Completed Staff Work with TapRooT® RCA

COMPLETED STAFF WORK

A few years ago, my boss gave me a short reading assignment: a military memorandum from WWII that outlines how to produce work for a general.

https://govleaders.org/completed-staff-work.php

I’ve since realized that the TapRooT® process expresses this philosophy and is a system for producing objective, unbiased, Completed Staff Work (CSW). Quotes are in italics.

1. The doctrine of “completed staff work” is a doctrine of this office.

CSW is written as a policy, immediately ready for posting on the corkboard or wherever you communicate policy.

2. “Completed Staff Work” is the study of a problem, and presentation of a solution, by a staff officer, in such form that all that remains to be done on the part of the head of the staff division, or the commander, is to indicate his approval or disapproval of the completed action. The words “completed action” are emphasized because the more difficult the problem is, the more the tendency is to present the problem to the chief in piece-meal fashion. It is your duty as a staff officer to work out the details. You should not consult your chief in the determination of those details, no matter how perplexing they may be. You may and should consult other staff officers. The product, whether it involves the pronouncement of a new policy or effects an established one, should, when presented to the chief for approval or disapproval, be worked out in finished form.

Your Commanding Officer, your CEO, is just one person. They are not an expert in everything. They rely on their team to run the organization, and they carry an immense responsibility to their people to drive the wise use of all resources. CSW allows your decision maker(s) to make an educated, informed risk management decision. We don’t come with opinions, judgments, or questions.

Our job as TapRooT® Investigators is to tell our leaders three things:

• What happened
• What allowed it to happen
• What we should do about it

And we submit the decision to their authority.

3. The impulse which often comes to the inexperienced staff officer to ask the chief what to do, recurs more often when the problem is difficult. It is accompanied by a feeling of mental frustration. It is so easy to ask the chief what to do, and it appears so easy for him to answer. Resist that impulse. You will succumb to it only if you do not know your job. It is your job to advise your chief what he ought to do, not to ask him what you ought to do. He needs answers, not questions. Your job is to study, write, restudy and rewrite until you have evolved a single proposed action – the best one of all you have considered. Your chief merely approves or disapproves.

Your recommendations should be structured as a holistic corrective action plan in a signature-ready proposal to execute immediately upon approval. This practice is personal and professional development for “staff officers”, managers, aides, and interns by giving them experience in complex problem solving around business issues.

TapRooT® RCA is your framework for showing complex adverse-event timelines and what should change about the organization in a systematic way.

4. Do not worry your chief with long explanations and memoranda. Writing a memorandum to your chief does not constitute completed staff work, but writing a memorandum for your chief to send to someone else does. Your views should be placed before him in finished form so that he can make them his views by simply signing his name. In most instances, completed staff work results in a single document prepared for the signature of the chief, without accompanying comment. If the proper result is reached, the chief will usually recognize it at once. If he wants comment or explanation, he will ask for it.

TapRooT® RCA is a repeatable, holistic, expert-guided process for reactive or proactive investigations to produce CSW. You should not show the Root Cause Tree®, detailed evidence, or interview records. A basic one-pager can capture the key points.

5. The theory of completed staff work does not preclude a “rough draft” but the rough draft must not be a half-baked idea.  It must be complete in every respect except that it lacks the requisite number of copies and need not be neat. But a rough draft must not be used as an excuse for shifting to the chief the burden of formulating the action.

6. The “completed staff work” theory may result in more work for the staff officer, but it results in more freedom for the chief. This is as it should be. Further, it accomplishes two things:

• The chief is protected from half-baked ideas, voluminous memoranda, and immature oral presentments.
• The staff officer who has a real idea to sell is enabled more readily to find a market.

We must grow from being opinion-givers to mature fact-submitters.

7. When you have finished your “completed staff work” the final test is this:

• If you were the chief would you be willing to sign the paper you have prepared, and stake your professional reputation on its being right? 
  
• If the answer is in the negative, take it back and work it over, because it is not yet “completed staff work.”

Simple to read, harder to do, but very clear and concise direction on how to produce a TapRooT® Report for your decision-makers to make their decisions!

Register for a 5-Day TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Team Leader Training to start using the only RCA system capable of digging deep enough, quickly enough to produce Completed Staff Work when your report is due yesterday.