Frustrated from recurring problems?

Are you practicing symptom-solving instead of problem solving? 25 to 40% of people’s time is spent on non-value added activities redoing tasks a second or third time or discussing and solving the same problems over and over. If you think this number is exaggerated or applies to someone else, and not you, think about the questions below and see for yourself.

Take a bird’s eye view of your company. Think back over the last 3 months. How many meetings (formal and informal) have been held to discuss a problem situation with a customer, a supplier, an employee or another issue? Now think back over the last year – how many times have similar problems cropped up?

Think of the work that you do. How many times do you have to redo or revise something because of poor communication, a misunderstanding, or a bad assumption either on your part or someone else’s?

Opportunities Lost

The opportunities lost are the biggest untracked costs in your company or organization. The cost of this problem is not limited to the wages earned by the people stuck in these repetitive and unproductive discussions. The fact is, while our attention is focused on dealing with a crisis or problem, it is not being focused on activities that will create value and growth for our companies and organizations.

• Engineers are troubleshooting instead of innovating
• Purchasing is expediting instead of developing suppliers
• Sales is dealing with angry customers instead of getting new business
• Senior management is firefighting instead of being future focused
• Maintenance is attending to breakdowns instead of ensuring uptime
• HR is dealing with turnover and attitude problems instead of strategically developing people for future growth
• Production is working overtime instead of cross training and improving productivity
• Quality is busy sorting and troubleshooting instead of focusing on the root cause

Getting Focused on the Big Issues

1. Increase the awareness of the problem – observe and listen to the conversations and meetings that are consuming your time and the time of others. Are the same issues and problems coming up over and over?

2. Ask questions to help others see the problem more clearly – most people are going through the motions, repeating the same tasks over and over without thinking. Ask questions such as, “How much of our time is wasted every day/week dealing with these same problems?” or, “Haven’t we dealt with this type of issue before, why does it keep coming up?” or, “Why do we keep having the same problems arise again and again?”

3. Acknowledge the persistent, nagging and repetitive problems instead of simply fixing the symptom over and over again - Decide as a management team, or as a team leader that you are going to fix the problem once and for all, even if it takes a little more effort. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

4. Use a Systematic Problem Solving Process - Spend time defining the real problem instead of applying an immediate knee-jerk response. Ask “Why” at least five times to get closer to the root cause. Experiment to determine which fix is the best and apply corrective action to permanently eliminate the root cause.

Getting Beyond Current Problems to Future Potential Problems

In the automotive and other industries, they apply a tool/concept called FMEA, which stands for Failure Mode Effect Analysis. FMEA can be allied to products, services and processes. The purpose is to predict or anticipate what could go wrong, estimate the probability and severity of that problem occurring, and apply a fix in advance so that the problem is eliminated before it occurs. FMEA thinking can be applied to every process in your company from hiring and promotions, to product design and development, production planning, quality and more.

Use Your Newly Found Free Time to Add Value

As you systematically eliminate problems, there will be less firefighting to do and more time available to focus on important tasks. Now is your chance to do more planning, anticipate changes in the market, what your competitors will do, how customer’s needs are changing, the types of employees you need to recruit, and more.

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