Comprehensive: covering completely or broadly. First known use 1614. Synonyms: all-embracing, all-inclusive, broad-gauge, compendious, complete, encyclopedic, cover-all, cyclopedic, embracive, exhaustive, full, global, inclusive, in-depth, omnibus, panoramic, thorough, universal. Antonyms: imperfect, incomplete, partial.
Root Cause Analysis
Root cause analysis is a problem solving method which identifies the original cause of error, as opposed to simply addressing the symptoms.
Root cause analysis is critical in those areas in Germany where sustainability is important, where seemingly minor mistakes can lead to major damage, where error occurs time and again, especially in technical areas. Every type of quality analysis relies on root cause analysis.
If products are returned as defective, roots cause analysis is employed immediately. Each and every form of research and development works at the root level. Where more is required than treating symptoms, root cause analysis comes into play.
Pareto
The Pareto principle: Also known as the 80-20 rule, stating that in many situations approximately 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist, documented in the early 1900s that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. Pareto went on to observe that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas. It has become a common rule of thumb in business that 80% of sales come from 20% of clients.
The 80-20 rule could be a metaphor about the American approach to many things, or at least about an element or aspect of the Americans approach. Americans tend not to be perfectionists. Not because they do not recognize and honor striving for the best. But because in many cases attaining, reaching, accomplishing that extra 5% is in many cases “simply not worth it”.
Worth. Value. Does the customer want that extra degree of engineering excellence? Is it necessary to calculate that many digits behind the decimal point? Is that depth of analysis necessary in order to make a decision?
80% is often enough. For Americans, depending on the situation, 60% is enough. Depending on the risk-benefit relationship, even less is enough.
Limited, but Relevant
Americans prefer gathering limited, but highly relevant, information, and fast. Comprehensiveness costs time, and must be justified by its value. All information sources should be considered, provided that there is sufficient time. Americans also accept subjective (non-quantifiable) information sources, such as personal references. Their credibility, though, is judged based on experience (track record) and reputation.
For Americans, however, information gathering serves the pragmatic purpose of information analysis, which in turns serves decision making. Information gathering, thus, is seen early in direct connection with the end goal. If enough information has been collected in order to perform good analysis, there is no reason not to move on to the information analysis step in the decision-making process. Information gathering is not an academic exercise.
Because Americans also see the complexity inherent in many decisions, they prefer to break down decisions into sub-decisions, into particulars. This allows for more focus on key elements of the broader decision. The analysis of the information should then be quick and pragmatic. Objective tools are helpful and should be used, but also combined with experience and common sense. Americans are willing to trust their intuition.
Analysis and Intuition
Good decision making in the American context means a healthy balance between objective analysis and intuition.
Intuition: The ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning; a thing that one knows or considers likely from instinctive feeling rather than conscious reasoning. Late Middle English denoting spiritual insight or immediate spiritual communication. Latin intueri, to consider.
Empiricism. Observation. For Americans, intuition is experience-based knowledge, called on immediately. Intuition is more than a spontaneous thought, a “gut reaction”, a hunch. Americans trust the judgement of the experienced, the wise, of those “who have been there”.
But not to the exclusion of objective analysis. Americans are constantly coming up with new ways to quantify what is deeply human, what in its essence cannot be quantified. It’s a question of balance. When to go with the objective analysis, when with intuition? Can they be combined?
Star Trek. A brilliant television series. Late 1960s. Deeply human, created with little frills, eye-candy, special effects. Instead it tapped into the human imagination, the greatest source of special effects. Kirk is intuition. Spock is reason. Tension between the two. But it worked.
“Paralysis by Analysis“
‘Paralysis by analysis’ – a phrase often used in the American business context – describes over-thinking that leads to a reluctance to make a decision, and in doing so exhausts the available time in which to act.
In Aesop’s fable The Fox and the Cat the fox boasts of hundreds of ways of escaping while the cat has only one. When they hear the hunting dogs approaching, the cat climbs quickly up a tree while the fox in his confusion was caught. The moral: “Better one safe way than a hundred on which you cannot reckon.” In Hamlet, Shakespeare writes of Hamlet’s flaw of thinking too much: “sicklied over with the pale cast of thought.”
Analysis: ‘In the final (or last) analysis’ means when everything has been considered. This phrase is used to suggest that a statement expresses the basic truth about a complex situation. Late 16th century. Medieval Latin from Greek analusis, from analuein unloose.
Reluctance: Unwillingness or disinclination to do something. Ambivalence: The state of having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone. Hesitation: The action of pausing or waiting before saying or doing something.
Fracking
Fracking is a way of mining underground gas, but it has been linked to earthquakes and tap water that burns (at least when you run it over a lit match).
The method was first discovered during the American Civil War, when Union Colonel Edward Roberts noticed the effects of explosive Confederate artillery plunging into the narrow millrace (canal) near the battlefield.
Americans, who enjoy using any potential resource once it becomes apparent, soon began experimenting with the new procedure, and these days there are several fracking operations taking place in the US.
Although there have been attempts to legalize fracking in Germany, so far it seems like Germans would prefer not to risk the potentially dangerous method in order to gather new resources.
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism was an American philosophical movement that began in the early 19th century. Transcendentalists emphasized individualism, self-reliance, and avoiding conformity.
Many of the transcendentalists’ suggestions for how to live life were based on the assumption of readily-available resources, and especially on the idea that one shouldn’t be too careful about wasting resources, because often good things come out of failure.
“Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”
“Hitch your wagon to a star.”
“It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘Always do what you are afraid to do.’”
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Henry David Thoreau:
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”
“Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.”
“This world is but a canvas to our imagination.”
Amos Bronson Alcott:
“We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes.”
Dignity of Work
About the dignity of work and the rights of workers the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops writes:
„The economy must serve people, not the other way around. Work is more than a way to make a living; it is a form of continuing participation in God’s creation. If the dignity of work is to be protected, then the basic rights of workers must be respected: the right to productive work, to decent and fair wages, to the organization and joining of unions, to private property, and to economic initiative.“
“in the same light as a machine”
In his 1893 book The Distribution of Wealth economist John R. Commons used the term human resource. The term was then used in the 1910s and 1920s. Workers were seen as a type of capital asset. E.W. Bakke revived “human resources” in its modern form was in 1958. Adam Smith defined human capital as follows:
“The acquisition of such talents, by the maintenance of the acquirer during his education, study, or apprenticeship, always costs a real expense, which is a capital fixed and realized, as it were, in his person. The improved dexterity of a workman may be considered in the same light as a machine or instrument of trade which facilitates and abridges labor, and which, though it costs a certain expense, repays that expense with a profit.”
“… in the same light as a machine.”
