To diagnose well, ask the following questions: 1. Is the outcome good or bad? 2. Who is responsible for the outcome? 3. If the outcome is bad, is the Responsible Party incapable and/or is the design bad? If you keep those big questions in mind and anchor back to them, you should do well. What follows is a guide for getting the answers to these big-picture questions, mostly using a series of simple either/or questions to help you get to the synthesis you are looking for at each step. You should think of these as the answers you need before moving to the next step, leading all the way to the final diagnosis. You can, but don’t need to, follow these questions or this format exactly. Depending on your circumstances, you may be able to move through these questions quickly or you may need to ask some different, more granular questions. Is the outcome good or bad? And who is responsible for the outcome? If you can’t quickly get in sync that the outcome was bad and who specifically was responsible, you’re probably already headed for the weeds (in other words, into a discussion of tiny, irrelevant details). If the outcome is bad, is the RP incapable and/or is the design bad? The goal is to come to this synthesis, though to get there you may need to examine how the machine worked in this instance and build the synthesis from there. How should the machine have worked? You may have a mental map of who should have done what, or you may need to fill it in using other people’s mental maps. In any case, you need to learn who was responsible for doing what and what the principles say about how things should’ve gone. Keep it simple! At this stage, a common pitfall is to delve into a granular examination of procedural details rather than stay at the level of the machine (the level of who was responsible for doing what). You should be able to crystallize your mental map in just a few statements, each connected to a specific person. If you are delving into details here, you are probabl
