How To Get To The Root Cause Of Problem?

There are problems everywhere. Still, some seem to be comfortable with it and are happy to solve them to move on. While others may just defer the problem and not solve them, others solve it comfortably. The solution lies in the conditioning of the mind. We should be conditioned to find the root cause of the problem. Problems come and go. Fire fighting is the main task of many managers of otherwise smooth running company. Problems arise and for that these managers need to run and solve them. However, some problems are solved only on surface. Instead if they would have been solved at the root, then it may not come again. For example, there is a faulty reading in the electricity bill. The customer goes to the Electricity board office. The bill is corrected and paid in this month. Next month, again the bill is erratic. Again it is corrected and paid. The customer has to go again and again to the office of Electric board. The fault with the meter. If the meter is corrected in one shot, it might just release the pain of going to the office in each month. 

For that our mind should be conditioned to find the root cause of the problem. For finding the root cause, it is good to ask Why? Ask Why till you arrive at the root cause. It is also called as Root Cause Analysis. Another way is to find list all the reasons for the failure and writing a value/percentage against all the reason. The top one or two reasons might be causing the bulk of the problem. This problem might be tackled by investing to cure those one or two reasons. This is on the line of 80:20 rule meaning that 80 % of the results are due to 20 % of the work/problem. 

There is another method also called as the Fish bone diagram. You can a horizontal line at the centre, which is the problem statement. And slanted vertical lines at the top and bottom may be drawn to drive the attention to the causes. After identifying the causes, it is easy to find the root cause. Once the root cause is identified, attack it.