Root cause analysis

In India, more than 1000 accidents take place every day. 16 - 17 people die every hour due to road accidents. It's just not in India, accidents do take place across the world. However, the no of accidents is very high in India. Can you guess what could be the reasons for such accident? If we were to list down, we could think various factors such as, reckless driving, drunken driving, unsafe road conditions etc,

I read some time ago that a detailed study was conducted in the US wherein they tried to find out what really contributes to most of the road accidents which is the real root cause. What they found out was really surprising.

Can you guess what they could have found out?

Drunken driving?

Reckless driving?

Unsafe road conditions?

Any other reasons?

No. none of the above reasons.

It’s actually Music. Yes. You’ve read it right.

It's actually listening to high-beat peppy songs or music while driving causes most of the road accidents.  You must be wondering how this can be a root cause and what it has got to do with road accidents.  The study says that when people listen to such peppy songs, they tend to get charged up and rev up the vehicle more that they would usually do.

I guess, now, all of us can really relate to this. Because, we have done it ourselves. I’ve done it myself.  I want to give one more example, more or less on the similar lines. This happened in somewhere in down south of Tamil Nadu, India wherein a person, right after watching F1, started driving his car very fast, lost his control and hit a huge tree off the road and died on the spot.  What triggers accidents most of the time on the road is this factor, more than any other factor.  A balanced and matured driver can handle most of the other factors that can cause accidents like unsafe conditions etc., This is what is called the root cause.  Once it’s addressed, the problem does not surface.  If it’s not addressed, the problem disappears for a time being and surfaces again.

To give one more example, if you were to get headache due to eye sight issue, Saridon (a common medicine for Headache) cannot give a permanent relief because the root-cause for the headache is something else which is eye-sight related. To get permanent relief, you need to get your eye checked up and wear a suitable glass and you will your headache vanishing. Here, root cause of eye-sight is getting addressed. 

So analyzing and understating the actual cause, the root-cause is the most important thing in addressing any issue, be it a Business issue or HR issue or anything in our professional life and personal life too.  Let me share few real time examples.

Root-cause analysis in Attrition: Attrition is the reality and everyone is getting adopted to this new normal.  There can be many factors or root-causes triggering attrition.  Some of them could be push factors ( internal factors that are not motivating employees to stay back) and some of them could be external factors (employees getting attracted to the market, say higher salary etc.).  Some of the factors could be within control and some could be outside the control.  The key lies in understanding the actual root-cause/s and addressing it rather than coming out with general retention programs. This will not help.

In of the ITes organizations that I worked for, we did a detailed attrition analysis with lot of data.  Of many, one of the common patterns that we could see was high attrition amongst employees with long-distance commute and comparatively lesser attrition amongst employees with short-distance commute.  Combination of long-distance commute and coming to office public transport added fuel to the fire.  So, to address this particular issue, we refined our recruitment plan and we starting hiring candidates who were in 6-8 KM radius.  This has really helped.

Habitual Late coming:  Organizations do understand and provide flexibility to employees in their reporting and work timing. In spite of all that, you will see few employees coming late. Some of the most reasons told by the habitual later comers are traffic jam or I missed the bus. If you dig little deeper, you would understand that he/she would have got up late. They would have got up late because they would have gone to the bed late. They went to the bed late because they were busy chatting / posting pics etc., in social Media.  Unless the person concerned brings in some discipline on his social media habits and goes to bed early, he would continue to be an habitual late comer only. 

It’s just not that. Studies confirm that minimum 7-8 hours of sleep is a must to be alert and to bring in the much needed focus and concentration to workplace. Continuous loss of sleep will surely take a toll on one’s performance.  So, to address the issue, understanding the root-cause is important.

Good performers having performance challenges.

Sometimes, I’ve come across good performers facing performance challenges. I think it happens to all of us. One of the root-causes that I’ve come across is personal issues, someone being sick at home or may be financial issues.  Understanding the root-cause will not change the problem, but your perspective of the problem changes. It will help you manage that team member much more effectively. May you can refer him to a company counsellor or load him with comparatively less challenging work till he recovers back.  Such specific interventions will show better results than just trying to motivate in a generic manner.

To conclude, every effect (problem) has a cause. If you want to address the effect (problem), it’s critical to understand the actual cause, the root-cause and then address it in a focused manner. Root-cause analysis is a good problem solving tool, not just in Business or HR but in every function and in every aspects of life. 

So next time, when you face a problem, do consciously try to look at the root-cause.

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