The best way to solve a problem? Go fishing!
When you go to a doctor, you probably want her to take care of the cause of your problem, not just the symptoms.
For example, if I tell my doctor that I burst into tears every time I see Justin Bieber, and she then hands me pills that stop me from crying forever, I probably won’t be happy with that. After all, like they used to say in “Free to Be You and Me,” it’s all right to cry. Instead, I’ll want her to help me figure out the cause of the tears.
Solving business problems – whether for yourself or for your customers – is a lot like that. Of course, weeping and Bieber are unlikely to have anything to do with it. However, as we discussed last time, your first job before you go selling your precious “solutions” – which are like those stop-crying pills, if you don’t do your homework first – is to diagnose the root cause of the problem. And to do that, you have to know what questions to ask.
If that sounds like hard work, I’ve got some advice I think you’re going to like. Go fishing.
That’s right. When it comes to structuring your questions and guiding your problem solving process, there’s a really simple tool that helps you fish for root causes. Quality control geeks call it the Ishikawa diagram, because a brilliant statistician named Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa invented it back in the ’60s. However, I’m always afraid I’ll mispronounce his name, so I just call it the fishbone.
In the quality control world, fishbone diagrams are used to identify and display all possible causes for a given problem, but you don’t have to be a quality control expert to use them. You simply have to understand two simple ideas: cause and effect.
Click here to see an example of a fishbone diagram.
The head contains the effect, which is the problem I’m trying to solve. The bones are major categories of types of causes that would make sense for this context.
The categories I’ve put on my fish’s bones – Machinery/Equipment, People, Materials, Methods – are some of the traditional categories used in fishbone diagrams. Machinery/Equipment includes any of the tools that might impact the problem. The category of People captures issues related to training, skills, knowledge or other human causes. Materials refers to the actual stuff involved in the process. The bone labeled Methods is a place to list all the ways we go about doing things that might lead to the problem. But you can use whatever will help you diagnose the problem in its context.
Let’s look at the head of my fish. Why are Eryc’s shoes always coming untied? I realize you’re more likely to have heads that say, “Why is the data center overheating?” or “Why is bandwidth constrained?” I also realize that my problem doesn’t seem complex enough to warrant its own diagram, but bear with me.
Now, let’s see how going fishing will help me solve my problem. Instead of this vague, general question at the head of my fish, I now have four additional questions I can ask. What machinery or equipment is causing Eryc’s shoes to come untied? What is it about the people involved in tying Eryc’s shoes that causes them to come untied? Are there issues with the materials used for tying Eryc’s shoes? What issues might exist in the methods and processes employed to tie Eryc’s shoes?
See how that narrowed the conversation? Now I can start my diagnosis process – putting meat on the fish’s bones by brainstorming all the possible causes of my problem in a structured way that keeps it from getting overwhelming and keeps me focused on causes, not symptoms.
One word of caution: the fishbone diagram is a brainstorming tool. That means it should contain every possible cause, no matter how far-fetched or improbable it might seem. When we meet next time, we’ll talk about how to pull all that fish meat off the bones and find the tastiest parts – the most likely root causes that we can go after.
In the meantime, pick a problem in your own business. Grab a piece of paper, scribble that problem in a fish head and start putting meat on the bones. You’ll be surprised just how easy it is.
Eryc Eyl / Freelance Writer and Business Consultant
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