And neither is that…
Over the last couple of years I’ve been working more and more with something called EOS (The Entrepreneurial Operating System). It’s basically just a really tight organizational structure focused on vision, clarity, and accountability. I love it. But I digress.
One of the core components of the EOS model is Level 10 Meetings. This is a really structured weekly standup for the leadership that helps unblock things. it’s incredibly helpful for keeping teams on track and on focus. But I digress.
The main section of the L10 meetings is called IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve) and it is the key to strong organizational growth. And this is what I want to talk about today.
Everytime that we dig into a “issue” during IDS and we dig and dig and dig… we find that what we’ve identified as the issue is not ACTUALLY the issue. The issue is always something deeper that has deep roots and touches everything. It’s kind of like when you take Tylenol for a headache. Tylenol doesn’t treat your headache. Tylenol treats the symptom. It treats the pain. And that makes people happy. Because it feels to them like that’s the issue. But why did you have a headache?
Tylenol HOPES that the problem will solve itself while it takes care of the pain and far too often, we see that in organizations. We think the problem is individual performance when it turns out that it’s poor systems and inconsistent communication. We think the problem is poor performance from the sales team when it turns out that the product isn’t ready. We feel pain. We feel stress. We feel discomfort and we try to treat the symptom.
Don’t.
The next time you are dealing with an issue at work, don’t try to solve the issue. Dig deeper. You’ll find something below that level. Do you then solve for that? NO. Go deeper. Go all the way down until you can’t go any deeper. THAT is your problem.
Solve THAT and then work your way BACK UP the hole, dealing with the symptoms as you go.
Give it a try and let me know how it goes.