How can a Swiss cheese can make my venture start-up safer?

Combining a Threat Tolerability Matrix with Prof James Reason's "Swiss cheese" model can create a robust risk management framework for startup businesses which usually operate in highly uncertain environments.

The Swiss cheese model is an effective and powerful framework for understanding how accidents and failures occur within business systems. It's a particularly valuable tool for entrepreneurs who have to navigate intricate and rapidly evolving business landscapes. Here's a breakdown of how these tools complement each other:

Threat Tolerability Matrix: prioritising and assessing risks

As described in a previous JunoConsult blog, the Threat Tolerability Matrix helps you to assess risks based on their likelihood and impact. This allows you to:

• Identify your most critical threats.

• Prioritise your risk mitigation efforts.

• Allocate limited resources most effectively.

This tool is excellent for creating a clear, visual overview of the risks facing any business.

The Swiss cheese model: understanding systemic failures

Accidents and failures are rarely caused by a single event. Instead, they result from a combination of latent conditions and active failures within a system. The so-called Swiss cheese model visualises a business’s defences as multiple layers, or "slices," of a Swiss cheese.  Each slice represents part of the business and in each part there are protective barriers created to prevent errors and failures. However, just like a Swiss cheese, these layers contain "holes," which represent weaknesses or vulnerabilities. These holes can arise from various factors, including:

• Human error

• Technical flaws

• Organisational deficiencies

• Latent conditions (hidden weaknesses)

An accident or failure will only happen occurs when the holes in multiple layers are aligned, allowing a pathway through which a hazard can pass through to cause harm.

Key concepts of the Swiss cheese model

Latent Failures - are underlying weaknesses that exist within the system, often for extended periods. Examples include:

• Poorly designed processes

• Inadequate training

• Insufficient resources

• Flawed organisational culture

Active Failures - are the immediate, observable errors made by individuals on the front line, such as mistakes or slips.

Combining the tools for reducing your risk

The Threat Tolerability Matrix helps identify what risks are most significant in your business, while the Swiss cheese model helps understand how those risks can materialise.

Here's how they work together

• Identifying latent conditions: When a high-risk threat is identified in the Threat Tolerability Matrix, the Swiss cheese model is all about encouraging you to look beyond immediate causes and examine the underlying latent conditions that could contribute to the threat.

  
  

• Strengthening Defences: By visualising your defences as slices of Swiss cheese, you can identify weaknesses in your systems and implement strategies to strengthen those defences. This might involve improving processes, providing better training, or fostering a culture of safety.

• Analysing Failure Pathways: Reason's model encourages early stage venture business to think about the various pathways through which a risk could become a failure. This helps to identify potential points of failure and allows you to implement preventative measures before the failure can occur.

• Proactive Risk Management: Instead of simply reacting to incidents, you can use these tools to proactively identify and address potential risks before they happen.

• Improving organisational resilience: By understanding that failures often come from a combination of factors, you can build a more resilient venture, much better prepared to handle unforeseen events.

• Layered Defences: The model emphasises the importance of building multiple layers of defence to mitigate risks. This could involve implementing:

  • Robust processes and procedures

  • Comprehensive training programmes

  • Redundancy in critical systems

  • Creating a culture of safety and open communication to share problems and near-misses.

  
  

• Improved Problem-Solving: When failures do occur, the Swiss cheese model provides a framework for analysing the root causes. Entrepreneurs can identify the specific holes that aligned, allowing them to implement targeted corrective actions.

  
  

• Fostering a Culture of Safety: For a startup, especially one that is growing rapidly, a culture of safety can be hard to create, let alone maintain. The Swiss cheese model allows for a visual representation of how important it is to have multiple layers of safety, and that any one layer can have holes.

• Adaptability: Startups are constantly adapting. The holes in the Swiss cheese are also constantly changing. The model helps to visualise that, and allows for constant reassessment of risk.

Practical Application in Startups

·       For example, imagine you are an early stage venture facing a high risk of data breach (as identified in the Threat Tolerability Matrix). You can use Reason's model to examine the latent conditions that could contribute to this risk, such as inadequate cybersecurity training for your employees or outdated software that has not been updated to counter known threats. Then you will have closed the holes in your "Swiss cheese" by implementing better security protocols, and targeted employee training.

·       In another example, you are in a venture with a high risk of supply chain disruption – a coffee bean supplier. You would use the Swiss cheese model to look at the different areas of your business that could fail. That could include your bean suppliers, , your inbound, and outbound delivery methods, your storage arrangements. You can then build in redundancies, or multiple options, to create stronger barriers to help mitigate the risks that you have identified.

Conclusion

Used properly the Swiss cheese model empowers entrepreneurs – you - to move from reactive firefighting to proactive risk management, creating a more resilient and sustainable venture business. By integrating these two powerful risk management tools, you can develop a more comprehensive and effective approach to mitigating risks, increasing your chances of long-term success