Single Point of Failure

"Ishikawa Diagram" - A "Cause - Effect" theory that I have known and heard about being practiced in one of the companies I worked for. For the record, I have never formally worked on it, nor have I been trained on its usage.

The idea of the Ishikawa diagram is to take a desired Effect (read expected result), work backwards and think of all the causes that can potentially contribute to it, and document them. Focus on making sure the effecting causes execute well, and the effect will automatically happen. It identifies the possible points of failures, and makes the executor aware of it, so that no point of failure can derail the expected outcome. Very elegant. It works.

Being aware of what the causes are, can and will, influence what finally happens. So far so good.

But how much of a weight does each of the causes has on the effect, is the one question that takes certainty out of the process. Finding out the weight of each cause is subjective, messy and ambiguous.

As I look back in my life, and look ahead, I find that in most cases, a single point/action defined the success or failure of a desired outcome. The weight of the action was not obvious when it happened. It was just one of those things in the action-stream. In most cases, I could not have impacted that particular causatory action. I could not have foreseen its impact. But it is true that the impact of that one action changed everything moving forward, from that point forward. Like a cascading wall of effects. If that one action at that precise time went well, everything went well. If not, then rapidly downhill. In hindsight, there are single points of failures in endeavors.

I focus these days on identifying those actions, the ones that can make/break to cause the outcome that I want out of any situation. The rest, I ignore.

No Ishikawa diagrams for me. One single point is all that I am looking for.