Analyze This

Copyright © 2004 by Don Blohowiak
Don@LeadWell.com http://www.leadwell.com/

Here's my version (83K PDF) of the classic fishbone or Cause & Effect diagram, useful for analyzing the Inputs to an Outcome in a specific situation.

From Inputs To Outcome

Call it a Cause & Effect Diagram (named for its purpose), a fishbone diagram (named for its shape), or an Ishakawa diagram (named after its Japanese originator, Kaoru Ishakawa). It's still a great tool that folks who are not specialists in quality may not know about or forget to use.

Here's my version (83K PDF)—useful for analyzing the Inputs to an Outcome in a specific situation.

You can use it to either begin thinking about how to explain the causes of a current situation. Or, to identify the elements that will affect a desired future outcome.

Rather than the classic manufacturing-oriented categories (Machine, Measurement…), I've placed more organizational or service-related categories on the "bones' (e.g., Culture, Structure, Policies, Information…).

A word of caution: Resist the temptation, when looking for root causes of an undesirable outcome to focus on money or people. I always urge my clients to go to those branches last. Otherwise, they take on inordinate prominence resulting in the unintended consequence of understating the impact of the other factors. And that's an effect whose unfortunate cause you can avoid entirely.

Lemme know what you think of the tool.

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Copyright © 2005, Don Blohowiak, Lead Well Institute

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