LearnLesson 7 of 8
The three questions
What to change, what to change to, how to cause the change, and the five pictures that answer them.
Every improvement effort has to answer three questions. What to change? What to change to? How to cause the change? Most plans skip straight to the third and never really answer the first.
The Thinking Processes are five pictures that answer the three questions in order. They are the deliverables this tool builds with you.
Goal Tree. Before you can call anything a problem, you need to know what the system is for. The Goal Tree states the goal with a number and a date, the three to five that must be true, and the under each. It is the yardstick.
Current Reality Tree. Takes your symptoms and traces cause and effect down to the one or two root causes. This is the first half of "what to change".
Gap Map. Puts the Goal Tree and the Current Reality Tree side by side. For each necessary condition: where must you be, where are you, what blocks you. The top row is the constraint. This is where the constraint gets named, in one sentence, with a reason why the other candidates are not it.
Future Reality Tree. Answers "what to change to". A small set of , checked to see that they turn each symptom into its opposite without creating new ones.
Action Plan. Answers "how to cause the change". Injections become actions with owners, dates, , and a list of things you will stop doing.
Check yourself
Two questions. Pick one answer each; you will see why straight away.