Interactive Tool: Symptoms-to-Root-Causes Expert System
a tool to help diagnose the root causes of leadership concerns

This expert system helps executives diagnose the root causes of their organizational concerns. It is based on NDMA's decades of research on the systems within organizations.

Beginning with a symptom (such as dissatisfied clients or unhappy employees), you can "drill down" through a series of successively more specific symptoms until you find a suspected root cause -- a systemic dysfunction in the organization.

Even if you don't see precisely the issues that's on your mind, it will certainly demonstrate the organizational root-cause analysis process that NDMA facilitates and it may suggest solutions that are relevant to your issue.

This expert system is focused entirely on organizational issues, not on individual performance problems. It's based on the following premise:

If an organization is not well designed, good people will appear to be poor performers; and firing them will only bring in a new batch of good people who will also perform poorly because of the unhealthy organizational environment around them.

The most important job of an executive is to design an organization in which everyone can succeed.

Briefing on Organizational Systems

Purpose of this Expert System

Key Terminology: organization, client, customer

How To Operate this Tool

How To Analyze Real-life Root Causes

Buy the expert system on CD