ABSTRACT
Root cause needs to be reissued to executive and leadership teams as a must-have competency. And much of the root-cause thinking or tools one see at the executive level are either dusty or dismal in terms of a systematic and common tool for finding cause. One need to reinstate root cause – this means manager establish an executive team routine to look at both positive and negative variances and apply a common process for finding cause. Because of the background and being part of a company with a pedigree of problem-solving, the chapter suggests five reasons for why the systematic use of root cause has waned at the C-Suite level. They are already trained, only for the shop floor, too tool focused, rewarded for crisis management or firefighting and executive resistance. These reasons seem to have prevented the adoption of root cause as a Go-to Tool for executives.
