Re:Root cause of failure, root cause of success
by kqr on Sunday August 15, 2021 @12:24PM
(#28190030)
The CEO does not operate in a vacuum -- they, too, can be the victim of the circumstances they find themselves in. By saying "person X screwed up" you're making it impossible for yourself to learn important things that could prevent the same problem from occurring again. This is true regardless of the level of the person you're blaming.
The people who truly improve systems are, in my experience, the ones that do consider multiple causes of failure. The ones who latch onto narrow chains tend to fix symptoms and then think they're done.
Therefore there has to be a single cause of failure, because all else failing the CEO has mucked up. And practically speaking there is probably a root cause somewhere closer to the problem.
"There are multiple causes of failure" style arguments are technically true, but also the sort of argument that people make when they aren't going to do anything to improve. There are many things that could change. There aren't many reasons why there was a failure.
> Why was the chain manufactured with a weak link?
I don't think it is feasible to manufacture a chain without a weakest link. The materials science requirements to produce truly identical links are extreme.