Last week in the second of this five-part series, I covered measuring the critical to quality (CTQ) characteristics of the process you think is causing the problem will help ensure the change you’re making is a sustainable solution for your organization (Click here to revisit Part 2 - Measure the Process).  The first step was to really define the problem using voice of the customer (VOC) and critical to quality (CTQ) characteristics (Click here to revisit Part 1 - Define the Problem). Now comes the third thing you can do to help ensure your change is here to stay in the organization.  

3. Analyze the process and identify the root cause(s) of the defects.  

What’s considered a defect of the process?  It’s when the customer views the service or product as unacceptable (i.e. it doesn’t meet their CTQs). 

In this step, it’s imperative you “walk the process” and see what is actually happening in the organization.  Skipping walking the process typically leads to an understanding of the process that is akin to having rose colored glasses on (i.e. you end up with a much rosier picture than what is actually going on), and this leads to missed root cause(s).

Take recent events for example.  The inventory software at a hospital may show the hospital has a month’s worth of supply of N95 masks on hand.  However, when the material planner walks the store rooms, they find the hospital actually only has half a month’s supply of N95 masks on hand.  This discrepancy in the inventory process between what “should be” and “what is” is vital and important information for the material planner, the staff, and ultimately patients!  

Once you’ve walked and mapped out the process, some root causes may jump right out at you.  In the example above, unfortunately the root cause of the discrepancy was theft.  Other root causes require a little more digging to uncover.  Pareto Charts, Fishbone Diagrams, 5 Why’s, Bar Charts, Scatter Plots, and Histograms are just some of the analysis tools that can be used to identify the root cause(s).

Another tricky thing in this step is to make sure you’ve gotten to root cause rather than just a symptom.  Otherwise, in the next step, improvement efforts will end up focused on a symptom rather than root cause, which results in the customer’s issue reoccurring and you having returning to step 3 all over again.

Next week I’ll cover the fourth thing you can do to ensure the change you’re making is a sustainable solution for your organization. 

Call to Action

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About the Author: Rosanne Essiambre helps change agents and departments in one-on-one and group settings to be seen, be heard, and be effective in bringing about change in the organization and/or in their personal lives. She provides consulting and facilitation to organizations to improve communications and collaboration, smooth out the change / transformation journey, get to the root cause of an issue so it can be solved for good, improve processes, and implement successful lessons learned. And she conducts workshops, trains, and speaks on Energy Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, Resilience, Being a Change Agent and more. If you or your organization could use support with your change effort or some inspiration, contact Rosanne for a complimentary consultation. Rosanne is a Change Agent Coach, Facilitator, Six Sigma Black Belt, Change Management / Continuous Improvement Consultant, Speaker, and Energy Leadership Index Master Practitioner with more than 20 years experience working on a variety of transformations across a diverse set of industries both domestically and internationally, while continuously improving herself.