Curing Causes, Not Consequences

Getting my son ready for school taught me how to keep problems solved.

“Ay caramba! It’s so hard to get our boy dressed for school,” I complained.

“Why?”, queried my wife.

“It’s snowing, but he insists on shorts. He just won’t wear what I tell him to,” I hissed.

“Don’t you think he’ll realise he’s under-dressed as soon as he steps outside?”

“Well, yeah.”

“It sounds like you’re choosing for him because he’s bad at choosing for himself. Maybe letting him choose the wrong clothes will help him learn to choose the right ones - so you don’t have to.”

“Well when you put it like that...”

Something in my head clicked.

Suggests Pirsig:

“As long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The real system is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself.

If a factory is torn down, but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory.

If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government.

There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.”

In organisations, solutions are contagious.

When delivery slows, managers may try to keep staff fully utilised.

When results dwindle, staff may be stack ranked to encourage improvement.

As these solutions become the norm, we lose curiosity about the problems we’re trying to solve. Delivery further slows, talented staff leave, and pressure to improve only increases.

Progress requires us to first understand what’s really causing the problems we see, and we’ll often find it’s an invalid belief, or pattern of thought.

Suggests Goldratt:

“We should strive to reveal the fundamental causes, so that a root treatment can be applied, rather than just treating the symptoms.

I usually stop when I reach a cause which is psychological and not physical in nature.”

We need to begin with asking: Why is delivery slowing? Why are results reducing, and by what measure?

The takeaway? Progress in organisations is often about starting with ‘why?’, and then working backwards until we find the invalid belief. More choice, not less, will help my kid get better at dressing himself - even if it means an icy encounter.

Note: This article was inspired by Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Goldratt’s Essays on the Theory of Constraints, and Noah Cantor. Quotes adapted for brevity.