According to legend, the term KISS or ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid’ was coined by Kelly Johnson, lead engineer at the Lockheed Skunk Works and noted by the US Navy as early as 1960. Subsequent phrases such as ‘Less is More’ followed.
At first glance, it makes sense not to overly complicate a product, process or project. Certainly, a non-technical audience such as senior management will need to the issue and risk management strategy explained in terms they understand. However, in our search for Red. Yellow, Green ratings are we overly simplifying complex environments?
Albert Einstein is created with saying, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” This begs the questions, where is that line and how do you know if you’ve crossed it?
One of the mantras of the High Reliability Organization Mindfulness is, Preoccupation with Failure. This is not defined as with Normal Accident Theory, where failures are inevitable. Rather, it is an understanding the modern complex systems one must be resolute in one’s focus on operational issues and rapidly move to normalize out of limit situations.
In 2016 (and earlier) we made the case that after the Ebola outbreak in Dallas, the Public Health sector was resilient and that issue was contained quickly (links to all three parts of this series provided below). In this writer’s opinion, this was not possible if the process was ‘worked’ at a too simple level. Lessons learned from that and other contagion incidents may be useful combating Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).
The overused phrase, “failure is not an option” is the root of contemporary Operational Excellence business models. In fact, failure happens but mitigating its impact and rapidly recovering are the hallmark of successful organizations.
The graphic is a fractal. From the Fractal Foundation, “A fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop. Driven by recursion, fractals are images of dynamic systems – the pictures of Chaos. Geometrically, they exist in between our familiar dimensions. Fractal patterns are extremely familiar, since nature is full of fractals. For instance: trees, rivers, coastlines, mountains, clouds, seashells, hurricanes, etc.”
Our world is a complex place. Processes and technologies must deal with that fact. Successful risk management strategies must take Einstein’s wisdom into consideration.
Does Your Organization Have a Robust Enterprise Risk Mitigation Strategy?
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The Three-Part Series Referred to in this blog:
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