March 10, 2010

Cause Analysis

Overcoming Assumptions

It is important to understand what your goals are, and to see how the steps you are undertaking will work to complete the goals. It is critical to suspend solutions until the true root cause(s) is identified. We do not presume that training is the solution for a given performance gap. Cause Analysis is used to determine why the performance gap exists, then we chose the most effective intervention.

Defining Cause Analysis

Cause analysis starts at the end of the business process, identifying the goals of your business and then identifying the contributions of the departments, units, and individuals that produce the outcomes that satisfy those goals.

Once the goals and outcomes have been identified, Cause Analysis considers the processes that produced the outcomes, the tasks that make up the processes, and finally the initial influences that affect the accomplishment of each task.

Causes of Performance Gaps

The cause behind a performance gap might be training, but often there are other causes:

  • A lack of knowledge or skill on the part of workers can often be corrected with some coaching, job instruction, a job aid or a support tool
  • A lack of resources to do the job (human, physical, financial)
  • Aproblem with the structure or process of the work flow
  • A need for more information – which might be in the form of just being able to access the information when needed, just when it is needed
  • A lack of leadership or a change in leadership
  • A lack of consequences or information regarding the consequences of poorly done work
  • Motives or expectations
  • Inadequate feedback
  • Lack of capacity by an individual to perform, due to poor hiring practices, selection practices or promotion policy.

Cause Analysis Tools

Observation is a powerful method of identifying key performance, because it enables you to see how one employee or department has better results than another employee or department. This is a similar process to identifying what the core competencies are within your business.
Other tools we use include:

  • Structured brainstorming
  • Fishbone diagrams
  • Five Whys
  • Surveys
  • Interviews and focus groups
  • Review of performance data and other data
  • Records review (e.g. performance appraisals, hiring process, maintenance records, etc.)

Levels of Causes

Performance gaps can occur in three levels of the organization:

  • Organizational Level
  • Process Level
  • Job/Performer Level