Charles Kepner and Benjamin Tregoe, in their groundbreaking book, The New Rational
Manager,summarized the process this way:
Reprinted with the permission of Kepner-Tregoe, Inc. All rights reserved.
220 SECTION 7 TOOLS FORPROBLEMSOLVING, DECISIONMAKING, ANDQUALITY
Assess
Risk✔ For each potential problem, assess as High, Medium, or Low on a scale from 1 to 10:
➠probability—the likelihood of the problem occurring, and
➠seriousness—the negative impact of the problem if it occurs.
Depending on your risk tolerance, now consider which potential problems to work on.➟
Determine
Likely
Cause✔ For intolerable risks (e.g., an emergency landing), brainstorm likely causes.
Do this before determining preventive actions.
➟[☛7.3 Finding Cause]➟
Contingent
Actions✔ No matter how much effort you put into prevention, incidents may still occur.
✔ For high-risk potential problems (see step 4), prepare contingency plans and build these back into
➟ your original plan.Preventive
Actions✔ First, assess the probability of each cause occurring. Deal with only the most probable.
✔ Determine the actions you need to take to prevent the cause from occurring; build this back into
➟ the plan.➟
➟