Christmas 1990 wasn’t so merry for the McCallister family, who learned an object lesson in how well they mitigate operational risk. For those unfamiliar with this most disturbing and unfortunate case, young eight year old Kevin was left alone for a number of days in his posh Chicago home while his family visited Paris. Only once she was over the Atlantic did his mother detect the failure mode. As a result, Kevin became involved in some risky behaviors including petty theft, a scary neighbor, and battling two serial burglars. As a parent I am forced to ask myself: what went wrong with the McCallister Family process controls?
First, how did this defect in the familial deployment process occur? Simply: Kevin’s presence was missed constantly throughout the deployment process. Perhaps not unrelated, there was some animosity towards Kevin. Key stakeholders referred to him as a “jerk” or one of “Les Incompetants.” Kevin’s subsequent pushback to his operational lead sent him to remediation activity in the attic, which was preferable to reassignment with associate Fuller, who was noted as having issues with liquid retention. Unfortunately, this action caused Kevin’s removal from the floor which resulted in his not being aware of movement, as well as out of view from other operational entities. So the process seemed to rely on individuals to take their own required action, which alone isn’t enough to achieve the high level of process efficiency required to keep our children safe or parents out of jail.
The Parents McCallister, having at least five offspring, seemed aware of this potential failure mode (having deployed their children out of doors regularly we can assume) which is why they implemented a headcount control. Unfortunately, this was not executed to standard since older child Heather accidentally counted a neighbor kid so the count was as expected. Unfortunately this key control was delegated to a person who didn’t apply due care to count the correct children. Perhaps she was incentivized on achieving the desired count at the expense of counting the right children? Perhaps a Balanced Scorecard would have eliminated this principal-agent dilemma? Hard to imagine a big sister would sabotage her youngest sibling, but they all did leave him home too.
The final control point that failed is one most students miss. Recall back in Stone Age Pre Internet 1990 air travelers used physical tickets for transport. So when the family showed up at the gate, there should have been one extra ticket right? But the night before a gallon of milk spilled on the counter, and in the hasty cleanup Kevin’s ticket were discarded. We don’t have information on who was responsible, but we can assume they were perhaps lactose intolerant or “Les Incompetents.” The lesson here clearly is to not drink milk with pizza because that frankly is kind of gross.
What are the key takeaways beyond silly Christmas movie nostalgia? In terms of controls, our choices are Detective (found the problem!), Preventative (stopped the problem from happening!), and Corrective (fixed a detected problem!) (more info here). We like preventative controls the most for obvious reasons. But controls not implemented correctly are not controls. If control accuracy is a suspected problem, or if the item being measured is a significant risk, consider adding additional control or improve the reliability of the control system. If using a multiple eyes approach, be sure to change the method of control so it’s not just a repeat performance. In this example, either have big brother Buzz do an independent count (if he can count), or have mom or dad do it. Better yet use different methodology by having one person count and the other do a roll call. Further, I’d recommend the family sit down and complete a Failure Modes Effect Analysis (FMEA) with one of the fine people at Process Sherpa. Taking a comprehensive look at the complete process and how things can go wrong will likely uncover many other failure modes not even considered. This is especially important if the family continues to exercise this process without fixing all the possible problems. (Sadly, McCallister deployment activity to Miami in 1992 also resulted in a similar situation.)