Let’s start with the story, Once Chanakya told Chandragupta to cut the tree in a way that it should never grow again, as then Chandragupta started hitting the stem with his axe, he tried and finally cut down the tree from its stem, Chanakya replied, “You failed in the process and the task given”, Chandragupta asked, “How I can you fail me in the examination? I completed the task provided with full dedication”. Chanakya then took some honey and pour it on the ground where the tree started growing from, within a few minutes ants started to gather, and gradually within hours the roots of the tree were eaten, then, Chanakya told Chandragupta if you want to kill the enemy or the problem, don’t just cut the stem destroy the roots and eventually you will destroy everything for once.
From the above story, you can understand the importance of finding the root cause and the roots, if you are unable to get to the root cause you will cut the steam but the cause by which the problem started won’t have vanished and again it will appear over time. RCA should be found out with a process, you can surely get the process on the web, but what I am here to you is “What you will get at the end of the RCA”. The answer you will get by asking Why? Why? And Why? At the end is “YOU”, you will be the reason for most of the problems caused.
You can take any example from your industry or daily life and start finding the cause, for example, we will take the problem of acidity, this is the problem! If you ask why it caused? You will find the answer you ate something or behaved something in a manner that your body doesn’t accept and hence the problem appeared, if you start building good habits to eliminate the cause, gradually you will see the problem itself will disappear.
What we can start with is, to find the RCA in your organization, you can use a fishbone diagram for finding the root cause. Eventually, you will find the basic need to change yourself and change the way of your thinking decision-making. Once this is been changed most of the problems we think we are causing will disappear.