REPLY Definition of root cause (SD6835)

[SDMAIL John Gunkler]

Posted by  "John Gunkler" <jgunkler at sprintmail.com>

Fred Nickols writes, about the example (from
http://www.systems-thinking.org/rca/rootca.htm) of the plant manager who
finds oil on the floor,

"I'll wager that aficionados of root cause analysis (RCA) would indicate
that the plant manager needed to go at least one or two steps further and
determine why he was pressing everyone to be so cost conscious."

And I, being one such aficionado, might reply much in the light of Gene
Bellinger's suggestion at the bottom of the cited webpage:  to wit, that
maybe we should not look for root causes but, instead, for "actionable
causes" that "I can act on that will provide long term relief from the
symptoms, without causing more problems that I have to deal with tomorrow."

In that light, if the manager can simply change his own behavior without
further analysis, and if that change in behavior resolves the problem
without creating more, then no further analysis is warranted.  I notice,
too, that simply being put under pressure to reduce costs should not be
enough to prevent the plant manager from changing -- after all, if his bonus
depended upon cost savings, he has just discovered that certain actions led
to the opposite result and is fairly confident that a change in his behavior
would lead to a higher bonus.

If, on the other hand, the pressure on the manager was of a different sort
that prevented him from simply changing the way he pursued cost savings
(such as being held to very short-term accountabilities), then further
analysis might be useful and, indeed, another deeper cause and corrective
action might be preferable.

John Gunkler
Posted by  "John Gunkler" <jgunkler at sprintmail.com>
posting date  Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:46:46 -0400