Getting to the Root Cause of a Client’s Problem and Proposing the “To-Be” Process

One of the most effective tools for performing a root cause analysis is the fishbone diagram, which is illustrated in Figure 6.2. The fishbone diagram was first introduced by Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa in 1968. His tools were quickly embraced by the business world, as a critically important technique used to help teams identify potential causes of the serious problems that their business was facing. As you can see from the illustration in Figure 6.2, a fishbone diagram does not have to be overly complicated; yet, it is very effective at getting beyond symptoms to identify the actionable root cause

or causes for a particular problem. The term “actionable” root causes means those causes identified by the team as the ones which the team believes they can control or influence. In documenting the root causes the team agree which causes to “act” upon. There can be just one actionable root cause that surfaces during a fishbone activity; however, it is far more common for the team to identify several causes to act upon, as most problems are complex and are rarely the result of just one cause.