‘my brother does not reply to text messages’ as opposed to ‘poor communication’). Try to make these as specific as possible (e.g. On post-it notes, write down the possible reasons for your problem. Start with your problem written on one side of the page.
Get together the people who experience the problem on a regular basis. It is important to understand your system before you start changing it. Fishbone diagrams are often used when investigating a significant adverse event but are also useful when looking at a quality improvement problem. We often think we know what causes a problem but on deeper investigation, it is rarely a single cause.
