Lean from the Trenches

Solve Problems, Not Symptoms

The key to effective problem solving is first to make sure you understand the problem you are trying to solve—why it needs to be solved, how you’ll know when you’ve solved it, and what the root cause of it is.

Symptoms often show up in one place, while the cause of the problem is somewhere else. If you “solve” the symptom without digging deeper, it’s highly likely that the problem will just reappear later in a different shape. Let’s look at a couple of examples.

• Problem: Smoke in my bedroom.

  • Bad solution: Open the window and go back to sleep.

  • Good solution: Find the source of the smoke and solve it. Whoops, there’s a fire in the basement! Extinguish it, find out what caused the fire in the first place, and ...