Corrective Action Program Best Practice 15 – Condition Report Review Meetings
Effective corrective action programs promptly and consistently screen newly reported issues for their impact on the organization’s vision, mission, values, and goals. These screenings prioritize and aggregate corrective actions from all business areas with the organization’s strategic initiatives and day-to-day operations; ensuring optimal resource use. Consequently, condition report review meetings are frequently used to review and prioritize newly submitted condition reports.[wcm_restrict plans=”48922, 25542, 25653″]
Condition Report Review Meeting Characteristics
Impactful events and nonconsequential issues often involve numerous functional areas. Furthermore, realignment of organizational resources to address reported conditions is easily forgotten when assigning condition report priorities and follow-on actions. Establishing daily condition report review meetings with the following characteristics helps ensure these challenges are effectively and efficiently mitigated:
- Daily Meeting – provides for the prompt screening of reported issues. Note that daily implies business weekdays and is not inclusive of weekend days
- Multidiscipline Meeting Participation – ensures the application of the necessary knowledge, technical expertise, and operating experience to the review, prioritization, and resolution assignment of newly submitted condition reports. Additionally, invites unique alternative perspectives be applied to the resolution of issues (See StrategyDriven Business Performance Assessment Program best practice article, Multidiscipline Teams)
- Pre-meeting Condition Report List Dissemination – allows meeting participants to investigate the circumstances and resolution status of the condition reports for which their workgroup has primary responsibility. This advanced preparation facilitates meeting efficiency and effectiveness
- Condition Report Reviews Led by the Associated Functional Group – provides for the assignment of condition reports to those workgroups having the knowledge, technical expertise, and operating experience necessary to effectively investigate and resolve an issue
- Devil’s Advocate – injects an alternative viewpoint into the prioritization and dispositioning of reviewed condition reports thereby preventing group-think and enhancing the robustness of the decision-making process (See StrategyDriven Strategic Analysis best practice article, advocatus diabolic, The Devil’s Advocate and StrategyDriven Podcast, The Devil’s Advocate)
- Condition Report Prioritization and Follow-up Action Assignment – consistent prioritization of condition reports ensures follow-on corrective actions are performed in a timeframe consistent with the issues’ impact on the organization’s vision, mission, values, and goals. Specifically assigning follow-up actions to a workgroup provides accountability for their completion
- Real-time Review Updates – enables real-time updating of condition reports based on review meeting input thereby ensuring all input is captured and speeding the assignment process
Final Thought…
Organizations experiencing a low volume of condition reporting may find daily condition report review meetings to be administratively burdensome. In these cases, less than daily meetings may be held but should not be convened less than once per week. If a less than daily review meeting is adopted, management should periodically evaluate the screening delay to ensure condition reports are processed in a timely manner consistent with their prioritization and organizational needs.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”48922, 25542, 25653″]
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About the Author
Nathan Ives is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.
Determining the amount of time required for performing causal analyses is a balancing act. The depth of issue investigation should align with its significance. Consequently, more significant events require additional time to perform the more detailed causal analysis assigned to them. Countering this is the urgency to understand and correct the underlying causes of more significant events as well as to put into place those barriers that will prevent their recurrence. Thus, it is important to establish time limits for causal analysis performance that effectively balance these two opposing needs.[wcm_restrict plans=”48918, 25542, 25653″]
Effective corrective action programs support achievement of the organization’s vision, mission, values, and goals. Consequently, adverse conditions and trends as well as performance improvement opportunities entered into the program must be aligned with these stated outcomes lest the program’s resource be diverted to non-value adding issues and its effectiveness be diminished. Formally defining corrective action program reporting criteria helps ensure the desired alignment is achieved and program effectiveness maximized.[wcm_restrict plans=”48912, 25542, 25653″]
Leaders valuing continuous performance improvement encourage employee engagement in the corrective action program as a primary input to organizational learning and growth. Combined with a low reporting threshold, these organizations process numerous condition reports every day, some of which will be duplicative when an adverse condition is observed and reported by more than one person.
Adverse conditions and opportunities for improvement present themselves at unpredictable times and in unexpected places; possibly observed by only a few or one. Furthermore, an organization benefits most when its workforce contributes the full measure of its intellect and creativity. Thus, it is critically important that everyone, including contractors, be able to submit a condition report.[wcm_restrict plans=”48889, 25542, 25653″]