Root Cause: In both our personal and business lives, this is something that is often disregarded.
Think of it as a tree – which is where the term comes from in my opinion…
Throughout our life, it is easy to look at signs or symptoms rather than the root cause.
However, dealing with branches will not solve the initial problem – for example – let’s keep it simple – a headache – many people just pop an Advil or Tylenol and move on but where does the headache stem from – it is a symptom of something bigger.
Prolonging or suppressing it does not help the root cause of the headache – it just puts it off, until the next one – dealing with a branch.
There could be numerous reasons that you have the headache and if you fix the root cause of the issue, the likelihood of its return has lessened significantly.
A majority of headaches are caused by dehydration, and simply drinking more water on a regular basis will decrease the amount of headaches you will have. (one simple solution to try…)
It is the same in business.
We tend to spend a majority of our time fighting fires – dealing with the branch – and not taking the time to delve in to the root cause – so it will just keep happening until the root cause is sorted.
Fighting fires is a more expensive, more impulsive way of making decisions and tends to fall into the category of decisions based more on emotion than data.
In some situations, it may be necessary to deal with the branch in order to keep things running, I understand that. However, once the issue has been rectified, take the time to dig into the root cause and figure it out instead of moving on to the next issue at hand.
Questions to Ponder:
Do you tend to deal with branches or do you look further into the root cause?
Are your decisions based on:
- Data
- Gut feeling
- Opinion
- Emotion
If you need assistance with this, visit www.customizedbusinessessentials.com.
