Framing the Issue at Hand

…avoid the common error of seeking out solutions before you understand the nature (the root cause) of the issue at hand.

Once you’ve set the stage and recognized common obstacles that can stand in the way of decision making, you’re ready to frame the issue for your decision-making team. A key task during this step is to avoid the common error of seeking out solutions before you understand the nature (the root cause) of the issue at hand.

Consider the following story: New Age Electronics, a toy manufacturer, has a support phone line to answer customers’ questions about assembling its products. The volume of phone calls has increased so much that the phone-support associates can’t keep up with the demand. Customers have complained about waiting as long as half an hour to get help. Tai, the manager responsible for the support line, puts together a team to help him decide how to address the issue. He begins the first meeting by saying, “We have a serious problem with our customer support line. Customers are waiting too long for service. We need to fix it.”

Because Tai has framed the issue as a problem with the phone line response time, the team is most likely to focus on ways to reduce the response time—for example, adding more phone line, adding more reps, or increasing the hours of service. These solutions will address the symptoms of the problem—overloaded phone lines—but may not address the root of the problem.

To get to the root of the problem, Tai’s team should be thinking about why customer callas have increased dramatically. Is one product in particular responsible for an inordinate number of calls? Is there a flaw in the design of a product or in the assembly instructions? Are the phone-support associates poorly trained? Suppose Tai had framed the issue by saying, “We have a serious problem with our customer support line. The volume of calls has increased, customers are waiting too long for service, and we need to find out why. Then we need to decide what to do about it.” This framing would better guide the team toward uncovering the root cause of the problem. The team would thus stand a better chance of eventually deciding on a course of action that would address the cause of the problem instead of just treating a symptom of the problem.

ACTION POINT: Look beyond symptoms of issues to address root causes.