SARA PRINCE: Once we know we have a problem and that there's something that has deviated that we need to go do something about as a manager, the most important thing is actually to determine what the root cause, what's driving the problem, as opposed to listing out the various different symptoms. If we just address the symptom, we create an environment where the same problem can arise again and again. And if we want to be efficient and effective with our team skills, resources, and time, then we want to solve the problem, not the symptom.
So it can be tricky to identify the root cause. Often, the symptoms masquerade themselves as root causes. And unless we take a structured and intentional approach to identifying the root cause, we may miss it. You may actually uncover a handful of problems, certainly more than one. An important part of your role, as the manager, is to be able to help the team prioritize which of those problems actually should be solved, and which ones to focus the team's time and attention on.
And again, you can really use a sense of the impact, or the nature, or the scale of the problem, and how solvable is it to be your guide for which ones to go solve. To give you a sense of how the root cause dynamic can play out in a problem, in the midst of a team huddle, an organization realized that they weren't getting the profit lifted they had expected from a new process that they put in place to actually go identify where there were profit improvement opportunities at an individual customer level, and then ask the sales people to go execute the tactics associated.
And once they started to dig in and have some conversations with the salespeople, genuinely asking the very simple why is this, why is this, why is this, it actually got underneath to the core driver which is not that the profit strategies weren't good, not that they didn't have the tools to understand, but that the sales people weren't comfortable having the conversation with their customers, because they hadn't had an opportunity to really play out how the conversation was going to go and to know that it was going to be successful. So they weren't having the conversations, and so it became a very simple matter of not changing the strategies or giving them more tools, but actually scheduling a profit conversation, having someone go ride along with the salesperson to make sure that they had the conversation effectively, and giving them the coaching beforehand, and the opportunity literally to role play the conversation to make sure they were comfortable.
Fortunately, there's a number of tools that exist to help get at the root cause for any particular issue. For example, the fishbone model, or the Pareto, or the five whys are all tools that we'll talk a little bit more about, in terms of how to address getting after the root cause with your team in an effective way.
A fishbone is essentially a diagram where you start at the major components of what could be driving a problem, and then you use lines coming off very much in the shape of a fishbone, if you will, to really anchor in and understand the different elements that could be driving each of those major components. And as you go deeper in the diagram, it allows you to get a better sense at what the core root cause or causes, as the case might be for a particular situation. Pareto is often referred to as 80-20, and it's really the concept that 20% of the drivers might create 80% of the problem or the issue at stake. And it really helps you get a sense of which drivers, or issues, or root causes should you address first, because you'll get the most impact from addressing them and solving the problem.
And then finally, the five whys is a great tool for when you're not certain that you've gotten to the driver of the issue, and you don't have a clear sense of how the problem breaks down and how to structure it, and so you just start the simple task of asking why.