[Fred Nickols (970719, 0700 EST)]
(This in response to some earlier comments about cause and effect, but not
to any posting in particular, hence no references to the earlier postings.)
In an inconsequential article published in an inconsequential journal, I
observed that the search for the cause of a problem is quite probably the
biggest single time-waster in most problem solving efforts. I went further
and suggested that many problems dealt with in organizational settings don't
have a cause per se and that any search for cause is bound to be futile.
As you might expect, the Quality folks (those devotees of Deming, Juran,
Shewhart and others) went through the roof (figuratively, of course). They,
are, after all, the guardians and high priests of the concept of "root
cause" and my suggestion was heresy and possibly blasphemy as well. (Oh
well, I never was much on religion.) "Surely, I wasn't serious!" wrote one
of them. "There has to be a cause!" he added. I could almost hear him
wondering what the world would be like without causes.
Cause as explanation doesn't hold much interest for me -- unless I'm being
asked to explain why something happened instead of do something about it.
When I am asked to come up with an explanation, I usually mumble something
starting with "Because..." and let my imagination have free rein from that
point onward.
Cause as trigger or precipitating event doesn't hold much interest for me
either; that's roughly comparable to driving a stake into the bed of a
stream and saying, "The stream starts here." (We do that, by the way, when
we establish boundaries for organizational processes.)
Cause-and-effect thinking is occasionally useful, and usually in the context
of some kind of malfunction in a previously acceptable arrangement. A fuse
blows, a component fails, a sudden change is introduced (with all manner of
intended and unintended effects).
"Why did the chicken cross the road?" Who cares; it wouldn't have had to if
the road hadn't been there in the first place, or if the chicken had been
somewhere else. If...if...if... If the dog hadn't stopped, it would have
caught the rabbit.
People cling to the concept of cause because it is reassuring to believe
that effects have causes and that these causes can be rooted out and
corrected. The concept of cause supports the notion that we are masters of
our destiny. This, of course, is a perspective far more appealing than
believing we are victims of chance and circumstance, that what happens is
often the result of many, many factors interacting in relationships too
complex for us to grasp, let alone control.
In sum, cause-and-effect thinking appeals to the notion that human beings
reign supreme over their universe. After all, God gave us the universe,
right? (Perhaps He did, but He neglected to give us the operator's manual,
and I, for one, am particularly interested in the schematics and the design
specifications.)
So what does all this have to do with CSG and B:CP?
Well, I think that a lot of what I read in CSG postings from time to time
smacks of the Rodney Dangerfield syndrome: "We don't get no respect."
That, in turn, traces to the challenge that B:CP presents to some
well-established theories, and to the counter-attacks that such challenges
elicit (all of which, by the way, can be explained rather neatly using
B:CP). So, in the last analysis, my interest in B:CP and in monitoring the
CSG Digest doesn't tie to the better ability of B:CP to explain matters. As
indicated above, I don't much care about explanatory powers. Instead, my
interest in B:CP ties to what I see as its greater utility as an aid in
doing something about the kinds of problems encountered in the world,
especially in the workplace. In short, I think B:CP offers a better
diagnostic framework and better diagnoses lead to better prescriptions.
Regards,
Fred Nickols
nickols@worldnet.att.net