When Should You Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth?
Have you ever heard the old saying:
“Never look a gift horse in the mouth?”
If you have never been around horses, you might not know that this implies that you shouldn’t be judgmental about things given to you.
Yet I couldn’t help but be judgmental when I saw an organization “giving” free root cause analysis training over the internet.
They claimed that in just 19 minutes, you would learn to find the root causes of problems.
Why would I be judgmental about this?
Because the risk you take if you do a BAD job when you perform a root cause analysis.
What if I told you that in just 19 minutes, over the internet, I would teach your teenage children to drive? Would you sign them up for the course and turn them loose in a car? Of course not! The risk of failure is TOO HIGH.
Teaching people root cause analysis in 19 minutes is ridiculous.
Yet people “send” people to this type of training and expect a good result.
What do they get? Bad investigations.
I’ve seen these kinds of bad investigations. Way too many of them. And then I’ve seen major accidents that could have been prevented (but weren’t) because the root cause analysis of precursor incidents and the resulting corrective actions were ineffective.
That’s why our minimum root cause analysis course is two days.
Plus, we recommend our 5-Day TapRooT® Course for those who lead teams investigating serious accidents.
Don’t be tricked into thinking that any root cause training is “good enough.” When you have serious problems that could cost big bucks, cause major quality issues, cause expensive equipment downtime, or lead to fatalities or serious injuries, you should only use the best root cause analysis technique – TapRooT®.
To see what our clients have achieved, see the success stories at:
