4: The Hint of Something Profound

By now, I hope you are beginning to see that Latent Cause Analysis will require us to re-think almost everything in response to the "failures" in our lives, especially the entire notion on "failure" itself!Consider the word "failure."  I think the best way to define "failure," in the context of Latent Cause Analysis is "unexpected, unplanned pain."  And because of the pain associated with the phenomena of failure, most people have not put too much thought into it.  They'd rather turn their heads and ignore it instead of probing its nature.  But if we take a small amount of time to consider what's "beneath the surface" of failure, the rewards become profound.

Let us begin by talking about the difference between a "failure" and its "causes" or, the difference between a "problem" and its "causes."  Note:  We will be using "failure" and "problem" interchangeably.

The difference between a failure and its causes is fascinating, a bit ambiguous, but vitally important.  If you slow down and take time to think about this subject, you'll begin to see some of life's basic truths.  I'd like to focus on four pivotal words to help explain the depth of this subject:

Manifestation
Visibility
Congruity
Situation

Manifestation:   A manifestation is "an indication of the existence, reality, or presence of something: A high fever is an early manifestation of the disease."Failures are manifestations of causes.  A failure and its causes are almost one in the same.  It's like the difference between water vapor and rain.  We wouldn't know the water vapor existed if the rain (snow, fog, or dew) didn't manifest (materialize) somehow.

The word manifestation is extremely relevant because it implies that the essence of something was there all along, but just hidden.  Of course, this is precisely the point.  Everything we see is a manifestation of something that was there all along, just hidden.  Failures are undesirable manifestations  -- something undesirable that was there all along, just hidden.Please remember the Merry-Go-Round analogy we talked about in the last article.  The Merry-Go-Round is something that was "there all along, just hidden."  Also please remember that the Merry-Go-Round includes "the way we are, and the way we think about ourselves and our surroundings."

Visibility:  Just as the word "manifestation" helps crystallize the concept of a "failure," the word "visibility" helps distinguish between a failure and its causes. If it's visible, it's a failure.  If it's invisible, it's a cause.  Water vapor provides a useful analogy here also.  Although the vapor is invisible, it exists and manifests itself when other conditions are favorable.  However, because it is normally invisible we seem to automatically say that it is one of the causes of rain or snow.  Those things which are normally invisible are said to be the causes of things which have become visible.As another example, if you are driving along the highway and suddenly experience a traffic jamb, you might define the problem as "I am stuck in a traffic jamb!"  But you also know that something caused the traffic jamb.  Since you don't initially know what caused it, you begin searching and wondering "what is causing all this traffic?"  Your inner desire to search is another signal that you're looking for cause.  Things we don't know are "causal" to things we know.

It's interesting to note what happens as we learn more and more about our existence.  We tend to make the invisible, visible.  More precisely, we make the unknown, known.  This happens all the time in our technological world.  We call it "progress."

But when we translate this finding into the area of problem-solving, what we find is that we are continually "re-defining the problem."  And, as we discover deeper and deeper truths about a phenomena, we begin using this information.  In other words, as we make things visible (or known), we begin using (or acting upon) the visible. Most importantly, we must realize that we are not really solving the problem at all.  We are only making more and more of it visible.

Congruity:  Hopefully, from the above dialogue, you already understand the essence of this next important concept -- that of congruity.  Although it would be inaccurate to say that a failure and its causes are on-in-the-same, it's tempting.  The relationship between failure and cause is like that of your hand and foot.  No, they are not the same, but they sure are related.  They are intimately connected -- congruous.  When one exists, the other is there.  They are of the same "entity."  The concept of congruity is important because of its implication:  we must eliminate the entire entity to eliminate the problem.  We ought to be asking ourselves, when confronted with a failure (or problem) "how much of the entity have we identified?"

Situation:  It would help to agree on a word which describes the combined entity -- the totality of the failure and its causes.  The word that I have been using is "situation."  For the remainder of this series, please think of a situation as the combined entity of a manifested failure and its causes -- as if it came in a package.

At this point you might be saying "so what!  This is all a bunch of theoretical nonsense."  But it isn't!  Allow to me try to tie all this together.

It is this very split between the visible problem and invisible causes which provides a hint at a strategy -- a personal and organizational approach for Latent Cause Analysis.

Which is precisely what is happening.

Important Points:

• Failure is not what we think it is.  It is arguably the most valuable phenomena of life.
• Failures (problems) are manifestations of something that was there all along, just hidden.
• The difference between a failure (problem) and its causes relate to visibility.  If it's initially visible, it's a failure (problem).  If it's initially invisible, it's a cause.
• A problem (failure ) and it's causes are of the same "entity."  We treat them as though they were different, but they are not.
• We will use the word "situation" to define the combined "entity" of a problem (failure) and its causes.

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