One of my clients has been working with Steve Spear. They shared a great point he made with me, and I want to share it with you:
“The root cause of all problems is ignorance.”
— Steven Spear
I can’t argue with that. If you don’t understand the root cause, you need to learn more about the problem. And to be clear, “problem solving” and “improvement” are learning processes. If you didn’t learn, you didn’t solve the problem, and you didn’t improve anything. At best you suppressed the symptoms.
So… next time you encounter a problem (which is likely as soon as you put your head up from reading this), instead of asking “What should we do?” ask “What do we need to learn about this?” It will set people off in an entirely different (and far more robust) direction.
Thanks Mark. This articulates well what Paul and you taught us at EK. I will “steal” your last paragraph “shamelessly” as it says it better than I can. Although you will continue to get blog references and a citation every time I use it!
Bill – Thanks and steal away. Nice to hear from you.
For everyone else reading this – Paul is the same Paul that is mentioned in this old post:https://theleanthinker.com/2009/05/10/genchi-genbutsu-in-a-warehouse/