Welcome to my website. This is where I write about what interests me. Enjoy your visit!
Only send email to recipients that need to know the content. The Addressees of your email message should only be the people who will be truly grateful for receiving it. Use the Cc: field of email sparingly. NEVER automatically “reply to all.”
Only send email to recipients that need to know the content. The Addressees of your email message should only be the people who will be truly grateful for receiving it. Use the Cc: field of email sparingly. NEVER automatically “reply to all.”
BLUF: After several forwards and replies, the average email contains an enormous quantity of non-value-added text. “Take out the trash” from your emails means to remove all unnecessary text before sending. Take a little bit of extra time to improve clarity and focus readers on just what is important for accomplishing your purpose.
BLUF: Delete or paraphrase ugly (insensitive or intemperate) remarks in email from yourself or others to avoid future pain and embarrassment. Send a separate note to people that write such things asking them refrain in the future.
This is Part Five of the sequence of events associated with the collision of the USS JOHN S MCCAIN (DDG 56) with Motor Vessel ALNIC MC on 21 August 2017 in the Straits of Singapore. It is part of a series devoted explaining key concepts of HRO in context and continues with the day before the collision.
BLUF: The Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF) describes the essence of your email in three sentences, plus or minus one. Reading the BLUF alone should be sufficient to understand both the action and its importance. Creating a good BLUF also helps you clarifies your thoughts about the message.
BLUF: I have received many comments on LinkedIn about my posts thus far (thanks a lot). They raised several good issues that are worthy of discussing in a separate post.
BLUF: This is Part Four of the sequence of events associated with the collision of the USS JOHN S MCCAIN (DDG 56) with Motor Vessel ALNIC MC on 21 August 2017 in the Straits of Singapore. It is part of a series devoted explaining key concepts of HRO in context. This is the second of two posts that uses the sequence of events to examine value conflicts associated with Highly Reliable Organizing.
This is Part Three of the sequence of events associated with the collision of the USS JOHN S MCCAIN (DDG 56) with Motor Vessel ALNIC MC on 21 August 2017 in the Straits of Singapore. It is part of a series devoted explaining key concepts of HRO in context. This is the first of two posts that uses the sequence of events to examine value conflicts associated with Highly Reliable Organizing.
BLUF: This is Part Two of the sequence of events associated with the collision of the USS JOHN S MCCAIN (DDG 56) with Motor Vessel ALNIC MC on 21 August 2017 in the Straits of Singapore. It is part of a series devoted explaining key concepts of HRO in context and continues with the day before the collision.
BLUF: This is Part One of the sequence of events (SOE) associated with the collision of the USS JOHN S MCCAIN (DDG 56) with Motor Vessel ALNIC MC on 21 August 2017 in the Straits of Singapore. There were many things from the SOE that present opportunities to learn so there will be many parts.
The USS JOHN S MCCAIN (DDG 56) collided with Motor Vessel ALNIC MC on 21 August 2017 in the Straits of Singapore. Ten Sailors died, forty-eight more were injured, and both ships were damaged (DDG 56 seriously). This is the first in a series of posts devoted to the application of HRO for analyzing the accident.
The complexity and risks involved in safety-critical work are managed with role systems. The work is divided among groups or separate organizations with defined roles. Each is important to the mission of the organization. A role consists of defined behaviors and responsibilities required of people because of their position in the organization.
In this post, I summarize the main points of Charles Perrow’s Normal Accident Theory (NAT). I consider NAT to be the main counterpoint to HRO.
This post provides one possible design for the organization, technology, training, staffing, and resources to manage the risks of shipboard fire. It is not THE answer, just one of many possible answers.
This post is a continuation of my observations from the USS BONHOMME RICHARD fire. It is a decision exercise rooted in High Reliability Organizing (HRO). How would YOU design the organization, technology, training, staffing, and resources to manage the risk of foreseeable occurrences like a shipboard fire?
BLUF: My observations about errors in the standard helm commands and courses to station in the movie Greyhound. Standard helm commands are one way the U.S. Navy maintains high reliability in ship control.
There are few facts available about the fire aboard the USS BONHOMME RICHARD (LHD 6), but lots of assumptions and opinions. This post provides an HRO introduction to the fire. It starts with the basic facts associated with Navy ship fire safety. It continues with some observations causes of serious shipboard fires. It concludes with the need to treat shipboard fire safety as a system.
This post provides an overview of High Reliability Organizing (HRO) and the research on it. I distinguish high reliability organizing, the principles and practices that yield superb performance, from high reliability organizations, collections of people working to create high reliability. I focus on the principles and practices of organizing to achieve high reliability (High Reliability Organizing) what the people in the organizations DO and WHY rather than on the organizations themselves. This blog is about the organizational design practices for active management to reduce failure and increase the reliability of important outcomes.
This post is an introduction to my writings on High Reliability Organizing (HRO). I have a different perspective than others because I am both an organizational scholar and have decades of experience as an HRO practitioner. The blog is a way for me to explore those different ideas and share them with others.
