1. Do you understand what can go wrong?
Answering this question requires you to really understand your risks. A risk is the probability of an occurrence that adversely affects the realization of the organization’s business objectives, or causes serious damage to the environment or leads to hurting people.
Do we know the most significant risks and are they assessed and aligned with the organization’s risk attitude? Whereby risk attitude is defined as “an organization’s approach to assess and eventually pursue, retain, take or turn away from risk” (ISO 31000).
Answering this question is the first step in designing your (safety/quality/operational excellence) management system.