Get to The Root Cause

Written by Mike Nunn

When you're at work, or even at home, do you have any challenges or problems that continue to happen over and over again? Too often we get caught up in problem solving, which does a great job of fixing the problem but doesn't actually prevent the problem from happening again. Problem solving has another less popular name: fire fighting.

The best fire fighters are usually the ones who get promoted to Supervisor or Manager positions, and these are the same people who are running around like a chicken with its head cut off. What could be achieved if you were not fighting fires all day? How much more could you produce? How much more could you grow your business?

Think about it, if you spend 5 minutes fire fighting one problem that happens twice each day, then you will spend almost two full days each year dealing with that one problem. Staggering isn't it? If you could only stop that problem from happening after the first occurrence, what would you do with the extra two days? Moreover, how many other problems are you fire fighting in a day?

Instead of problem solving, you need to start getting to the ROOT of the problem(s). Once you discover the root of a problem you will know the reason that problem is occurring in the first place. Here's an example of a problem: A production worker did not add a specific part while assembling a widget.

In many companies this production worker might be reprimanded for not adding the part during assembly. But wait, did we ever stop to ask why this problem happened? I believe that people go to work to do a good job and never intend to make mistakes. People want to be recognized and rewarded. With that understanding we need to involve the production worker in getting to the root cause of why the part was missed in the assembly of the widget. There are many forms of root cause analysis tools out there but the easiest one for everyone to use is the Five Why method, which is simply asking why five times when a problem occurs. Now, let's Five Why the problem above.

Problem: A production worker did not add a specific part while assembling a widget.
Why? The worker didn't have any of that part to install.
Why? He had run out of stock.
Why? A replenishment order had not been placed.
Why? The person responsible for placing the replenishment order was not aware an order was needed.
Why? There was not a trigger to tell when a reorder is needed. Ah ha! The ROOT CAUSE!!
REMEMBER: When going through the Five Why process you MUST involve the stakeholders and DO NOT PLACE BLAME ON ANYONE!

Once you've determined the root cause you can put countermeasures in place to address/solve the root cause to the problem and as a result prevent the problem from happening again. Use this in all areas of your business, work or personal life to eliminate wasted time spent fire fighting and add more value.