What do you know and what don’t you know?

How can you get the information you don’t know?

Investigation (both internal and external)

Colleagues

External research

Superiors

Is this problem similar to something you’ve experienced in the past?

If so, what are the differences between this situation and something you’ve successfully dealt with before?

Once you’ve validated a problem exists, the next step is to analyze it

1 – What do you know and what don’t you know? Should be keeping track of any information you need to get

2 – How will you get it?

3 – Ask yourself is this something you’ve seen in the past, or similar to something in the past? If so, should not re-invite the wheel, should leverage what was done before as much as possible

Generally, your analysis should be focused in one of two ways:

Optimal solution: when your problem is very easy to understand. Don’t need to waste time going through the root cause analysis

Qs: Can someone give an example of this type of issue?

Other times, it may not be clear why a problem exists, or what the actual problem is

-There are multiple potential causes, and you need to dive deeper to figure out what actually caused it

-After that, you can ensure the solution addresses the cause of the problem

-Often once you figure out the cause, the solution is very apparent

Doubtful that the root cause of any problems in an organization are chairs and pants, but you never know!