Perfecting the Process of Problem Solving
Why There are Only Three Causes to any Problem (And this is what they are...)
Folks who have worked with me previously know that I’m a staunch champion of process and systems. Beyond building and elevating a team of top talent, I believe it’s the boss’ job to approach their operation as if they are building a machine.
This systems thinking approach to leadership is designed to deliver a highly effective and efficient operation that can largely self-manage and self-regulate, performing and producing high quality work long after the boss has moved on.
It’s in support of that cause that I’ve developed a painfully simple Three Principles of Problem Solving, a three-question approach designed to identify the cause of every problem, as well as the required next step to address it.
So the next time you run into a problem at work, I’d encourage you to give this simple framework a try:
The Three Principles of Problem Solving
For any problem our teams encounter at work, there are only three potential causes:
# 1 There Wasn’t a Process
In the first case, there wasn’t a process in place for this particular situation. When this occurs, our next step is to develop and implement a process, so the next time this situation arises we have a process to support effective execution.
# 2 There Was a Process, but We Didn’t Follow It
In the second case, our team had a process designed for this situation, but the team didn’t follow it. When that occurs, the issue is a talent management issue which can be addressed with improved training.
# 3 There Was a Process, We Followed It, but the Process Didn’t Work
In the final case, there was a process in place, the team did follow it, but something still went wrong. In that case, the next step is to review the process itself and identify how we can update the process to better perform in the future.
Putting it all Together
Here’s a simple example of how this could play out in a marketing context:
The Situation is that an email was just sent out that had a spelling mistake in the subject line
The Symptom we’re trying to address is having an inaccurate subject line in a specific email
The Root Cause however has nothing to do with this specific email, but rather is to be found somewhere within our process for proofing email subject lines
By running through the Three Principles of Problem Solving we may find any of the following could be the culprit we need to address:
The team has no process for QA’ing email subject lines. In this case, the next step would be to develop and implement a quality assurance process for proofing subject lines, so this situation doesn’t happen again.
The team has a process for QA’ing email subject lines, but the team didn’t follow it. In this situation, we have a talent management and training issue and need to focus on effective execution of our existing process.
The team has a process for QA’ing email subject lines and the team followed it, but for some reason the mistake was still made. This time, the process itself is the problem, as it clearly was inefficient to ensure this type of mistake doesn’t happen. The next step now would be to improve the process and train the team on it.
While it can be tempting to immediately jump to trying to “solve” for a problem, the above example highlights that without running through the Three Principles of Problem Solving we won’t actually know which problem it is we’re ultimately trying to solve for.
Conclusion
When a problem arises, it might seem natural to just tell the team to be more careful in the future, but that would be a mistake.
As the boss, it is our responsibility to not only manage the team, but to build the machine. We are responsible to ensure process is developed and implemented, individuals are trained on the approach, and that we iterate the process as additional problems arise.
If we’re not careful, we will find ourselves spending our time addressing symptoms rather than rooting out root cause. When that happens, we are destined to repeat the mistakes that are plaguing us, and likely piss off our teams in the process.
So the next time you run into a problem at work, I’d encourage you to ask yourself:
Do we have a process for this?
If we do, did we follow it?
If we did, did it work?
While it may seem simple, these are the only three questions you should ever need to ask.
Editor’s Note
Kanahoma is an education marketing agency based in San Diego, California. We live, work, and play at the intersection of beautiful brand creative and effective direct response marketing.
You can learn more about what we do and how we do it at Kanahoma.com.
Wishing you all the best,
Seth
my FAVORITE!