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Step Two: Determine the Causal Relationships
the software will automatically put the associated cause into an Action
Items Report for further assessment.
Only one in twenty people are capable of admitting they don’t know
the answer when dealing with a serious question within their expertise.
About 95% of the time, when we can’t find an answer, we make one up
and then spend enormous amounts of time justifying it with various
rationalizations. This is a fundamental human reaction that is very
detrimental to effective problem solving, so watch for it.
Sometimes a cause path will take us not to our point of ignorance,
but to a valid reason for stopping. There are really only four reasons for
stopping and RealityCharting® again makes it easy to insert these with
the click of a mouse.
Desired Condition—This is the most common reason for stopping
and reflects the fact that the event was caused by the pursuit of one or
more goals. If you reached your goal or a desired condition, there is no
need to continue asking why. If your goal is faulty, that is another matter.
Examples of this include “met production goals,” “procedure followed,” or
“service level met.”
Lack of Control—This can be an easy excuse for stopping, so make
sure the lack of control is outside your or your organization’s control before
using this reason. Examples are “laws of physics” or “legal requirement.”
New Primary Effect—This occurs when you get to a point in the cause
path that you need to do a separate analysis. The reasons for a separate
analysis can be many, such as outside your control but within another
organization’s control, or it is within your control but you want to separate
it for resource or presentation purposes. This reason is often used as an
interim stopping point because you have a separate team working on
the details of this cause. When they are done, you can easily import their
Realitychart into the final analysis.
Other Cause Paths More Productive—Sometimes you may have
solutions that will prevent recurrence and there is no need to go down
other cause paths because they are simply not productive or cost too
much to pursue. It doesn’t make any sense to continue down these cause
paths and spend more time and money when you already have effective
solutions. This reason for stopping is usually not identified until late in the
analysis. This may also be caused by obviously frivolous causes, like the
sky is blue.
To learn more about how to construct a Realitychart, watch the
following video: http://coach.RealityCharting.com/Book/Node-Menu.
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