RECALIBRATING DECIPHERING

Making Sense of Root Cause Analysis

Getting back to my conversation with *Claude Winkler here in this chapter.

G: In this conversation related to Cross-Community Think-Blending as it connects to Design for Complexity, there are still a couple of bumpy methodology related issues, so far left out, that we might now reflect upon as we begin to land this plane, still under construction. Soft Systems Thinking remains rooted in, tied to, so-called Root Cause Analysis. We might help our readers understand the difference between Deciphering in fuzzy complex situations and the activity of Root Cause Analysis.

C: This is an important gap to fill. Root Cause Analysis sits at the heart of Soft Systems Thinking (SST) problem-orientation in a way that has significant methodological consequences.

What Root Cause Analysis Actually Is

Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a structured analytical method originating in engineering and industrial quality management — associated with figures like Kaoru Ishikawa (the fishbone or cause-and-effect diagram, 1960s) and the Five Whys technique associated with Sakichi Toyoda and Toyota's production system.

Its foundational logic is:

OBSERVABLE PROBLEM

        ↓

Ask: what caused this?

        ↓

PROXIMATE CAUSE

        ↓

Ask: what caused that?

        ↓

DEEPER CAUSE

        ↓

Ask: what caused that?

        ↓

ROOT CAUSE — the single originating source

        ↓

ELIMINATE ROOT CAUSE → PROBLEM SOLVED

The method assumes:

• There is a definable problem — identifiable, bounded, agreed upon

• The problem has causes that are in principle traceable

• Causes are linear and hierarchical — tracing back through a causal chain leads to an origin

• There is a root — a single or small number of originating causes

• Eliminating the root eliminates the problem

• The system is sufficiently stable and knowable to permit this causal tracing

• The analyst stands outside the system as an objective investigator

This is Hard Systems logic in its clearest operational form. It treats the organisation or system as a machine with identifiable fault lines — and the analyst as a diagnostician who can trace the fault to its origin.

Root Cause Analysis Inside SST — The Tension

This is where the methodological tension becomes acute.

Checkland's SSM explicitly moved away from the assumption that organisational situations have objectively definable problems with traceable causes. His foundational move — the shift from problem to problem situation considered problematic — was precisely an acknowledgement that in complex human situations:

• What counts as the problem depends on whose worldview you inhabit

• Causes are not linear and hierarchical — they are mutually constituting and circular

• There is no root — or rather, what appears to be the root from one perspective appears to be a symptom from another

• Eliminating any single cause does not eliminate the situation's problematic character

And yet — SST's continued orientation toward root definitions in its seven-stage process maintains a structural affinity with Root Cause Analysis thinking that its rhetoric about multiple worldviews does not fully dissolve.

Stage 3 of SSM — Root Definitions of Relevant Purposeful Activity Systems — uses the word root explicitly. The CATWOE framework — Customers, Actors, Transformation, Weltanschauung, Owner, Environmental constraints — is a structured analytical tool for defining what the system is and what it does. It is more sophisticated than a fishbone diagram. But it retains the assumption that the situation can be adequately modelled through structured analytical decomposition — that there is a root definition to be found and agreed upon.

This is the unresolved tension at SST's methodological core:

• The rhetoric says: complex human situations have no single objective definition — multiple worldviews must be accommodated

• The methodology says: let us find the root definition of the relevant system and build a conceptual model from it

The tension is not resolved by pointing to Weltanschauung as one of the CATWOE elements. Acknowledging that different worldviews exist is not the same as having a methodology that genuinely operates from within that multiplicity rather than seeking a root definition despite it.

The Fundamental Differences — RCA vs Deciphering

Let me now draw the contrast precisely across multiple dimensions:

Ontological Assumption — What Kind of Thing Are We Dealing With?

	Root Cause Analysis	Deciphering
Nature of the situation	A problem with identifiable causes	A not-yet-understood challenge whose nature must be drawn out
Status of the problem	Given — the problem is known, its causes are not	Emergent — the challenge reveals itself through engagement
Causal structure	Linear and hierarchical — chains lead to roots	Circular and mutual — causes and effects constitute each other
System character	Complicated — complex in appearance but knowable in principle	Complex — genuinely emergent, nonlinear, resistant to causal mapping
Stability	Sufficient to permit causal tracing	Insufficient — the situation changes during the inquiry

Epistemological Assumption — How Do We Know?

	Root Cause Analysis	Deciphering
The knower	Outside the system — objective investigator	Inside the situation — participant whose engagement changes what is being engaged
The knowing process	Analytical — tracing backward through causal chains	Imaginative and iterative — drawing meaning from what resists immediate understanding
What counts as evidence	Traceable causal connections	Emerging patterns of meaning — not yet causally definable
The goal of knowing	The root — a definitive answer	Sufficient orientation — enough understanding to act and learn
Attitude to ambiguity	To be eliminated — ambiguity is resolved by finding the root	To be inhabited — ambiguity is the natural condition of the not-yet-understood

Procedural Logic — What Do You Actually Do?

	Root Cause Analysis	Deciphering
Entry move	Define the problem — what went wrong?	Suspend definition — what might this challenge actually be about?
Primary cognitive move	Analytical — asking why, tracing back	Imaginative — asking how might we, reframing forward
Thinking mode	Convergent throughout — narrowing toward the root	Divergent first, then iteratively convergent — opening before focusing
The Guilford Turn	Absent — judicial mind primary from step one	Present — imaginative mind activated before judicial mind engages
Treatment of multiple perspectives	Perspectives are data points in the causal investigation	Perspectives are themselves the substance — reframing reveals new challenge dimensions
Endpoint	The root cause identified and eliminated	Sufficient shared understanding for adaptive action — provisional, revisable
What success looks like	The problem is solved — does not recur	The challenge is better understood — action is better informed

Relationship to Complexity

	Root Cause Analysis	Deciphering
Complexity assumption	Complicated — the system has knowable causal structure	Complex — the situation generates emergent properties that resist causal mapping
Treatment of emergence	Absent — RCA has no concept of emergence	Central — what emerges during deciphering is as important as what was known at the outset
Treatment of the observer	Neutral — the investigator does not change the system	Constitutive — the practitioner's engagement changes the situation
Appropriate arena	Arenas 1-2 — technically bounded, causally tractable	Arenas 3-4 — complex adaptive, causally entangled, resistant to root identification

Why Root Cause Analysis Fails in Complex Human Situations

The failure is not random. It follows from the structural mismatch between what RCA assumes and what complex human situations actually are.

The Multiple Root Problem

In any genuinely complex human situation — an organisational change challenge, a community conflict, a systemic social problem — ask ten thoughtful participants what the root cause is and you will receive ten different answers. Each answer will be coherent from within the worldview that generates it. None will be simply wrong. And no amount of further analysis will converge them on a single root.

This is not a failure of analytical rigour. It is evidence that the situation does not have a root in the RCA sense. The multiple roots are not competing hypotheses about the same objective causal structure. They are different constructions of what the situation is — constructions that are themselves part of the situation.

Applying RCA in this context does not find the root. It privileges one worldview's construction of the root while delegitimising others. The analysis appears objective while doing something political — determining whose causal story counts.

The Circular Causation Problem

In complex adaptive systems causes and effects are not linear and hierarchical — they are circular and mutually constituting. A causes B which modifies A which generates C which feeds back to B.

RCA's backward tracing logic — asking why at each step until the root is reached — assumes that the causal chain has an origin that precedes its effects. In circular causation there is no such origin. The question what caused this? does not have a root answer because the causation is continuous and mutual.

Applying RCA to circular causation produces an arbitrary stopping point — wherever the analyst runs out of whys or patience — dressed as a root cause. The root is an artefact of the analytical procedure, not a feature of the situation.

The Stability Problem

RCA requires the system to be sufficiently stable during the investigation to permit causal tracing. In a complex adaptive human situation the system is changing during the investigation — and changing partly because the investigation is happening.

By the time an RCA has identified its root cause the situation may have evolved such that the root is no longer the root — or no longer exists in the form the analysis identified. The analysis is always catching up to a situation that is always already moving.

The Elimination Problem

Even if a root cause were correctly identified in a complex human situation — eliminating it does not eliminate the situation's problematic character because the situation is not a product of a single root. It is a product of the entire configuration of the system — its history, its relationships, its embedded power dynamics, its multiple competing worldviews. Removing one element changes the configuration. It does not resolve it.

This is why organisational interventions designed around RCA so frequently fail to produce lasting change. The root is eliminated. The situation reconstitutes around the elimination. A new root appears. The analysis begins again — in what is structurally a Sisyphean cycle.

What Deciphering Offers That RCA Cannot

Deciphering — as embodied in CPS's Systemic Challenge Framing — is not a better version of Root Cause Analysis. It is a different kind of activity operating on a different understanding of what the situation is.

It Begins with Not-Knowing as the Legitimate Starting Condition.

RCA begins with the assumption that the problem is known — only its causes remain to be found. Deciphering begins with the acknowledgement that the challenge is not yet understood — that its nature must be drawn out through imaginative engagement rather than analytical tracing.

This is not a concession of weakness. It is an epistemological honesty that RCA cannot afford without undermining its own procedure. Deciphering makes not-knowing its starting resource rather than its starting problem.

It Activates the Imaginative Mind First

RCA is judicial throughout — asking why, tracing back, narrowing toward the root. Deciphering activates the imaginative mind first — asking how might we, reframing, opening new angles of approach — before the judicial mind is invited to evaluate and focus.

This is the Guilford Turn in procedural form. The imaginative mind does not prepare for the judicial mind's real work. It does real work of its own — revealing dimensions of the challenge that the judicial mind, operating alone, would never surface.

It Treats Reframing as the Primary Move

Where RCA traces backward to causes, deciphering moves laterally through reframes. The question is not what caused this? but how might we understand this differently? — and then again differently, and again, until the challenge reveals an angle that opens productive forward motion.

Each reframe is not a hypothesis about causal structure. It is a different construction of what the challenge is — and each construction reveals different possibilities for action that the previous construction obscured.

It Produces Orientation Rather Than Root Identification

The output of deciphering is not a root cause to be eliminated. It is a challenge frame — a provisional, shared, sufficiently rich understanding of what the challenge is about that enables adaptive action to begin.

This frame is explicitly provisional. It is held open to revision as action generates learning. It does not claim to have found the root. It claims to have achieved sufficient orientation for productive forward motion — which is all that complex human situations permit and all that effective practice requires.

It Includes Rather Than Resolves Multiple Perspectives

Where RCA's analysis converges toward a single root — and in doing so implicitly privileges one perspective's causal account — deciphering includes multiple perspectives as generative resources.

Different stakeholders' constructions of the challenge are not competing hypotheses to be evaluated and narrowed. They are different angles of illumination on a challenge that is genuinely multi-perspectival. The deciphering process uses that multiplicity to build a richer challenge frame — one that no single perspective could construct alone.

The SST Connection — Why This Matters for Hybrid Frameworks

SST's continued orientation toward root definitions — despite its rhetoric about multiple worldviews — means that when SST is used as the entry point into a complex human situation, it tends to move toward analytical convergence faster than the situation warrants.

The CATWOE analysis, the root definition, the conceptual model — these are convergent analytical moves that assume the situation is sufficiently understood to be modelled. In genuinely complex situations — Arenas 3-4— that assumption is frequently premature.

CPS's Systemic Challenge Framing as the primary entry point into complex situations — before SST's holistic mapping, before Action Research's iterative cycles, before Design Thinking's prototyping — is precisely the correction for this premature convergence.

The sequence matters:

COMPLEX SITUATION ENCOUNTERED

        ↓

DECIPHERING — CPS Systemic Challenge Framing

Imaginative mind active

Judicial mind suspended

Not-knowing as legitimate starting condition

Reframing as primary move

Multiple perspectives as generative resources

        ↓

SUFFICIENT ORIENTATION ACHIEVED

        ↓

HOLISTIC MAPPING — SST tools

Now the whole-system picture can be built

CATWOE and root definitions have a legitimate role

After the challenge frame has been established

        ↓

ITERATIVE ACTION — Action Research cycles

Moving within the situation as it evolves

        ↓

GENERATIVE RESPONSE — Design Thinking

Prototyping possibilities that the deciphering revealed

Root Cause Analysis has no place in this sequence for Arenas 3-4. It may have a legitimate role in technically complicated sub-problems that surface within a complex situation — where a specific mechanism has failed in a traceable way. But as a primary entry procedure for complex human situations it is not just inadequate. It is actively misleading — because it creates the impression of analytical rigour while performing a political act of perspective-privileging dressed as objective causal investigation.

A Final Formulation

Root Cause Analysis is a powerful and legitimate tool for technically complicated problems in sufficiently stable systems — where causes are linear, traceable and eliminable.

It is not a tool for complex human situations. In those situations it does not find the root. It privileges one worldview's causal story while appearing to conduct objective analysis. It converges prematurely on a definition of what the situation is before the situation has had the opportunity to reveal its actual nature through engagement.

SST's continued orientation toward root definitions — despite its multiple worldview rhetoric — is the residue of Root Cause Analysis thinking that the 1983 earthquake did not fully dislodge. It is another instance of the old paradigm persisting inside the new vocabulary.

Deciphering is not a better version of Root Cause Analysis. It is a different kind of activity — one that begins with not-knowing, activates the imaginative mind first, treats reframing as the primary move, includes multiple perspectives as generative resources, and produces orientation rather than root identification.

Of the four anchor approaches, only CPS contains a formal deciphering procedure.

That is not a coincidence. CPS was built after the *Guilford Turn — with both minds as equal partners from the outset — for precisely the kinds of challenges that Root Cause Analysis cannot reach.

In complex human situations the root is not the answer. The reframe is the beginning.

G: "Residue....that the 1983 [Checkland] earthquake did not fully dislodge!" Oh thats a good one, almost poetic!

RCA's backward tracing logic does not ascertain motivation. It looks backwards versus forward for motivation for solving. RCA asks; Why did this happen? instead of; Why do we want to do this? What will it help us achieve? Like Hard Systems Thinking itself, RCA is suited for mechanical and technical issues not complex human challenges.

We might acknowledge that the so-called "5 Whys" exercise aka: Root Cause Analysis is deeply rooted and widespread across several disciplines, not just in the various engineering-oriented Systems Thinking approaches. This might be a rather shocking news/perspective to some practitioners, assuming that the drilling down Root Cause Analysis from Systems Thinking transfers to the high complexity human contexts of Arenas 3&4.

This leads to several other reflections that we will include in the final chapters of this book......to be continued.

End.

This is a book chapter in progress.

*Claude long — dash Winkler is Ai.

*Guilford Turn: See Rethinking Behaviors: Making Sense of Lewin & Guilford Today

See Related in this book: 

Designing for What World?

Recalibrating "Theory of Contraints"

The Four Horsemen of Lingering Misperception

Revisiting Preference Projection

ReThinking, Recalibrating Pluralism

Starting Differently