Root Cause Contrarian?

It's really simple. I disagree with the self-appointed "experts" i.e. the academics and the consultants. On one hand you've got the old school single root cause dinosaurs, on the other you have the au courant multipath causation nerds, and on the gripping hand are the holistic hipster complex systems dweebs that say there are no root causes. They're all right, wrong or fuzzy depending on the situation, but always annoying.

Do you want to know what a root cause is? It's really not that difficult, but you couldn't tell that from listening to the "experts" whine about how this, that and the other thing should or shouldn't be included in the formal definition. They're taking a simple concept and turning it into a philosophical discourse on the nature of the universe. Who the hell cares? We have problems to solve, dangit!

Sweep away all the cruftiness, bloviation and ivory tower drivel and this is what you get.

A root cause is something that's important to the creation and
impact of a problem and which doesn't result from
something more important.

Was that so hard? Oh sure, every "expert" is going to find a problem or five in this. Fine. That's their choice. I'll keep doing what I've been doing. Oh, I've read their books and taken their courses and heard them speak at conferences and seen what they write online. What I learned from all this is that these guys think they have to mess with definitions and tools and methods. "We have to differentiate ourselves from the competition" ... barf puke spit, may I never say those words in that order ever again.

Root cause analysis is about solving problems - saving lives, preserving assets, increasing quality, minimizing downtime - in the most effective ways possible. All else is bunk. Period.