Facilitating Root Cause Analysis
Industry is rife with job opportunities that include Root Cause Analysis (RCA) as a sought after skill. Most of these posting intimate if not outright state that the individual candidate will perform RCA as a function of their new position. What is missing from these posts it the understanding of the fundamental nature of RCA, that being that an individual does not perform RCA.
RCA is not an individual skill, it is a methodology or set of methodologies designed to discover the root cause or causes of a fundamental problem or set of problems within a system or related systems. The common misunderstanding simply confuses RCA with Subject Matter Expert (SME).
As an example; If your SME were able to perform an RCA as an individual, you would not have any problems to solve as they would have been discovered and resolved already. Of course, this assumes that the problem is in the purview of the SME and that the SME understands the entire system. This type of misunderstanding continues to plague industry where RCA is involved.
The solution is that a well-trained RCA facilitator can guide a team of practitioners into finding the solution or solutions needed to mitigate the root causes. The facilitator is not a line worker or SME in the subject matter, but rather a coach with the understanding of the nature of problems and problem solving.
Unfortunately, when a job opportunity presents itself and one of the expected duties is: ‘the individual will “perform Root Cause Analysis,” ‘both the employer and the employee will be disappointed. The employee will be disappointed because of the inability to find the root causes, in a vacuum, and the employer will be disappointed because of the expectation that the employee will solve the root causes.
In concluding: If you find that your SME is not able to solve the problems you face, do not look for another SME in the field to perform a Root Cause Analysis, rather find a facilitator that will guide and coach your team into solving the problems you face.
