A team is two or more people working together to accomplish a common purpose. If two or more people are seeking to work together, successful communication is critical. The CRCA Team Communication Cycle is an effective way to facilitate communication within the team.

Teams are a resource of tremendous potential and tapping the genius, insight and potential in any team is the challenge of team communication. Individuals who make up the team can bring a vast knowledge, understanding, ability, expertise, insight, intuition, access and energy to the team, yet these assets are not immediately obvious or easily accessible. We have an unmined deposit.

While the team contains the untapped resources of great knowledge and energy, it also harbors misperceptions, partial understanding, blind spots, invalid assumptions, irrational responses, prejudice and bias. The key to successful teamwork is to separate the two (untapped resources) (misperceptions) utilizing the former and discarding the latter. Just as the prospector panned for gold and carefully sorted the gold from the mud, a team must select the genius of insight from the mud of misinformation.

The CRCA Team Communication Cycle, a specifically designed communication method, facilitates the team’s gathering of information and the sorting of the valuable from the worthless. It is a very specific method used to facilitate teamwork by managing communication. It utilizes the same probing questions that drive the team process to stimulate each team member to draw on the pool of resources he/she brings to the task in order to utilize the collective resources for the team.

The challenge of an effective team facilitator, like a prospector of old, is to separate what is valuable from what is not. While teams generate a great deal of information, not everything is useful. To collect and sort information, effective teams follow the five sequential steps of the CRCA Team Communication Cycle:

1. Ask a probing question.

2. Provide time to find potential answers.

3. Report all potential answers.

4. Discuss and analyze all potential answers.

5. Agree as a team on the answer.

A Tactical Plan details the implementation of solutions. To complete the problem-solving task, the team must develop and implement a Tactical Plan.

The Tactical Plan Step identifies the resources necessary to implement the solutions, organizes the resources, establishes a timetable and assigns responsibility and accountability. Read the whole story…

The Solution is the course of action the team chooses to address The Root Causes and solve the problem. It becomes the strategic objective targeted by The Tactical plan. Read the whole story…

Visualize The Root Causes

The Systemic Categories become the roots on the diagram and the verified causes in each category become the tributary roots. Visualize the root causes by recording all of them on the root cause diagram. This rendering is important for perception, and often generates further insight into the problem. While this may appear to be time consuming, the visualization of the category roots with the contributing factors is a powerful tool to drive The Solution Step of the process. Read the whole story…

Once The Root Causes have been verified, the next task is to systematically organize them. As a team, group The Root Causes together by like themes, patterns, and similarities. When completed, category names should be determined that will represent the main contributing (primary) roots to the problem. There are no predetermined category titles or number of categories in this method. Some root cause diagrams will have two categories; others three; still others, four and five. The categories will become the titles of the systemic roots on the diagram. Read the whole story…

In generating a long list of possible causes, it is understood that many of these will not be valid. The next activity after generating this long list is to pair down the list of causes to a “short list” that only contains actual causes. Read the whole story…

Root Causes are the factors that fuel The Surface Problem. They are the source of the problem condition and the tributary events that bring about the problem. Read the whole story…

Poorly or ill-defined problems lead to poor solutions. The accurate definition of a problem is essential for effective problem solving. A Surface Problem is an obstacle that blocks the Expectation. This condition is unacceptable. “Surface” implies that the problem is immediate and observable, but the entire problem is not visible. In some terminology, the Surface Problem might also be called the symptom. The cause of a Surface Problem can be a single or multiple, less visible source. The Surface Problem is the difference or the gap between expected results (Expectation) and actual results (Alarm). Read the whole story…

In root cause problem solving, the Expectation is the anticipated outcome or result. It is the assumed or explicit benchmark that triggered the Alarm. It is the strategic focus of a viable solution. The Expectation is also the standard of measurement that will be used to define the problem. It may also be understood as a desirable situation or event with desirable consequences. Read the whole story…

Too many alarms are an indication of more than one problem. However, the team may also identify symptoms or even root causes at this time. Accurate alarm descriptions may be facilitated by a thorough consideration of What, Where, When, How, Who. The following questions may prove useful: Read the whole story…