essential and its written word can ensure effective communication so there is as little misunderstanding as possible. Requirements will be definitive, obligations and liabilities will be unambiguous, and instructions will be clear.
Projects typically require plans and processes as well as details of products and services and methodologies for contemporaneous purposes. They contribute to corporate knowledge, assist with learning lessons and may defend any liability. Documents are usually subject to some form of acceptance, approval, non-objection or similar.
[Read more…]Is climate change humanity’s greatest ever risk management failure?
The Guardian newspaper
Climate change. Global warming. These are the ‘new normal’ or the ultimate ‘Horsemen of the Apocalypse’. U.S. intelligence report said:
Read more: Climate Change or Global Extinction?“Global environmental and ecological degradation, as well as climate change, are likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent through 2019 and beyond. Climate hazards such as extreme weather, higher temperatures, droughts, floods, wildfires, storms, sea level rise, soil degradation, and acidifying oceans are intensifying, threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security.”
Risk likelihoods as well as direct risk consequences are increasing. Extreme heat is impacting global food supply chains, housing near the ocean, increases in cancer, and other factors.
Are you a denier? According to a recent report, there’s a 95% likelihood that VUCANs are the drivers of climate change through carbon dioxide emission.
OK, is human extinction too strong of a prediction? The New York Times said:
“Humans are transforming Earth’s natural landscapes so dramatically that as many as one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, posing a dire threat to ecosystems that people all over the world depend on for their survival .”
Story: You may be a green believer or even an evangelist. Or, you may be a denier. It really doesn’t matter.
We’re in a global heating environment and changing political environment. So, pay attention to sustainability. I was a green skeptic until I saw first-hand major environmental changes occurring over a few years. I catch & release salmon on the Columbia River in Oregon, USA., which is a beautiful and pristine environment. The problem is over the last 30 years, salmon fishing changed. Fewer fish. Smaller fish. Shorter fishing season. Not good. As an engineer, I thought maybe we were going through a macro weather cycle from cold to warm.
Work Lesson Earned: Climate is now directly tied to work and salaries. More people see climate change impacting job retention, promotional opportunities, and recruitment. A recent survey concluded 74% of executives say climate change poses risks to their job security. How does climate change impact or may impact your work? Are there any opportunities for you? As traditional industries adapt to the changing environment, have you considered working in a green business? You’re saving humankind. You’re having fun. You’re doing good. You’re saving the planet.
Healthy organisations create an environment where organisational members have mutual trust and respect for each other, especially in terms of how they decide and implement decisions. They create an environment in which organisational members are empowered to deal with their problems and where problems can be identified, discussed, and solved with mutual trust and respect through cooperation and communication amongst themselves.
When there is mutual trust and respect, there will be more teamwork and collaboration. This constructive and collaborative culture will generate a positive ‘risk culture’ and a collaborative approach to risk management. It builds a higher level of risk maturity for the organisation.
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There are two mindsets surrounding the concepts of transformation and change. First, there is fear that comes with transformation and change. The feeling of not having control over something in your personal or professional life can be daunting, because it leaves us feeling helpless. And the second mindset is an apathetic, hands-off one. This is where the concepts of transformation and change seem so insurmountable that we accept them passively.
[Read more…]Eighty-five (85%) of the jobs today’s students will be doing in 2030 haven’t been invented yet.
Institute for the Future
Now, let’s look at university graduates’ marketability? Why are so many Gen-Zer’s and millennials unemployed or simply underemployed? One major reason is many recent college graduates are simply not prepared for work. They are not FOW-ready or work-ready. Gartner, the consulting organization, said:
“Only 20 percent of employees have the skills needed for both their current role and their future career”.
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Many larger companies have three critically important operations: organizational sustainability, procurement, and supply chain management. IN most companies, these operations are managed separate from each other, and their operations are not directly influenced by international standards.
Organizational sustainability works to improve all the operations of the company. However, these operations are managed internal to the organization. There may be a sustainability plan for the organization, but it is not used in all facilities or in the same manner for many of the facilities. The corporate sustainability program creates its own program based on how the sustainability manager works with operations. This will be coming to an end as the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) is preparing to release mandatory reporting to provide information to the capital markets.
[Read more…]If colleges were businesses they would be right for hostile takeovers, complete with serious costcutting and painful reorganizations.
US News and World Report
COVID has forced universities to do online teaching. What’s the value add of spending $70K (USD) for online instruction, when you paid for sports, in-class instruction, and the college experience? In 2021 and 2022, we’ll find out as university students who have been taught online for a year or even longer.
[Read more…]In September 2022 the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) issued NIST IR 8286C. (1) As the C indicates, this is the third such cybersecurity risk management standard issued by NIST. NISTIR 8286A and 8286B provide guidance to stakeholders on assessing and managing cybersecurity risk in conjunction with Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) processes. This piece looks at the guidance provided under NIST IR 8286C.
[Read more…]My first job after college was with Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) at which time in the 1960’s the chemical process industries far outstripped that of the rest of the manufacturing industries.
My second job was as a pioneer in the development of the North Sea, the expansion in search for oil and gas, leading in time to petroleum refining, the most hazardous of all offshore rolls at the time, was hookups, which is building the field, which was developed by a single central combined drilling and production platform.
[Read more…]Video Killed the Radio Star…went the 1979 music video byThe Buggles. MTV used this as their first ever video in 1981, but despite the prophecy and MTV’s 40 ongoing years, radio stars aren’t dead. Radio revolutionised popular music, vinyl discs gave us today’s disc jockeys but even though technology evolves it demonstrates that the fittest will survive and not everything will be killed.
Compact cassette started to challenge vinyl in 1963. With the emergence of CDs in the mid ‘80’s, tapes eventually became old-hat. CDs were ousted by flash drives and today ubiquitous access to downloads overshadow almost everything…but vinyl and tapes aren’t altogether dead and buried. People can be branded dinosaurs but sometimes they are just nostalgic; the odd scratch can make music more of a memorable memory…as does listening to cricket or baseball or horse-racing on the radio!
But it’s not just music that’s been influenced by technology. Meetings have also been affected and, with the advent of COVID more and more of us are being exposed to on-line meetings and, of course presentations. But how effective are some presentations in blending audiovisual media, the spoken word and that most important ingredient, people.
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