Which TapRooT® Books Do You Need to Read?
You’ve probably noticed that we took the one big TapRooT® Book (published in 2008) out of circulation. In its place, we produced a set of smaller, easier-to-read books with very specific information on selected topics. We finished the last three books in the series and now you can take advantage of the Complete TapRooT® Book Set, available at a special price for all 10 books.
With so many books in the series (ten!), you might be wondering . . .
Which TapRooT® Books Should I Read?
Good question!
Here are some suggestions, sorted by the types of issues you might be facing . . .
WE HAVE PERFORMANCE ISSUES…
What kind of performance issues?
- High lost time injury rate?
- Significant process safety issues (fires, hazardous materials releases, etc.)?
- Customer complaints/quality issues?
- Project cost overruns?
- Production issues/significant schedule slippage?
You need a world-class performance improvement program to tackle your issues. If you are the person in charge of developing the program, read Book 2: TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Implementation.
Book 2 will help you plan a path forward for improving your improvement processes and provide an outline of what a world-class performance improvement management system looks like. This may be as simple as working TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis into your already existing improvement initiatives or a more complex complete overhaul of your performance management initiatives.
If you need more help designing your improvement programs—transforming them from reactive to proactive—contact us or call us at 865.539.2139.
Most improvement programs use the investigation of precursor incidents to prevent major problems. Thus, you need to understand the difference between a major investigation and an investigation of a low-to-moderate risk incident.
Where can you find out about these two types of investigations? In Books 3 and 4.
Book 3, Using the Essential TapRooT® Techniques to Investigate Low-to-Medium Risk Incidents is about investigating simple precursor incidents. Book 4, TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis for Major Investigations is about performing major investigations. Both of these books are provided when you attend the 5-Day TapRooT® Advanced Root Cause Analysis Team Leader Training.
Book 3, Using the Essential TapRooT® Techniques to Investigate Low-to-Medium Risk Incidents, explains how to perform analysis of low-to-medium risk incidents to learn from them so that you can strengthen Safeguards and prevent major accidents. Book 3 is included in the materials provided with the 2-Day TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Training and with the 5-Day TapRooT® Advanced Root Cause Analysis Team Leader Training.
To get started quickly, we recommend that people who will be performing investigations of low-to-medium risk incidents attend the 2-Day TapRooT® Training. Management will be able to observe measurable improvement in incident investigations and corrective actions after people attend this training.
Book 4, TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis for Major Investigations outlines the 7-Step TapRooT® Major Investigation Process and explains all of the TapRooT® Tools (essential tools and optional tools).
This book is for people who perform major investigations and is included in the materials that come with the 5-Day TapRooT® Advanced Root Cause Analysis Team Leader Training.
WE NEED TO STOP BLAMING PEOPLE AND FIND ROOT CAUSES
Often, people complain about adversarial investigations, the Blame Vision, and an “us vs. them” environment that occurs during a reactive accident investigation. The TapRooT® System is designed to stop that.
To start reducing blame, apply the TapRooT® Techniques in your low, medium, and high-risk incidents. See Book 3, Using the Essential TapRooT® Techniques to Investigate Low-to-Medium Risk Incidents, and Book 4, TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis for Major Investigations, to learn how to apply the TapRooT® System across the broad spectrum of investigations and focus on improvement rather than blame. Both of these books are provided when you attend the 5-Day TapRooT® Advanced Root Cause Analysis Team Leader Training.
To reduce blame and finger-pointing even more, you need to transform your improvement initiative to be proactive. We will describe that below.
WE WANT TO BECOME PROACTIVE
Most people find that as their improvement program matures, they move from reactive investigations of problems to proactive problem prevention. Book 6, TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis for Audits and Proactive Performance Improvement, helps you understand how to apply the TapRooT® Tools to learn more from your audits and observations.
WE HAVE EQUIPMENT RELIABILITY ISSUES
You need Book 5, Using Equifactor Troubleshooting and TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis to Improve Equipment Reliability. This book shows you how to use Heinz Bloch’s advanced troubleshooting techniques to understand how the equipment failed and then takes that information into the TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Process to find the failure’s root causes.
Book 5 is included in the 2-Day Equifactor® Equipment Troubleshooting & TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Training.
OUR INVESTIGATORS DON’T DO A GOOD JOB COLLECTING INFORMATION DURING AN INVESTIGATION
Your investigators need to improve their evidence collection and interviewing skills. Book 7, TapRooT® Evidence Collection and Interviewing Techniques to Sharpen Investigation Skills, can help them with that.
By now you probably are getting the idea that we have a course that includes Book 7. It is the TapRooT® Evidence Collection and Interviewing Techniques to Sharpen Investigation Skills.
What will you folks learn in the course (or from the book)? Here’s the course agenda:
Course Agenda
Module 1: Class Introductions and Investigation Skills Inventory
Module 2: Preplanning for Evidence Collection
- Write an Investigation Policy (a sample is provided)
- Consult Legal Counsel
- Prepare Investigation Kits
- Prepare Investigation Forms (samples are provided)
Module 3: Evidence Collection and the TapRooT® Process
- Where does evidence collection fit into the TapRooT® process?
- SnapCharT® – the central repository for evidence collection
Module 4: Scene Management
- Scene Management Priorities
- Collect Fragile Evidence
- Evidence Packing Guidelines
Module 5: Initial Site Visit
- Where to Begin
- What to Look for
- Sketches, Photography, Videotaping
- Document Equipment
- Collect PPE
- Collect Paper
Module 6: Use TapRooT® Tools to Collect Better Evidence
- Human Performance Troubleshooting Guide
- Collect Evidence with the Root Cause Tree® & Dictionary as guides
- Questions to ask during a walk-through
- Critical Human Action Profile (Task analysis)
Module 7: Effective Interviewing for Incident Investigation
- Memory and Observation
- The TapRooT® 12-Step Interviewing Process
- DeCoding NonVerbal Behavior
WE HAVE TOO MANY HUMAN ERRORS. HOW CAN WE STOP THEM?
You need to read Book 10 – Stopping Human Error.
Of course, that book is included in the course materials for the Stopping Human Error Course.
What is the Stopping Human Error book all about? Watch Alex and Mark discuss that very topic in this video…
HOW CAN I TREND THE DATA FROM OUR INVESTIGATIONS?
That’s what Book 8: Performance Measures and Trending for Safety, Quality, and Business Management, is all about.
In this book, you will learn to establish performance measures and how to trend them using Pareto Charts and Process Behavior Charts. These techniques will replace the ineffective and misleading trending that many people practice. Read more about how Book 8 can help improve your trending HERE.
OUR HOSPITAL CONTINUES TO HAVE PATIENT SAFETY-RELATED SENTINEL EVENTS
You need to read Book 9, Improving Patient Safety with TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis. CLICK HERE for details about this book and how it can help you improve patient safety.
GET ALL 10 BOOKS AND SAVE!
We have a special deal if you would like to order all ten books and save. HERE IS THE LINK to the special offer to get $325.50 off the price of ordering these books individually.
I WANT TO KNOW ALL THE BEST PRACTICES FROM TapRooT® USERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
We don’t have a book for that. But we do have the 2021 Global TapRooT® Summit. Where? Knoxville, Tennessee. When? June 14-18, 2021. Pre-Summit courses are on June 14-15. The Summit is on June 16-18.
The Summit is all about sharing best practices, learning the latest improvement technology, networking, and benchmarking, and going back to work motivated to make your improvement programs better than ever.
For a sample of what to expect from the greatness of the 2021 Global TapRooT® Summit, check out the Summit schedule. Then, register your whole team for the one annual event that will put you light years ahead when you return to your organization.
