The Moment After TapRooT® Training When Your Job Feels Uncomfortable
I’ve heard this story more than once. You go back to work after TapRooT® Training, excited to improve your investigations. And then things begin to feel uncomfortable. It’s surprising when it happens, but sometimes it does.
The moment the job gets uncomfortable doesn’t happen on day one. Discomfort shows up later – in meetings, investigations, and in analyses that move too fast to gain your support.
Technically, nothing is wrong. All deadlines are met, and all the boxes are checked. But something feels… off. Conclusions are drawn before evidence is collected, or steps are skipped because “everyone knows what happened.” When clarifying questions are asked in meetings, the room falls silent, or the questions are shut down.
So, you quit asking.
You may even get labeled as “a little too detailed.” Maybe you get feedback that you are “overthinking” or are not being “practical.” And you adjust. You move faster, since faster is the norm. You ask fewer questions and withhold your ideas.
What’s going on here?
If you’ve ever had this experience, I want to reassure you it’s not burnout, disengagement, or a bad attitude. TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis changes how you see human performance and conducting investigations. Once that lens is in place, it does not turn off if the current work process doesn’t ask for your input.
Keep this in mind – the discomfort is structural, not personal. You may be trying to work inside a box that no longer matches how you think. So the question becomes: how long can you keep shrinking your thinking to fit into it? When there is no room for improvement, the consequences tend to reveal themselves over time.
TapRooT® RCA cannot exist solely in training rooms.
When companies adopt the TapRooT® System as a shared way of thinking, performance improves. To make that shift from training to adoption, it’s important to build a strategy to get everyone on board. That may include training more people for different roles on the investigation team or building a roadmap during a free executive briefing, so you don’t waste time and money going the wrong direction.
The goal is to make the system capable of supporting disciplined thinking when it matters most. When companies collect better evidence, pause, and take time for shared understanding, TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis becomes part of how work actually gets done, not something people practice only when time allows.
We all know that time will never allow for anything we don’t make a priority.
If the discomfort you feel keeps returning, it may be a signal that you have outgrown the box. The next logical step is not to shrink your thinking again, but to help build an environment where good investigations are expected, protected, and valued.
TapRooT® Training is an investment that must be reinforced by systems, expectations, and leadership support. We are still here for you after training to help you achieve that. Let us know how we can help!
