Process improvers the world over rally around root cause analysis as if it were the holy grail of all things organizational. But is it?

Understanding the root cause of a problem certainly makes sense in the context of a present day situation carrying the potential for a correct answer or solution. In the process improvement world, problems center on reducing some form of excess, which comes in several traditional flavors... all of which center on something not working as well as it should be in a perfect world.

But the one critical place in business where root cause analysis has no real place is in strategy formulation.

I’m sure I’ll be taken to task on this by the lean/kaizen/Six Sigma crowd, but bear with me, because I’ve witnessed repeated attempts to apply root cause analysis to strategy, only to be met with derailment and eventual failure.

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