Intervening

In facilitation, there are many interventions that must be handled situation by situation. In the case of AAR, the most important technique is addressed here: Root Cause Analysis. When it is determined that something did not work well, then how should the participants go about finding the root cause?

Ishikawa diagrams (also called fishbone diagrams or cause-and-effect diagrams) were first used in the twenties (and later popularized by Kaoru Ishikawa in the sixties) and show the causes of a specific event. The Ishikawa diagram is used for discovering root causes of problems in a variety of situations. The topic may include products, services, or any other area in an organization that demands improvement. The causes are grouped into some logical themes for further analysis and actions.

The diagram template has the main topic identified on one end as the “head of a fish” and like the skeleton of a fish, there are side “bones” or areas to identify...