Upstream Solutions: Steering Towards the Root Causes of Problems

Nearly everyone would understand the sensation of having a runny nose. The frustration of the constant dripping or the blocking of your nose that disrupts your sleep.

Most of the time, people get a tissue and blow their nose. They are dealing with the symptoms of the issue, but importantly, not the cause of the issue.

The cause could be any number of things. It could be allergies, a bacterial infection, a viral infection, or sometimes in my case when I try to be brave and try something spicy. My nose turns into a tap, it’s a great look for me.

Luckily, in the case of a runny nose, our body is working on solving the cause of it and we have to deal with the mild discomfort of blowing our nose.

In the business world, if we don’t deal with the cause, the symptom keeps coming back.

A River Of Work

Work flows like a river, and before that, decisions should be made.

One decision creates a fork in the river to another decision, and this continues until the work is done.

At any point along the flow of work, some areas might get flooded or run barren.

You could spend lots of time dealing with the specific area, trying to fix the micro problem, but it is often easier to look upstream to see what the flow was doing before it got to the problem.

This often requires people up the chain to look at their own work and that can be quite confronting for some people, heaven forbid they ever acknowledge making a mistake.

Blame is Bullshit

Everything is a guess, we guess this is the best way to do things, but we will get feedback all the time if we are open to hearing it.

If things keep happening (Symptoms) then you should start looking for the cause.

If your project went over time, you could blame the people who did the work, but that will teach you nothing, or you could start working back up steam to figure out where the estimates were wrong? Was the analysis of the work wrong? Were the goals of the project unclear? When during the process were people introduced and should they have been added in earlier or later?

There is many factors to look at but it comes down to if you don’t deal with the cause then you will keep having the same issue. The symptoms keep coming back.

Aim to look upstream and fix fundamental issues. This will save you time, save you money, and reduce frustration from your team because I bet they feel the issues if they aren’t already telling you about them.