KEPNERandFOURIE critical thinking · Asia Pacific
Stop solving the same problem twice.
Thinking Dimensions facilitates and teaches structured thinking for the work that carries real cost: situation analysis, gap analysis, root cause analysis, decision making, solution design and risk. Based in Australia and New Zealand, delivering across the Asia Pacific and beyond, in any industry.
Since 1997
The KEPNERandFOURIE method, created and owned by Thinking Dimensions Global
Award winning
Telstra itSMF Industry Innovation of the Year
Asia Pacific
Based in Australia and New Zealand, delivering across the region and beyond
Any industry
IT service management, government, utilities, finance, mining and more
The problem
Intuition is right about 70% of the time. The trouble is the other 30%.
Faced with a hard problem, most teams follow their gut. That works often enough that people learn to trust it, so when it stops working they keep going: more theories, more meetings, more trial and error, and the same incident back again next month.
What we teach is how to notice that moment and switch to a structured method. Your people keep their judgement and their experience. The method gives that judgement something solid to work with, so the answer holds up when someone asks how you know.
Three ways to work with us
Facilitation
We run it with you
An independent facilitator for a major incident, a stubborn problem, a contested decision or a risky change. Structured, impartial, and focused on getting the room to agreement. From $5,000 per day.
Workshops
Build the skill in-house
itRCA for IT, Business Problem Solving and Decision Making, and Service Desk Advanced Triage. Between 40% and 50% of the time is practice on your own work. From $4,000 in-house.
Online
Learn at your own pace
itRCA as a self-paced online course, for individuals or for teams spread across locations. From $400 per person.
All prices in Australian dollars, excluding GST.
The method
KEPNERandFOURIE: five linked thinking processes
Created and owned by Thinking Dimensions Global, the method gives a team one shared language for situation and gap analysis, problems, decisions, solutions and risk. Each process works on its own, and each one can trigger another.
- ThinkingWise. Identify the core issues in a vague situation, so the team is working on the right thing.
- PriorityWise. Identify the core issues in a complex situation and prioritise them.
- CauseWise. Identify the technical cause and the root cause of an incident or problem.
- SolutionWise. The MAX4™ format generates immediate solutions during an incident, and permanent solutions that remove the root cause.
- RiskWise. Find the blind spots that cause incidents, rollbacks and poor implementations.
A recent example
Four days of "internet banking degraded"
A large Australian bank had made 27 changes over one weekend. By Monday, more than 60% of customers could not log in or use the service properly. Four days later the team was still going. They had backed out changes, which created new incidents, and every expert in the room had a theory worth chasing.
The problem was the words they were working from. "Internet banking degraded" has too many possible causes to investigate, so the team was picking theories rather than narrowing them.
We worked with them on a precise incident statement: the SSL handshake was not being received. That version had 3 possible causes, not dozens. They backed out the most likely change and the service came back.
Before
4 days
of trial and error, with the incident still open
After
135 minutes
90 minutes to write the statement, 45 to find the cause
Half of any incident sits in the incident statement.
In their words
"Damn you Andrew! Wish I saw this stuff 20 years ago, I probably would have retired by now!"
Problem Manager
ANZ Bank
"I wanted my whole division to have a common company wide problem solving approach and got much more than I'd bargained for. We also reduced the trial and error costs in most of our divisions."
Liam Edwards
Past Executive Director, global investment bank
"The KF training introduced us to the concept of Technical Cause versus Root Cause and that unique insight made all the difference in all our Incident & Root Cause Analysis restorations."
David Pryde
EVP Product Support, SGX
Why this matters more now
AI can do the heavy lifting. The thinking still has to be yours.
Many teams are handing the thinking itself to AI and slowly losing the skill. We take the opposite view: use AI for the heavy lifting, and keep human judgement, reasoning and decision quality sharp.
Structured thinking is how you tell whether an AI answer is right, and what question to ask it in the first place. We teach teams to work exactly that way: AI for the search, the drafting and the data, people for the framing, the judgement and the decision.
Questions buyers ask us
What is KEPNERandFOURIE?
A structured critical thinking method for root cause analysis, decision making and risk, created and owned by Thinking Dimensions Global. Thinking Dimensions Australia & NZ delivers it across the Asia Pacific.
Do you only work with IT teams?
No. We work in any industry, on any problem or decision that carries real cost. A large share of our work is in IT service management, because that is where much of our client base sits, but the method itself is industry-agnostic and is used from the boardroom to the factory floor.
Can workshops run virtually?
Yes. Workshops run onsite or virtually, and itRCA is also available as a self-paced online course.
Where do you work?
Anywhere our clients need us, with a focus on the Asia Pacific. We are based in Australia and New Zealand and have delivered across the region, including Manila and India.
Have a problem that keeps coming back?
Tell us about it in a 20-minute call. You will leave with a clearer view of the problem, whether or not we work together.