A Quick Guide to Applying TapRooT® RCA, Learning Teams, and HOP
We recognize that TapRooT® RCA, Human and Organizational Performance (HOP), and Learning Teams serve different but complementary purposes.
The objective of reactive and proactive investigations is not simply to determine what happened or who made an error. It is to understand how work is actually performed, identify system weaknesses, learn from both normal work audits and undesired outcomes, and make improvements that help people and equipment perform successfully. That moves us away from blame and punishment towards continuous improvement.
How TapRooT® RCA, HOP, and Learning Teams Work Together
Information obtained through HOP activities or Learning Teams should be considered potential evidence for a subsequent TapRooT® RCA investigation. They are not a stand-alone process for finding root causes.
TapRooT® RCA provides a structured methodology for analyzing evidence to identify root causes and effective corrective actions.
A Learning Team may provide important information about how work is designed and compare it to how it is really done. The team will document the discrepancies and problems they identify as significant issues on the TapRooT® SnapCharT®. Then they will tap into the team’s collective knowledge to add context and conditions around those significant issues. The context and conditions will drive the RCA as they analyze each significant issue using the TapRooT® Root Cause Tree® and Dictionary.
If you follow the TapRooT® Methodology and use the RCA tools the way we teach in training, you’re already applying all 5 HOP principles. The five Human and Organizational Performance principles were embedded in TapRooT® RCA long before HOP became a thing, so people who are not experts in human and organizational performance can get the same or better results than the actual experts.
That’s really what Mark Paradise accomplished when he created TapRooT® RCA. He gave people who aren’t human performance experts a structured RCA process and tools so they can get the same results as a Human Performance expert. And over time, as you apply your TapRooT® Skills and RCA tools to your investigations, you become more fluent in human performance.
To summarize the process:
Event occurs → Gather and document initial evidence → Interview SMEs and workers→ Conduct Learning Team activities to understand differences between work as designed vs. work as done for additional evidence → Identify Significant Issues and Causal Factors → Conduct TapRooT® RCA to identify root causes/system weaknesses → Develop and implement corrective actions to improve the systems that support human performance → Verify effectiveness
TapRooT® RCA provides the structure and RCA tools. Learning Teams ensure the right people are involved. The human performance principles embedded in TapRooT® RCA keep everyone focused on improving the systems that support human performance for continuous improvement and operational excellence.
Sign up for the TapRooT® Pre-Summit course Stopping Human Error to give your continuous improvement or operational excellence program a standardized process and objective tools to use to drive tangible results.
That is just one of the many courses and sessions we provide at our TapRooT® RCA Summit.
