Action 4.1 Determine Most Likely CAUSES

Purpose

To identify potential root causes for the problem or lack of opportunity.

Once this step is completed, you will have identified potential root causes that can be acted on to improve processes and results for employees and customers.

Use a cause and effect diagram to identify potential cause and effect relationships.

Ask ‘Why?’ five times when you have identified a cause. Why does this cause happen? Because of ... Why does that happen? Because of ... and so on.

It can be helpful to collect data about a cause, to determine if there is a cause of a cause.

Pareto charts can be very useful to separate out potential causes and then identify the cause that has the most impact.

This step is done in conjunction with step 4.2. Causes are identified, data is collected and the causes re-examined.

Pro tips

Getting to the Root Cause - When you have identified potential causes, ask for each 'Why does this happen?'

When you have an answered to this, ask 'Why" again.

Do this until you can no longer find an answer.