Find the Root cause - not the symptoms
Posted on September 08, 2020 by Emer O'Donnell
There’s a niggling feeling something’s amiss but you can’t put your finger on it. Financial numbers look fine at first glance, but sales velocity is slowing. Your team are telling you it’s a blip, but you’re worried.
You’re losing deals to new lower cost competitors. Existing customers are telling you the product needs enhancements, but engineering are swamped. You know something needs to change, but there’s so much noise. How do you know which signals to focus on?
When looking for a cause, the temptation is to take symptoms and reach for the most obvious cause, without digging deeper.
This is something we all tend to do – if you have backache, you will probably blame a recent sporting injury and only when you go to the doctor and run tests, do you discover that the sporting injury was actually another symptom and the root cause is something else entirely.
Getting the right diagnosis is as essential as getting an accurate medical diagnosis: you can’t apply the cure if you don’t know what’s causing the problem.
So before you dive into another round of problem solving take a step back and think like a doctor seeking a medical diagnosis. Focus on the data. Look for patterns. Challenge yourself to find the root cause, rather than the symptoms.
