Root Cause Analysis — What I learned from Japanese Engineers.
When I was still working in the Philippines, I worked with several brilliant Japanese engineers (NEC Corporation). We were producing printed circuit boards at that time, and the Japanese engineers were teaching us the efficient production of the product.
At that time, I don’t have any idea what these management principles were or learned any engineering principles as applied to production. I was glad that I learned these principles from the people who popularized Japanese quality. Their teachings, in one way or another, impacted my life.
I learned the Paretto Principle or the 80–20 rule, a rule that I still use in my life and business.
There were principles that stayed with me throughout my life, not just solving technical problems but personal problems too.
Japan was synonymous to quality decades ago, and I believe still is. Made in Japan is regarded as high quality workmanship. And this is because Japanese manufacturing developed quality control into a rigorous science.
After the second World War, Japanese was in chaos. When they decided to better themselves, they studied the scientific publications that came out from the West. Most of the concepts I learned from Japanese engineers came from studies that came from the US and Europe.
Pareto Rule, Lean Management, Juran’s Quality Control were some of the principles I learned from my Japanese Engineer-mentors.
But one thing that stood out from the crowd is the principle of root cause analysis.
Root cause analysis is simple, but anything simple is hard to do. That’s why root cause analysis is often times overlooked by people who manage to solve problems.
Root cause analysis is delving to what causes the effect. In quality control, you ask, “what causes the defect?”.
My son played soccer last week. In one instance, I heard a parent shouting to his son to “be the hardest working player in the field.” I watched his son played, and I saw some fundamental mistakes.
I stopped and think about it. You can’t ask your player to be the hardest working player if the kid don’t know how to fundamentally stop and control the ball. Or dribble properly.
That’s the very root cause of turnovers. You can’t mask or erase turnovers with working hard.
When I train my son Koji to play soccer, I always start with the fundamentals: stopping the ball and controlling the ball, before asking him to work really hard.
One time, Koji was playing basketball and I saw a parent telling his kid to “play smart and not turn-over the ball.” I saw the parent’s face turned red. I thought of the “Root cause analysis” again, what made the kid not play smart and turn-over the ball?
Is the kid good at handling pressure?
Is the kid good at dribbling?
What caused the turnover?
By digging deep into these questions, you’ll know what to address. Don’t just ask to play better, dig deeper.
It was an insight to me when that parent was shouting “be careful”, “Play smarter”, or “Work harder.” It came to me like a hand grenade and sniper. Telling a kid to work harder is like hand grenade thrown to the enemy, while coaching a player to “control the ball well” is more of a sniper.
Zero in on the root cause.
