The Origins and Power of the FINESSE Fishbone Diagram for Reliability Engineers

You get a few raised eyebrows when you claim to be Communicating with FINESSE. Well, at least you do if the person on the other end does not understand that FINESSE stands for something. Or if they do not understand what a fishbone diagram is. Here’s a short review of the origins of FINESSE and how the FINESSE fishbone diagram powers the communication of reliability engineers.

Getting the Boss’s Boss to Understand

It’s been about fifteen years since I began doing sessions and workshops on communicating technical information. It began as part of my sessions on using Monte Carlo simulations for risk and reliability analysis.

Part One was the “how to do it” and Part Two was “how to communicate what you did to decision makers.”

The Part Two part grew into workshops, seminars, and keynote addresses. Some of my professional colleagues encouraged me to publish it in a book. The book would allow any forum participant to obtain a copy of the comprehensive material, taking the pressure off me to cover everything in short forums.

The first edition of Communicating Reliability, Risk and Resiliency: How to Get Your Boss’s Boss to Understand was released in 2017.

We’re Missing Something

The first edition had nine chapters that matched the format of the eight-hour workshops. Obviously, or at least I thought the book would be easier to write if I just followed everything I did in the standard workshop. It didn’t work out that way, but that’s a different story.

The content was there in the workshop and book, but we were missing something memorable.

Nine segments worked well for an eight-hour workshop but did nothing to facilitate quick recall for a participant back in the real world. Nine segments also did not work well in a four-hour workshop format.

For shorter sessions, I broke the material into the “three things to remember” and the “five essential elements.” Neither worked sufficiently, and neither addressed the unsolved problem of making something memorable for application in the real world.

So I grabbed three of my expert friends, and we went back to the drawing board.

A Cause-and-Effect Model

Cause and effect models, or fishbone diagrams, depict the connections and influences among various input factors in producing a desired output.

A fishbone diagram is an obvious choice since it is a common tool for depicting cause-and-effect relationships among technical professionals.

Unlike a mental model that helps you recall key aspects for application, the fishbone diagram’s power (and challenge) is that it depicts all of the essential elements. A mental model may be catchy and memorable, but it is one person’s opinion. The fishbone diagram is the complete list of causes (inputs) that create the desired effect.

The underlying issue with effective communication for technical professionals is complexity and uncertainty. Major decisions that take months to resolve require significant investment, involve many people, and more than a few calculations.

Finding FINESSE

The punchline is that I found the seven essential elements of FINESSE with help from my three good friends.

The next challenge proved to be finding a catchy seven-letter acronym.

Weeks went by, and technology was applied. A positive result was elusive.

Then, one day, sitting on my parents’ porch and gazing across White Point Marsh, I recalled something someone had told me early in my career: “Engineers don’t have finesse.”

Excitement quickly turned back to depression. Finesse only has six letters, and I need two e’s. As I laid the back of the napkin down and started to move on, I decided to double-check the spelling of finesse on my cell phone.

It turns out that, unlike potato and tomato, finesse has an e on its end (and seven letters).

The FINESSE fishbone diagram was born that day, along with the fishbone dance.

Trademarking FINESSE

I rolled out the FINESSE fishbone diagram in a few paid workshops and branded it on some shirts and caps. It worked. We copyrighted FINESSE and Included it in the second edition of the book. We also started the two-year process of trademarking it.

Communicating with FINESSE® and the FINESSE fishbone diagram® are trademarks of JD Solomon, Inc. These trademarks protect our intellectual property from commercial use by parties without our permission. We encourage you to use FINESSE for practical, non-commercial purposes.

The Communicating with FINESSE Community

The FINESSE community includes contributors from many professions and market sectors. The community provides articles, webinars, and advice to technical professionals who seek to improve their soft skills as highly valued, trusted advisors.

In early 2022, we broke Communicating with FINESSE into its own not-for-profit division of JD Solomon, Inc. That was good for us internally as a company and our consulting clients, some of whom did not want to be bombarded by CWF material.

An Artistic Rendering of FINESSE

In 2021, Texas wildlife artist Don Breeden was commissioned to create a more creative version of the FINESSE fishbone diagram.

The challenge was that Don did realistic impressions of fish skeletons. Obviously, a fishbone diagram is a gross simplification.

The journey yielded an even more powerful aspect of FINESSE than we first anticipated.

The top, bottom, and tail fins were indeed significant, and this became obvious as we pulled the fins away from the bones.

If the underlying issue is complexity and uncertainty (the fishbone’s tail), then the effect we seek is effective communication (the fishbone head). The solutions (or the causes of effective communication) are in the bones of FINESSE.

The Fins of FINESSE

Like the top fin gives a fish direction, the top fin of FINESSE is analogous to the data and information that guides a technical professional’s communication.

The Top Fin of the FINESSE Fishbone Diagram

The bottom fin gives a fish its balance, just as the audience keeps the technical professional balanced in their communication.

The Bottom Fin of the FINESSE Fishbone Diagram

The tail fin gives the fish power and propulsion, just as ethics propels the technical professional.

The Tail Fin of the FINESSE Fishbone Diagram