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Are "mistakes" good or bad?


One of the attributes that make a great technician is the fact that they have made a lot of mistakes. Our biggest challenge is recalling those mistakes ourselves and as importantly sharing them with others on our team. Every single day we go out and fix things, many of them are routine and may not require any form of documentation or sharing; however, there are those instances where we have discovered gold. The trick is to make sure that we can learn from our mistakes in a systematic manner and have the ability to spread the information throughout our organization in a useful and relevant way.



Corrective action, an integral part of a quality system, is the absolute best vehicle to put in place for your organization. Some of you may have been turned off by the words "quality system", don't worry you can still deploy a corrective culture without having to understand completely how corrective action and quality management systems work. The process is very straightforward just simply query your field workers at some frequency to share with you their most challenging field condition and the resolution. This could be done with a phone call, an email message, a post to a website,  or using a "Big Chief tablet and #2 pencil". The key is to not get wrapped around the use of technology; instead concentrate on leveraging the information and cataloguing it in a way which is useful for your fieldworkers.



You absolutely want to retain your best workers and you can do that by giving them a sense of community and helping them make a difference in others' lives. Deploy a corrective strategy today.



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