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Constraint Finder

LearnLesson 3 of 8

Symptoms vs. cause

Low cash, stress, slow delivery: these are effects. Ask why five times.

Three symptoms trace down to one causeThree boxes at the top read low cash, owner is stressed, delivery is slow. Arrows labelled why lead down through an effect box to a single highlighted root cause box at the bottom.Low cashOwner is stressedDelivery is slowwhy does that exist?Only the owner can closewhy?Policy: “I don’t trust anyone else to sell”

Low cash. Stress. Slow delivery. Leads that go cold. A team that waits on you. These are the things you notice, and they are real. But they are effects, not causes.

In this method an effect you can observe and prove is bad is called an . Fixing an undesirable effect directly rarely works, because something underneath keeps producing it. Chase cash and you get a loan. Chase stress and you get a holiday. The effect comes back.

The move is to ask "why does that exist?" and keep asking. Not once. Five times is a good rule. Each answer should be a present-tense fact about your business, not a wish for a solution. "We do not have a CRM" is a missing solution. "Leads wait three days for a first call" is a fact you can trace.

As you go down, two things happen. Separate symptoms start to share causes. And you arrive at something you control: a rule, a habit, a belief, or a physical limit. That is a .

There are usually very few of them. Goldratt's claim was that any system, however messy it looks, has one or two core problems driving nearly everything you complain about. The work is to find the few, not to catalogue the many.

When one cause explains most of your symptoms through a chain you can read aloud, you have found it.

Check yourself

Two questions. Pick one answer each; you will see why straight away.

  1. 1.Which of these is a valid undesirable effect?

     

  2. 2.You ask "why?" and the answer is "because only I can close a sale." What have you found?