Has the training you've invested in made any real difference?

ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS AND PROBLEM SOLVING
​(The psychological view of leading effective RCA exercises)

Are you incurring training costs that don't change the way people work?

Agree or Disagree?

"The training we're provided fundamentally alters the way we work"

Agree! That's great.  
If you had to stifle a laugh... you won't have been alone... ​​

An analogy (that you've probably heard before).

If you walk across a meadow of long grass, you can look back and see where you've walked, but after a short time, the indents in the grass will disappear. There will be no trace of your passage. If you decide that isn't the best route and you don't repeat the journey across the meadow, the grass will show no signs of the time you walked across it.

If your boss (or coach, or trainer) tells you the route across the meadow is the best one for you to use and you walk that path many times, you will eventually create a pathway in the grass,

But .... [and this is the REALLY important bit], if YOU don't really BELIEVE it's the best route ... and your boss leaves, the coaching programme ends or the training isn't reinforced, you will stop walking that path and revert to the route you originally BELIEVED to be best.

The grass will grow back and over time and the path you've created will be lost as you reestablish the pathway you still believe to be 'Good' / 'Best'.

If you walk the path for years, because you believe it's the best route, the earth will compact and the grass will struggle to grow through even if you don't walk the path regularly in the future.

The method of creating new pathways in your brain is similar to the process of creating path's across grass
... to an extent.

Due to the amazing adaptability of the brain in novel conditions, creating new pathways doesn't always take years of experience... sometimes, given the right emotional triggers (Fear, love, frustration etc.), the brain can re-map itself in next to no time at all!   ​

---

However, without the correct stimulus, your brain will not create a new wiring and firing pattern, preferring to stick to what it knows (i.e. to use the same wiring and firing patterns established from years of experience). 

Activities in our central nervous system (Brain & spinal cord) are expressed through our peripheral nervous system (nerves and muscles throughout the rest of our body, including eye movement, speaking, arm gestures etc.). i.e. what we call thinking and feeling at a conscious and sub / un-conscious level is expressed in our behaviours and attitudes.

Training often fails to transfer back to the workplace, because a logical approach taken toward the logical delivery of a logical tool doesn't alter the emotionally charged wiring and firing patterns in the brain of the trainee.

If that makes sense to you, it will also make sense that our behaviours can ONLY reflect the neurological map in our brains (which relies heavily on emotion to make adjustments). If your brain retains the existing neurological map of the world after a 'logical' training session, it suddenly becomes obvious that your behaviours will stay the same.

It's for this reason a lot of what is done under the banner of 'Training' in business delivers only a fraction of the benefit anticipated, if any benefit at all.

​We all have decades of experience.  Our brains, in their current state, are a result of that experience. If the training provided is not sufficient to interrupt the exiting wiring and firing patterns in the brain, the brain will default back to what it knows... just like grass springing back into place after a quick excursion across a meadow.

It's for these reasons, we aim to include in our training programmes a little more of a challenge to the popular world view and touch on the psychology at play behind the subject matter. It helps to disrupt the existing wiring and firing patterns and maximises the chance that 'trained' people will actually adopt and apply what they've learned.

We've done this for 'Root Cause Analysis and Problem Solving' and will follow with other popular improvement practices from the word of Lean, Continuous Improvement and the Toyota Production System in addition to our own proprietary material focused on a working definition of culture which links directly to Hoshin Kanri and successful, sustainable Lean deployment initiatives.

If you want your team to get a deeper understanding of the tools and techniques which have been popular (yet limited in their effectiveness) around the planet for the last 40 years, then sign up to the Dux Academy and take our RCA & PS course today. It's great value for money, on-line, easy to access and available for as many people as you want to put through it.

If you enjoy the course and want additional support, Contact Us we'll be delighted to help.