Three Skills Every Investigation Needs
Every investigation eventually reaches a report and a corrective action. The three skills below are what happens in between: building the actual sequence of events, testing which conditions caused it, and aiming the fix at the system instead of the person.
Practiced together, they turn a first reaction into an account that holds up.
Investigations learn. Corrective actions fix.
Skill One: Build the Timeline
Map the full sequence of events before judging any single moment in it. A first reaction is a snapshot. A timeline shows what actually led up to the event, and what happened and how it happened once you look past that one moment.
Skill Two: Test the Causes
Map the possible causes across every contributing factor, then test them. Investigations that reach for one root cause tend to stop too early. Most events come from several conditions, each necessary, only jointly sufficient.
Skill Three: Communicate the Fix
Aim the corrective action at the conditions that produced the event, not just the person closest to it. That is the difference between a fix that holds and a report that just closes the file.
KEYNOTE
Book a Keynote or Guest Session
Three Skills Every Investigation Needs works as a keynote, a guest lecture, or a working session, built around one real case and two hands-on worksheets. Sessions run 60 to 90 minutes, in person or virtual, for investigation teams, QA and EHS groups, or student programs training their next generation of investigators. No sign-up required. Reach out directly and we will find a date and a format that fits.
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On July 19, 2024, a single flawed software update crashed roughly 8.5 million computers worldwide, all at once. It grounded flights, froze hospitals, and knocked out banks. It's considered the largest IT outage in history. Three Skills Every Investigation Needs walks through what actually happened, and the three skills that turn "who's to blame" into "what do we fix," in any investigation, at work or at home.
Grab ten minutes, a pen, and read straight through. It works.
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