How do you borrow from other industries for root cause analysis?

1 Why cross-industry RCA?

Cross-industry RCA can help you discover new perspectives, insights, and solutions that you might not have considered otherwise. By looking at how other industries have approached RCA, you can learn from their best practices, avoid their pitfalls, and adapt their methods to your own situation. Cross-industry RCA can also help you avoid tunnel vision, confirmation bias, and groupthink, which can limit your creativity and innovation.

2 How to find relevant industries?

To find relevant industries for cross-industry RCA, you need to think beyond the surface similarities or differences between your industry and others. Instead, you need to focus on the underlying processes, functions, or goals that you share with other industries. For example, if you are working on improving customer satisfaction in a service industry, you might look at how other service industries, such as hospitality, education, or health care, have measured and improved customer satisfaction. Or, if you are working on reducing defects in a manufacturing industry, you might look at how other manufacturing industries, such as automotive, aerospace, or electronics, have implemented quality control and error prevention techniques.

3 How to conduct cross-industry RCA?

In order to conduct cross-industry RCA, you need to apply a systematic and structured approach that allows you to compare and contrast your industry with others. A possible approach is to first define the problem or goal you want to address, then identify potential root causes in your industry with tools such as fishbone diagrams, 5 whys, or Pareto charts. After that, research how other industries have defined, measured, and solved similar problems or goals using sources such as books, articles, case studies, or experts. Then analyze how other industries have identified and eliminated their root causes with tools such as SWOT analysis, benchmarking, or gap analysis. Finally, synthesize the findings and recommendations from other industries and apply them to your own industry using tools such as action plans, pilot tests, or control charts.

5 What are the challenges of cross-industry RCA?

When conducting cross-industry RCA, there are some challenges to be aware of and overcome. These include finding reliable and relevant sources of information from other industries, customizing the findings and recommendations to your own industry context and culture, evaluating the results and impacts on your process and performance, managing change and resistance that might arise from implementation, and balancing the time and resources with project scope and deadlines.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?