We sometimes hear from small business owners who wish to replicate their successful business and expand to one or more new locations. They often say that they “…need someone to come and package up (their) business from head to toe so we can expand.” That’s what they say — but is that what they need?

Most companies that expand successfully do so with a combination of:

• Researching and documenting “best practices”;
• Process documentation, in the form of well-written policies and procedures;
• Customized employee training; and
• Implementing a quality management system (QMS)

so they get consistent results across all operations.

After a few e-mails back and forth between the small business owner and Bizmanualz, the gravity of the situation — their “replication strategy” — becomes apparent. The process of documenting best practices, implementing policies and procedures, training employees, and implementing a quality management system is no small undertaking — any one of them alone would be daunting, let alone all four. While the owner’s first inclination may be to have someone to come in and do it, seldom are they in a position to budget for it.

Nor would it be advisable, in most cases. For most of our customers, existing staff — labor — is the largest cost, by far. When you dig down for what the owner really wants, it’s to enable the current staff to achieve the desired growth without spending more money than they’re already spending on employees and related expenses. Given our customer’s practical concerns, our approach has evolved into guiding and enabling growth, not sending in a “hired gun” to do it for them. We guide growth through training and workshops, and we enable growth with our products and services.

Saving Time with Pre-Written Policies and Procedures

Our pre-written materials save you time by giving you a starting point and a framework. But, in the case of the business owner seeking growth, he’s asking, “Which procedures do I need to customize, why are they important, and once I’ve customized them, how do I know they’re working?” These and other questions are answered in our two-day roll-out training.

In our Implementation training, we help you find the answers you need and help select the right procedures to sustain growth. That way, your staff can build the best-practice procedures you need.

But wait! There’s more! With the training, you get a year’s worth of phone consultations. Once you’ve taken the Implementation training, pick up the phone and ask us anything you want. Contact us, or download a one-page flier about the roll-out training.

The training will show your team how to build — and sustain — a system of best practices for growth. We’ll help you select, modify, and apply our procedure templates to improve your current operations, making it cheaper for you to provide your service to your customers. Not only do you make your operations more effective and more efficient — saving you money and increasing your profits. In this tough economy, you’re better able to answer price challenges from competitors.

Supporting your Growth and Expansion with Software

Our customers have taught us that when their businesses expand geographically, they often face challenges in coordinating, controlling, and distributing their policies, procedures, and best practices among their locations. That’s why Bizmanualz is currently testing a new software platform that will help you handle these challenges. Once this platform is available, you’ll be able to rent access to our software platform and upload your procedures so that when you’re ready to expand, all your locations can access controlled releases of policies and procedures, as well as other key documents.

Furthermore, you’ll pay only for what you need! Billed monthly, our web-based software will be particularly cost-effective for our small-to-medium-sized customers. You’ll get the convenience, control, reporting, and smooth operations that you want, with none of the hassles of maintaining the software in-house. It will come pre-loaded with your Bizmanualz policies and procedures. All you’ll need is an Internet browser.

If you want to help us test our upcoming web-based policies and procedures management software release, please comment below or contact us via the Web. Our job is to help you grow efficiently and with as little risk as possible. Share your growth challenges with us, and we’ll reply with ideas and products to help you.

Companies have a variety of reasons for wanting to get their document management process under control.  What are the four main reasons for investing in a good document management system software?  How about security, saving money, efficiency and compliance.

Document Management Software Security

Electronic files are a lot more secure than paper files.  Document management software can provide an audit trail that tracks every document change and even file views.  Electronic systems can be easily backed-up in case of natural disasters like fire and flood.  Bottom line: your electronic files are safer and more secure.

Document Management Software Savings

The cost of manually producing, storing, retrieving and transporting paper documents and records is high, very high.  People are expensive and using people to file, find and move documents is just not practical anymore.  Think of all the money you can save, and office space you can free up, if you eliminate paper documents and records. Document management software virtually eliminates the cost of searching for, or worse recreating lost documents.

Document Management Software Efficiency

Retrieving paper documents from your storage location (is it off site?) is a ridiculas waste of time. How long do you have to wait to obtain paper files?  Document management software systems let employees quickly access documents and records from their desks, over the internet.  So no matter where you are you can now quicky and easily retrieve important documents and records.

Document Management Software Compliance

If document and records control are a requirement for compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley, ISO 9001, HIPAA, or some other regulations then document management software systems are simply the fastest, easiest, and cheapest solution.  All of your policies, procedures, work instructions, forms, regualtions, and customer documents can be tracked, controlled, and managed per your compliance requirements.  Document management software provides compliance at a glance, access control, physical security, audit history, review and approval work flows, email alerts, and comment tracking.  Reduce your document audit findings and keep you company in compliance.

Document management security, cost savings, efficiency and compliance are the four main reasons for investing in document management software systems.

When we talk about helping companies obtain ISO 9001:2008 certification, people often ask us, “Why does our company need to be ISO 9001 certified?” Good question. ISO 9001 is the quality management system (QMS) standard and it produces numerous benefits for any company willing to go that route. So, why should your organization obtain ISO 9001 certification?

1. Meet Customer Requirements

Many companies want to get ISO 9001 certified just to satisfy one customer requirement. The customer states that it will only do business with vendors that are certified as ISO 9001 compliant, so to get (or keep) the business they need that certification. The problem with these companies is that they’re looking for a short-term payoff.  They see nothing but that one benefit — we need money– and ignore the long-term benefits, like “if we keep the customer well satisfied, they will want to come back again and again”.

They don’t embrace the concept of quality through continual improvement. They don’t understand that continued customer satisfaction is the ultimate goal of a QMS. In other words, these companies haven’t “bought into the program”. See, you may obtain a piece of paper (that ISO certificate) that claims ISO 9001 certification without seeing much actual quality or improvement. Focusing only on that one benefit — your immediate gain — without putting the customer in front will end up costing you much more in the long run. Hopefully, some of the quality management system ideas may rub off and eventually stick…but wouldn’t you rather have a plan than trust to luck?

2. Get More Revenue and Business from New Customers

Once you earn your ISO 9001 certification, you can advertise your quality certification and respond to requests for quotes (RFQ) from companies that make ISO 9001 certification a “must-have”. ISO 9001 certification can open up new markets you were virtually unable to do business with before your certification.

3. Improve Company and Product Quality

A quality management system standard is all about quality (really!) so, of course, one result of adopting a QMS should be an improved level of quality for the entire organization — every process, and every product. There are many definitions of “quality”, but Philip Crosby and Joseph Juran provide two of the best. Crosby defined it as “conformance to requirements”; Juran called it “fitness for use”.  A well-designed, effectively implemented ISO 9001 Quality Management System will put your company on the Road to Quality.

4. Increase Customer Satisfaction with your Products

Quality means whatever you produce will work as your customers expect. You will meet not only their stated requirements — you will meet more of their implied requirements, too.

Quality also means far fewer complaints and doing a better job of resolving those you do.  If your quality management system is working correctly, you should know what your customers expect and you should be providing it, resulting in increased customer satisfaction.

5. Describe, Understand, and Communicate Your Company Processes

The ISO 9001 QMS standard requires that you identify and describe your processes using business metrics, the purpose of which is to better manage and control your business processes.  Quality objectives form the center of your system.  Metrics are used to understand and communicate your system’s performance relative to your quality objectives.  If you make an honest attempt to conform to the requirements of ISO 9001, you’ll learn more about your business.

6. Develop a Professional Culture and Better Employee Morale

Implementing an ISO 9001 Quality Management System can empower employees. Your QMS will provide them with clear expectations (quality objectives and job descriptions), the tools to do their job (procedures and work instructions), and prompt, actionable feedback on their performance (process metrics). The result? An improved company culture and a more professional staff!

7. Improve the Consistency of Your Operations

What is consistency? Well, one way to think of it is “decreased variation”.  Reducing the variation in your processes is the definition of consistency. Is your customer better served by you supplying them with a consistent product — same dimensions, same weight, same tolerances, same output every time — or by your products being unpredictable and “all over the place”? (I hope you’re not thinking too hard on this.)

Of course, they won’t accept variation, and neither should you! And how do you decrease variation?  Increase control of your processes!  Control comes from having a clear target to shoot for (objective), collecting data on the process (metrics), and understanding how to adjust the process (procedures and work instructions) to maintain the target output.  If your ISO 9001 QMS is working, you should be increasing operational…and product…consistency.

8. Focus Management and Employees

We’ve discussed quality objectives, metrics, and procedures used within an ISO 9001 Quality Management System. Having the right objectives, metrics, and procedures, management and employees should be able to focus better on what’s important.  Yet, this isn’t always the case — it’s easy to lose focus over a period of time.

The ISO 9001 QMS has a way to ensure the company stays focused, and that’s quality auditing.  Internal audits, registration (and surveillance) audits, and self-process audits. ISO 9001 requires that the company periodically audit its quality processes. Regular process audits and as-needed audits, when done correctly, provide the objective feedback needed to correct any deviations from the quality path and keep the company focused on its goals.

9. Improve Efficiency, Reduce Waste, and Save Money

An ISO 9001 Quality Management System isn’t perfect; no process and no one is perfect.  (Why else would the standard devote a clause to “continual improvement”?) A well-run QMS does enable your company to approach perfection.  As your processes improve, become more consistent, and you achieve your target objectives with greater regularity, you will see tangible results. Your process waste will decrease, for one.

Waste is money lost forever. Waste results from poor quality and inefficiency.  Inefficiency results from variation and inconsistent processes.  Reduce variation, improve consistency, and you’ll have less waste…and more money.  It’s that simple!

10. Achieve International Quality Recognition

ISO 9001 is a worldwide standard administered by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), based in Switzerland. ISO 9001 is currently in use by close to one million organizations around the world!  It is truly a world wide standard for quality! Obtaining ISO 9001 certification puts your company in a very select group.

Why Should Your Organization Obtain ISO 9001 Certification?

Recapping the article, your company’s certification to ISO 9001 will help you:

1. Meet customer requirements;
2. Get more revenue and business from new customers;
3. Improve company and product quality;
4. Increase customer satisfaction with your products;
5. Document, understand, and communicate your company processes;
6. Develop a professional culture and better employee morale;
7. Improve the consistency of your operations;
8. Keep management and employees focused on quality;
9. Improve efficiency, reduce waste and save money; and
10. Achieve international quality recognition.

To learn more about improving your processes, attend our How to Create Well-Defined Processes Class, coming this spring to our St. Louis, Missouri, offices.

Thanks to recent reports across all media (ex., “Toyota’s Slow Awakening to a Deadly Problem“, 1 Feb 2010), we’re beginning to see the enormous scope of the acceleration error that has prompted the recall of millions of Toyota vehicles.

Toyota, a company long considered a paragon of lean manufacturing virtue (hence, its assuming the mantle of “World’s Largest Car Maker” from GM), appears to have a serious defect in many of its highest-selling products. “Unintended acceleration” has resulted in hundreds of accidents (reported so far) and the loss of untold lives. In the last two weeks, Toyota shut down the production lines of some of its most popular vehicles to address the situation.

Could it be, as some have suggested, that Toyota has been “hoist with (its) own petard”? Or, to put it another way, was Toyota done in by the very system designed to make it efficient and prosperous?

Just today (1 Feb 2010), Toyota “officially” announced it had found a way to correct the problem (one that goes beyond replacing or doctoring floor mats), but many people aren’t satisfied the manufacturing giant has found the real solution. And even if it has, it will be a long, long time before Toyota recovers from the damage it has done to its reputation.

Questions abound, including “Why didn’t Toyota conduct a thorough investigation when it first learned of the problem (back in 2007?)”, “Why did the company stay with the ‘floor mat’ explanation for so long?”, and “Why didn’t safety bodies (like the NHTSA) do more when they realized there was a problem?”

Toyota’s TPS system appears to be in need of a corrective action — the question is, “Where?” Is the problem in manufacturing only? Customer service? Marketing? Design & development? Outsourcing? Or, did Toyota get too big for its own good?

Toyota’s not the only organization incriminated in this scenario. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration doesn’t come out of this situation unbloodied and unbowed. There are allegations that it could have and should have done more to keep the defect, whatever its root cause, from getting out of control.

In a half-hearted defense of NHTSA, they appear to have been ahead of many of their counterparts around the globe. Recalls in Europe and elsewhere followed the recalls in the US. Furthermore, every government body is hurting. There isn’t anything they don’t need — the authority to inspect and recall, or enforce laws; more people; more training; and a degree of autonomy, so they’re not called on the carpet (truly, no pun intended) for doing their job.

No amount of corrective action, though, can begin to make up for the people who’ve already lost their lives. (Interesting how in a situation like this, we tend to say, “Lives were lost needlessly“, when the opposite is true. Too many times, lives have to be lost — often in numbers — before action is taken.)

Lessons we might take from this at this “early” stage? One: corporate management is increasingly susceptible to hubris as a company grows.   Maybe Toyota was afflicted with the same disease financial services caught — we haven’t seen a problem in so long, they must all be licked. Not that corporate “attitude” is the root cause of Toyota’s problem, or even a proximate cause, but the “floor mat” story should have given us all pause to reflect.

Two: nothing can completely take the place of testing and inspection. We have safety standards, regulations, etc., in place in the aerospace and food businesses. For better or worse, more is on the way. Why not make the automotive world jump similar hurdles (i.e., make safety mandatory)?

Three: the best designed, most rigorous systems eventually come apart when they’re not paid attention. CAPAs, like anything else in your Quality Management System, have to be applied continually in order for your company and your system to improve. Toyota has said it in so many ways: “Satisfactory” isn’t.

So, what happened? Your ideas?

(P.S. - Not like Toyota needed more bad news, but now they have a braking problem on the newest Prius. What do you think of that?)

This week, I responded to an e-mail from a Bizmanualz reader who asked the simple question: How do we get to best practices faster? They wanted to know how best to use our products and services to address feedback from their sales department — that their processes are too long and, therefore, hamper sales. Bizmanualz will engage to whatever extent suits a customer’s need and budget. There are three options to choose from:

1. Buy whatever of our published products that you think you need or that we might recommend;
2. Start with our introductory process optimization services (outlined below); or
3. Buy the CEO series and contact me to buy two days of training to help you get started on your own.

Get coaching and personal service with our process review (option #2). Current pricing is shown in our shopping cart. Contact me for this service:

Review your current process. What are you doing now, and what do you want to improve? Here, we clarify your current work process so that we can measure improvement.

Compare your current process to Bizmanualz best-practice processes. No need to re-create processes when we already have them. We will update your processes to our best practices, saving you the trouble and expense of doing it yourself. Streamlined process maps are simple to understand and easy to implement.

Define the goals of your improvement and provide a roadmap for implementing change. Some example improvement goals:

1. Simplify the process so that they will be used by employees;
2. Increase the number of sales leads from the level identified in the current state; and/or
3. Increase the number of leads converting to sales or other desirable actions, such as signing up for a newsletter, obtaining a sample product, or requesting contact.

When you employ Bizmanualz to lead your improvement project, we customize a process for you from our extensive library of best-practice processes. Best practices are included. This saves you time and money on research and development. Our approach is to identify incremental improvements that involve and can be sustained by your current staff. Improvements are realistic, achievable, and sustainable so they’re achieved consistently and benefits add up fast.

Process Implementation Phase

I’ve described the process review engagement where the scope and pace of improvement is set.  Implementing the improvements is the next phase.

In the follow-on process implementation phase, Bizmanualz processes are delivered in all the formats — with the checklists and forms — that your people will use to follow through and practice the improvement. For the do-it-yourself-er, most of the process map formats and examples discussed here are described in a recent Bizmanualz article and commentary series, starting with “What is a Process Map?“.

A Bizmanualz quality consultant, with supporting quality engineers, writers, and communications professionals, will customize maps, job aids, and other tools for your project.  Read about the types of process maps and other tools we deliver on our site. The do-it-yourself-er can also read about project management tools and use them to manage their own project.

Anyone can comb through our manuals-product web site and select individual policies, procedures, and forms manuals or they can choose collections such as the CEO Company Policies and Procedures set.  Most CEO Series customers will benefit from a day or two of training and review, where we’ll introduce your employees to the books and tools in the CEO series and show them how to get started.

Contact me, Dan Davison, for more information about training to use the CEO series product.  Do you have comments? How can we help? Please write to me directly, or leave your comments below.

Thank you.

In a blog post I recently read, the writer said that in America, when someone says “our policy is…”, the policy is stated and adhered to but in his country, “not so much”. He went on to say that the cultural signals are different between the two countries.

The writer goes on to suggest that in his homeland, they seem to operate on the premise that if most people are told, “We can’t do that…it’s against our policy”, they will not question the assertion and will just walk away. But, if you argue forcefully and with conviction, they will comply. In America, you don’t have to argue - they do what they say.

I’m happy he’s satisfied with the way things are here. I would argue, though, based on my many and varied experiences, that policy as written and policy as executed are two distinct branches on the same tree here, there, and everywhere else. And the wrong branch is dying.

I’ll give you an example: I once did business with a certain purveyor of wireless products and services before I became an employee. Once I became an employee, I naturally enjoyed a sizeable discount on everything wireless.  The service wasn’t that great but for the price, I felt I could bear some pain. A few years down the road, the company ”rightsized” and I became an ex-employee.

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
Socrates

At the end of my wireless contract, I looked at what the now ex-employer wanted to charge me for its goods and services (retail prices had gone up quite a bit).  I asked at a local office if my being a steady-paying customer for over eight years counted for something. What would they do to keep a good customer?

They said they were powerless to do anything - it was driven “by corporate”. I asked them to check with A/R and even offered to get my credit report to show I was a customer worth hanging onto. They wouldn’t deal, though.

I decided to take it to the corporate office. Sure enough, they were as indifferent to my “plight” as the local office. They said, ”If we do it for you, we have to do it for everybody.”

Their stated policy is to “give customers exceptional service” but what their actions say is “…as long as it doesn’t cost us up front.”  Their implicit policy is to treat customer service (or customer satisfaction) as a necessary evil.

The time-honored maxim — that it’s cheaper to keep customers than it is to replace them — seems to have lost its meaning. Perhaps, too, the concept of “cost control” has become the top priority…to the exclusion of everything else.

What do you think? More importantly, what do you tell your customers, and what do you do?

We’re conducting a poll on LinkedIn, asking users what their company’s acceptable use policy is with respect to “Twitter”. Does your company:

• Encourage you to use Twitter?
• Tolerate it?
• Discourage its use?
• Forbid you to use it?

If respondents aren’t familiar with the phenomenon and/or they don’t care, they can click on “What’s ’Twitter’?” The results in this highly unscientific poll, to date, are:

• 50% - Encourage its use
• 19% - Tolerate it
• 26% - Forbid it

Three percent responded “What’s Twitter?”  Looks like two-thirds of this sample is already there or is close to getting there.   On the other hand, if we assign a value to each response, like so:

• Encourage = +2
• Tolerate = +1
• Twitter? = 0
• Discourage = -1
• Forbid = -2

The result is between zero and one, which gives us the impression that while this group of companies is aware of Twitter, they’re not ready to make a commitment, either.  They’re a little “lukewarm”.

As I said, this isn’t a scientific poll. LinkedIn doesn’t allow us to gather demographics, so we don’t know if the sample is all B2B, if the respondents are top management or rank-and-file, etc. Still, a dirty window is better than no window at all, isn’t it?

So, what about your company? Are you using Twitter? Do you have a company policy on the use of Twitter? Is Twitter better suited to B2C than B2B?  Take our poll and let us know where you stand.

Thank you.

As I mentioned in another recent post, I’ve begun using the “Polls” feature of LinkedIn to gather data, however unscientifically done, that might tell me what’s going on in the minds of the Websphere’s inhabitants. It seems people love to take polls, especially when their commitment is minimal. They not only get to express an opinion (sort of), but they also get to compare themselves with other “pollees” (looked up that last word — Merriam-Webster’s OK with it).

Many of us participate in opinion polls routinely. Polls give us validation, as well as a sense of belonging. We vote online for everything from “Who’s the most popular talk-show host?” to “What was the worst outfit at the Golden Globes?” to whether news sites should charge for their online content.

Companies shape their actions and their policies, in part, on what people say. If we’re good, we understand what our customers are saying and act accordingly; if we’re not, we come up with “new Coke”.

At Bizmanualz, we want to know your opinions. We want to know how you feel about certain issues such as policies and procedures, process improvement, lean thinking, quality, and tools and techniques associated with those concepts. My first LinkedIn question is “What’s Your Company’s ‘Acceptable Use Policy’ with respect to Twitter?

Another question I just posted is “What’s the PRIMARY Goal of Your Social Media Program?” Even if you don’t have a social media program, take the poll (we have a “don’t have one” response). Then, please come back to Bizmanualz and comment further on the question, the poll results, or about something in the realm of policies and procedures, quality, etc., that concerns you. Create your own poll on LinkedIn and share the link with us, or ask us a question and we’ll see about creating a poll for the community.

Thank you so much for your participation.  As always, best of luck.

Last November, Lifehacker released results of a poll it conducted. They simply asked visitors, “Do you use Twitter?” The results were:

• Yes, regularly - am a big fan (26%)
• Occasionally (20%)
• Yes, but only for search (5%)
• Never - don’t care for (47%)

Another 3% said “other”.  Lifehacker didn’t ask about Twitter policies, though. Seeing (anecdotally) that social media policies appear to be on the increase,* I constructed my own unscientific poll on LinkedIn. I asked my “connections” (a small sample) if their companies’ policy is to:

• Encourage its use? (50%)
• Tolerate it? (18%)
• Discourage it? (0%)
• Forbid it? (27%), or
• What’s Twitter? (4%)

What’s missing, obviously, are demographics — age, gender, respondent’s job, size of the company, whether they’re B2B or B2C, etc. — and methodology. In other words, the poll would never stand up to scrutiny. Nevertheless, there’s some value there. I know what my next step is — that’s asking you, the reader, if you think an acceptable use policy for Twitter — and other social media — is needed at your workplace.

A lot of companies jumped all at once on the “Twitter train” without stopping to consider, “Is there a point to all this? Or are we just reacting?” They jumped in without putting together a plan. They were thinking (I’m guessing) that they had to get “out there” and build Twitter following because their competitors surely were, or they must be very, very close. They didn’t want to be thought of as followers, or technological laggards.

They didn’t know what results to expect, yet they were quickly disenchanted when they didn’t achieve these unspecified results. (It’s all over the Internet what they wanted — a business model, aka, money, cash flow, ROI.)

So, what should they have done (or, what to do now that it appears they’ve overcommitted)?

First, understand Twitter. Do some research on the topic. Find out all the costs (opportunity cost, maintenance cost, etc.). Assess the risks. In fact, do a whole SWOT analysis. “Social media ROI” comes in many forms. Companies often make the mistake of thinking ROI can take one form ONLY — short-term monetary gain.

Find out which entities have been most (un)successful at Twitter, and learn from them. Your goal is to determine if there’s a way to make Twitter work for your company, or if you should avoid it.

Second, assuming you’re going ahead with Twitter, lay out your objectives. Arbitrary though they might be, set a goal. A realistic goal…a stretch goal. You need something…a baseline, a hurdle…against which to gauge your success. Eventually, you gain experience and you adjust your goals.

Third, formulate your acceptable use policy (AUP) for Twitter around those goals. Policy can help — or hurt the success of your venture. There are plenty of Twitter policies online — borrow them, if you need to.  Be careful not to duplicate them — their situations are not the same as yours.

Make sure your policy is clear. Establish roles and responsibilities — who should be using Twitter, and under what circumstances. Let your users know what is and isn’t permissible. Let them know what the penalties are for one-time, multiple, minor, and major policy violations.

Fourth, revisit the policy periodically, or when special circumstances warrant. A policy written in stone isn’t a good policy.

And if you sense you jumped into the Twitter pool headfirst without checking the water’s depth? Well, you know better now, I hope. (If you decide to drop Twitter, you won’t be the first. Or the last.)

So, is it time for your organization to establish a social media policy?

* Some of the anecdotal evidence:

• ESPN Responds to Criticism, Publishes Social Media Policy (http://mashable.com/2009/08/04/espn-social-media/)
• Post Editor Ends Tweets, New Guidelines Issued (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ombudsman-blog/2009/09/post_editor_ends_tweets_as_new.html)
• NFL Issues New Twitter Policy (http://views.washingtonpost.com/theleague/nflnewsfeed/2009/08/league-issues-new-twitter-policy.html)

On January 7, 2010, Timothy Hendron, 51, a longtime employee of ABB’s north St. Louis, Missouri, plant, reportedly took the lives of three coworkers, wounded five others, and took his own life.  This is just one of the latest incidents of worker-on-worker violence that have been on the increase in the last several decades.

In retrospect, of course, it is always clear that “the signs were there”. The individual was under a lot of stress…he was disaffected, alienated, a guy who kept to himself…bills were mounting…he had an unusual interest in weapons…and on, and on. Not everyone fits “the profile”, but most are close enough that we invariably ask “Why didn’t they (we) see it coming?”, or “Why didn’t somebody do something about it before it got to that point?”

Unfortunately, there is no “one size fits all” answer — the answers are as varied and as complex as humanity itself. Recognizing, though, that workplace violence is the ultimate antisocial act against social animals, there are things we can do to and for one another to minimize the risk, among them:

• Showing respect for one another;
• Getting to know coworkers;
• Being better communicators (which means being much better listeners);
• Taking an interest in coworkers outside the workplace;
• At least occasionally, putting coworkers’ interests ahead of our own;
• Watching out for one another;
• Not thinking “someone else can take care of it” or “it’s not my job”;
• Becoming more aware of and responsive to coworkers’ needs, stated and unstated;
• Knowing coworkers well enough that you know what their “normal” is; and
• Having the courage and compassion to help when their “normal” isn’t there.

Does your company have a workplace anti-violence policy? Better yet, do you have a personal policy regarding the prevention of violence in the workplace?

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
(Lao Tzu)

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.