Are you a Proficient TapRooT® Investigator?

I teach a lot of TapRooT® courses all over the world, to many different industries and departments.  I often get the same questions from students during these courses.  One of the common questions is, “How do I maintain my proficiency as a TapRooT® investigator?”

This is a terrific question, and one that you should think carefully on.  To get a good answer, let’s look at a different example.:

Let’s say you’ve been tasked with putting together an Excel spreadsheet for your boss.  It doesn’t have to be anything too fancy, but she did ask that you include pivot tables in order to easily sort the data in multiple ways.  You decide to do a quick on-line course on Excel to brush up on the newest techniques, and you put together a great spreadsheet.

Now, if your boss asked you to produce another spreadsheet 8 months from now, what would happen?  You’d probably remember that you can use pivot tables, but you’ve probably forgotten exactly how it works.  You’ll most likely have to relearn the technique again, looking back over your last one, or maybe hitting YouTube as a refresher.  It would have been nice if you had worked on a few spreadsheets in the meantime to maintain the skills you learned from your first Excel course.  And what happens if Microsoft comes out with a new version of Excel?

Performing TapRooT® investigations are very similar.  The techniques are not difficult; they can be used by pretty much anyone, once they’ve been trained.  However, you have to practice these skills to get good at them and maintain your proficiency.  When you leave your TapRooT® course, you are ready to conduct your first investigation, and those techniques are still fresh.  If you wait 8 months before you actually use TapRooT®, you’ll probably need to refresh your skills.

In order to remain proficient, we recommend the following:

• Obviously, you need to attend an initial TapRooT® training session.  We would not recommend trying to learn a technique by reading a book.  You need practice and guidance to properly use any advanced technique.
• After your class, we recommend you IMMEDIATELY go perform an investigation, probably within the next 2 weeks or so.  You need to quickly use TapRooT® in your own work environment.  You need to practice it in your own conference room, know where your materials will be kept, know who you’re going to contact, etc.  Get the techniques ingrained into your normal office routine right away.
• We then recommend that you use TapRooT® at least every month.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that you must perform a full incident investigation monthly, but maybe just use a few of the techniques.  For example, you could perform an audit and run those results though the Root Cause Tree®.  Anything to keep proficient using the techniques.
• Refresher training is also a wonderful idea.  We would recommend attending a refresher course every 2 years to make sure you are up to speed on the latest software and techniques.  If you’ve attended a 2-Day TapRooT® course, maybe a 5-Day Advanced Team Leader Course would be a good choice.
• Finally, attending the Annual Global TapRooT® Summit is a great way to keep up to speed on your TapRooT® techniques.  You can attend a specialized Pre-Summit course (Advanced Trending Techniques, or Equifactor® Equipment Troubleshooting, or maybe an Evidence Collection course), and then attend a Summit track of your choosing.

There is no magic here.  The saying, “Use it, or Lose it” definitely applies!