Root Cause Analysis (RCA) of why do so many training efforts fail?
Organizations spend millions of dollars each year training their staff, sales people, call center
staff, managers, supervisors and leaders in the hopes of improving performance, sales, customer
satisfaction, improving employee morale, reducing turnover, or just simply having better
managers or supervisors but somehow do not accomplish the desired results they had hoped for.
They blame the HR training team or the all too ready consultant that had just the right training
for their problem.



If this resonates with you then you are not alone. Organizations are too quick to throw training
at just about any problem that surface from low performance to increased customer complaints,
falling sales numbers or poor employee morale in the hopes of fixing the problem.



What is Root Cause Analysis? Root Cause Analysis is a systematic approach to get to the true
root causes of any process problems ranging from low performance to client satisfaction to high
turnover and more.



Simply stated, RCA is a methodology to help identify not only what and how an event occurred,
or why certain results were not achieved but also why. Only when you are able to determine
why an event or failure occurred will you be able to specify workable corrective measures that
prevent future events of the type from happening again.

Understanding why an event occurred is the key to developing effective recommendations.

What Root Cause Analysis (RCA) does is to delve deep into the potential causes of
organizational dissatisfaction through investigative process by conducting interviews with the
key stakeholders. The stakeholders could range from the CEO to customers, vendors, business
partners, managers and employees depending on the situation; leading Focus Groups, conducting
appropriate surveys or assessments and looking at the past data to analyze and identify the root
causes.



There is usually more than one root problem and many times they are not training related.
Taking the initial first and most critical step of identifying the contributing factors to the
perceived problem is essential. Therefore saving the company valuable time and resources but
more importantly identify the key issues so that the company can address the root causes as
opposed to the symptoms. Otherwise, training can become a band aide approach leaving the
organization frustrated and disappointed. It is like taking aspirin for any ache or pain. It may
alleviate the symptom temporarily but when the pain persists it usually requires a more in depth

and through analysis to determine the cause of the pain. Root Cause Analysis can be likened to
an organizational MRI exposing the potential causes of the pain.



Although training can be a very effective solution to many of those problems many times it does
not yield the desired results. Why? Well let’s look at some example:

​

A medium size manufacturing company in Houston was frustrated with the low
performance of the sales team and asked all of the sales team and their managers to attend
a 3-day sales effectiveness training only to have the team more frustrated from being
away from the field. During the training a number of issues came up which training itself 

could not have addressed:

                        a. Sales incentives were marginal and with a comfortable base most of the sales
                           team did not feel motivated to spend any extra time generating new leads as the
                           incremental income was negligible (incentive issue)
                        b. The company’s products had not kept up with the competition’s newer, better,
                           faster gadgets (product issue)
                        c. Most of the sales team did not score very high on Sales profile competencies
                           therefore not a good match for the position but the base was good enough for
                           them to stick around (Selection issue)
                        d. There were not any major or defined consequences for missing their sales targets
                           and with remote territories it was difficult to know who was doing what and no
                           reporting of the calls made were kept or required. (accountability issue)



Conclusion: the company’s sales revenue was not improving but it was not something that some
sales training could fix in 3 days.

Recommendations:

                       1. The company needed to do a thorough analysis of the competitiveness of their

                           products and pricing and fix the engineering and innovation team to produce more

                           competitive products to begin with.

                       2. Selection and retaining the proper sales people was another major consideration.

                           A profile of their top producers was aggregated to be used for selection of new

                           hires. In addition a new onboarding and mentorship program for the new hires was

                           recommended to bring them onboard and learn from the star performers.

                       3. In addition, the company decided on a different sales incentive program lowering the

                           base just enough to stay competitive but offer higher incentives for new accounts and

                           increased sales performance and hence only attracting very motivated individuals to

                           stay and be recruited.

                       4. The sales management and reporting requirements were to be revamped to build

                           more awareness and accountability through weekly updates and quota attainment

                           requirements. The consequences of not meeting targets needed to be clearly

                           communicated and adhered to in order to change the culture. In addition recognition

                           programs were recommended for incentivizing the top performers more regularly and

                           building the competitive spirit and energy that most high achievers in sales thrive on.

                       5. A new Sales Training program was implemented which focused on selling through

                           their strengths, identifying and differentiating their competitive advantage and their

                           value proposition as well as identifying the key success factors learned from the star

                           performers. But only after the other organizational issues such as products, pricing,

                           incentive plans, accountability measures and consequences were identified and

                           addressed.