iLead is our internal leadership, education, and development program that was designed to help employees prepare for leadership positions within GUC. November 2019 marked the fourth year of project presentations by iLead teams. The focus of each group project must be aligned with one of four parts of GUC’s mission statement (customer service, safety, employees, and environment). Groups present their ideas to the Management Team in November for implementation considerations. We will spend the coming months focusing on iLead projects that are already making a difference at GUC.  

Root Cause Analysis 

The first iLead class in April of 2016 was made up of 16 employees from across all departments. One of the first projects selected by the Management Team for implementation that year was “Enterprise Root Cause Analysis,” presented by Carrie Peed (HR), Scott Farmer (Water Resources), Kevin Keyzer (Finance), and Tyler Nichols (Electric).  
 
The foundation of this project is Root Cause Analysis (RCA), a system that helps to identify the underlying causes of any situation that produces an outcome, either positive or negative, and sharing that information. At the time when the team proposed this project, there was no system for sharing this type of information across GUC, so it was often difficult to learn from other departments’ situations. The primary goal for the RCA iLead team project was to be proactive instead of reactive in determining the underlying root cause of one situation that may lead to other situations.  

GUC’s safety culture will soon benefit from this iLead project by using RCA as the underlying structure of our new event management system. This new system is in the development phase and will soon be launched as a way for leaders to better analyze safety incidents that occur. More details about this system will be shared in the coming months.  
 
“Being a part of this iLead project was incredibly valuable to me because I am passionate about being proactive in life and work,” said Carrie Peed. “If we have a culture of information sharing that can result in helping others, reducing incidents, saving money and time, and helping achieve GUC’s mission, then it’s worth it for all of us, and I’m all in!”