When I go to my doctor because I’m not feeling good he goes through a process to diagnose what it really wrong with me. He starts asking some basis questions that narrow the options of my illness. “Where does it hurt?” “My elbow.” He has now narrowed down the potential diagnosis… I clearly don’t have a broken ankle.
When dealing with situations in our organization, we need to start by asking the right questions. Asking the wrong question won’t get you the right answer. In fact, asking the right question won’t usually get us the right answer! Asking the right questions will get us to the right answer!
When leaders don’t take the time to ask the right questions they will inevitably treat the presenting symptoms instead of the actual problem.
Even after asking the right question, the first answer may not provide the “real” answer. Leaders that don’t ask enough questions end up treating the symptoms instead of the real problem. Symptoms are only useful to point us in the right direction. The “5 Why’s” technique of problem solving is a simple means of diagnosing what is the root issue when facing problems. The basic idea is to continue asking Why to the answer to the previous answer at least five times. The process of drilling down prevents thinking that a simple or surface answer to a question is the real issue.
In Information Technology, we refer to this as Problem Management where you perform a root cause analysis. If you focus only on the symptoms, then it is Incident Management and you run the risk of the problem resurfacing.