The seven forces and the body of knowledge
A root cause is a basic causal factor, which if corrected or isolated will stop recurrence of a situation .There is honest disagreement as to whether an error can be attributed to a single root cause(something that has the absolute effect of a light switch) or whether there will be a cluster of root causes. This may perhaps depend on the taxonomy of root cause definitions adopted by an organisation. The seven forces are as follows:
- Placing the budgetary considerations ahead of the quality: As per this root cause category, management does not understand the fundamental concept of the cost of quality, as defined by Philip Crosby and Frank Gryna. Obtaining quality in performance and service is still viewed as an expense, rather than an indispensable element for profitability. Major decisions are made based on accounting principles that do not recognise the idea of the cost of (poor) quality.
- Placing schedule considerations ahead of quality: When quality processes are in place, schedules will be met. But many organisations do not consider that they can take the time to do things right the first time, although they spend a great deal of time on rework and response to customer complaints. Many organisations succumb to meet deadlines, even when they know they are not providing a quality product or service.
- Placing political considerations ahead of quality: In few organisations it is not possible to discuss problems that may exist. In fact, mentioning a problem can be a career limiting shift. Sometimes this is because acknowledging the problem will reveal past efforts to fix it have been unsuccessful.
- Being arrogant: Any organisational culture that creates an environment in which the captain, chief surgeon, scientist, pilot or president cannot be viewed as competent of making a mistake and cannot be questioned has embraced an arrogance that will eventually lead to disasters. This is termed by ancients as excessive pride or self-confidence -hubris?.
- Lack of fundamental knowledge, research or education, the principles of quality assurance: Such as independent verification, testing, auditing and calibration control should be considered as necessary.
- Pervasively believing in entitlement: In some cases, management adopts a laissez-faire attitude, allowing the employees to judge as to how they actually run the organisation. Employee participation is a positive attribute, and in a few cases, employees really do own the company. This is a corporate model that works very well in a variety of settings and does not generally lead to a belief in entitlement. The entitlement conviction system is one in which employees believe they are entitled to their jobs and their benefits due to years of service, past sacrifices and past performance. They believe they should be immune to the vagaries of market forces, impact of new technologies and changes in customer requirements.
- Practicing autocratic behaviours, resulting in "enrolment": In the enrolment, employees talk about being mushrooms - kept in the dark by management. Many of the early efforts to develop team based organisations ran smack into the issues of autocratic leadership and the resulting sense of enrolment, and stopped right there.