Root Cause Analysis

In the System Improvement Process, the root cause is that portion of your model’s structure that explains why the system’s natural behavior produces the problem symptoms, rather than some other behavior. Root causes are found by asking a succession of "Why is this happening?" right questions until the root causes are found.

How do you know when to stop? A root cause has three identifying characteristics:

1. It is clearly a major cause of the symptoms.

2. It has no productive deeper cause. The word “productive” allows you to stop asking why at some appropriate point in root cause analysis. Otherwise you may find yourself digging to the other side of the planet.

3. It can be resolved. Sometimes it’s useful to include unchangeable root causes in your model for greater understanding. These have only the first two characteristics.

The important thing is to not stop at intermediate causes. These are plausible and easily found. Working on resolving them looks productive and feels productive. Intermediate cause solutions may even work for awhile. But until the true root cause is resolved, the system will invariably find a way to circumvent or thwart these solutions, because intermediate causes are symptoms of deeper causes. One must strike at the root.

Further Definitions

According to Wikipedia, a root cause is "an underlying cause that leads to an outcome or effect of interest. Commonly, 'root cause' is used to describe the earliest event in the causal chain where an intervention could realistically have prevented the outcome."

Building on this definition, Wikipedia says root cause analysis is "a class of problem solving methods aimed at identifying the root causes of problems or events. The practice of root cause analysis is predicated on the belief that problems are best solved by attempting to correct or eliminate root causes, as opposed to merely addressing the immediately obvious symptoms."

This is important, because it appears that most efforts to solve the sustainability problem have focused on addressing the symptoms instead of the root causes. In fact, as the environmental movement comes closer and closer to solving the problem, by passing through a long series of stages, what is really happening is it is coming closer and closer to addressing the true root causes. Here are the approximate stages:

Historic Stages of Attempted Solution

Stage 1. Conservation - The first class of solutions to solving the environmental sustainability problem was conservation. This treated the symptom of disappearing unspoiled lands and waters by setting large tracts of land aside. The idea was that if we set enough aside, it would somehow solve the problem. It did not, of course. It was a naive first solution.

Stage 2. End-of-pipe - The second class was end-of-pipe solutions. This treated the symptoms more directly, by saying that pollution must be treated so that it does not degrade the environment. This too failed, because it is exorbitantly expensive to clean things up after they are produced. Better is before they are produced, which led to:

Stage 3. Degradation Source Management - Also known as beginning-of-the-pipe solutions, this class is where we are today. It attempts to manage sources of environmental degradation through regulation, fines, quotas, tradable permits, and so on. Because so much centralized effort is required, this is essentially a command and control approach.

The third stage is failing. Why? Because the deepest underlying cause of the problem is still not being treated. The proper root cause analysis has not been performed so the environmental movement continues to treat intermediate causes, instead of root causes. This is similar to a physician skipping the diagnosis step, and relying on guesswork and intuition alone to treat the underlying cause of a disease.

If a process that fit the problem was used to perform a good root cause analysis, it would probably come to conclusions similar to those found in The Dueling Loops of the Political Powerplace. This analysis proposes that the first root cause of successful change resistance can be seen by examining an invisible social structure called the Dueling Loops. The root cause is that the dominant agent in the human system, the modern for-profit corporation, has gotten its proxies to push on the high leverage point of deception. This causes the race to the bottom to be dominant, which allows corporations to get their way. Since they are all trying to maximize the net present value of profits, it is more profitable to be unsustainable. That then is the behavior they promote, which becomes the policies corrupt politician support, which cause the system to behave unsustainably.

Once problem solvers realize this the next stage may be:

Stage 4. Overcoming Change Resistance - In this stage problem solvers concentrate on overcoming the strong, prolonged systemic change resistance that we have seen for decades. It must be completely overcome, or we will see so much foot dragging that a total solution will be impossible or will happen too late. The Dueling Loops paper suggests ways to do this. Further ways are covered in part one of Analytical Activism, which presents six sample solution elements.

Stage 5. Proper Coupling - Once change resistance is overcome, problem solvers can focus on the second root cause of the problem: the current improper coupling of the human system to the greater system it lives within: the environment. This coupling needs to be changed from improper to proper.

Proper coupling occurs when the behavior of one system affects the behavior of other systems properly, using the appropriate feedback loops, so the systems work together in harmony in accordance with design objectives. An example of how proper coupling can be achieved appears in The Proper Coupling Package paper.

Difficult problems usually have multiple root causes. Overcoming change resistance and proper coupling only solves the first two root causes. One more remains.

Stage 6. Staying in the Goal State Indefinitely - The third root cause of the sustainability problem is that the original model for how civilization runs itself has drifted so far from what is needed that it is in the Model Crisis step of the Kuhn Cycle. The prior model worked up until the world's limits to growth were reached. Then it failed, and nothing has appeared to replace it.

The root cause of excessive model drift appears to be the quality of political decision making is too low. This subject is explored in part four of Process Is Everything.

The Larger Context

The above may be viewed as part of a larger context. Stages 4, 5, and 6 are the three subproblems of the System Improvement Process. They must be solved individually and sequentially. Due to the extreme difficulty of the sustainability problem, solutions will never complete stages 4, 5, or 6 without a very high quality root cause analysis.

There are two possible exceptions: One is luck, but this is unreliable. The other is the so called "wake up call catastrophe," which would overcome change resistance. But in my opinion this would only overcome enough change resistance for a half-hearted attempt to solve the problem. The dominant agent in the system, the modern for-profit corporation, would still be against sustainability. And a command and control form of coupling would be very inefficient, just as that in the USSR was terribly inefficient compared to the free market system.

Furthermore, by the time a large wake up call occurs the world will have probably already passed certain irreversible environmental thresholds, such as the melting of the ice caps or frozen methane deposts, the beginning of the stoppage of the Gulf Stream, the release of more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere than can be absorbed by land biomass, ocean biomass, and the ocean itself, and many more. Thus we should not rely on a wake up call catastrophe.

Much better would be to rely on mankind's greatest tool: reason.