During IDS®, our team tends to fixate on the person causing the bottleneck rather than the underlying process design or software system. How do we shift our collective focus to diagnose the systemic root cause instead of just pointing fingers at individuals?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When your team gets stuck in personal finger-pointing during the Identify step of IDS®, it is usually because you lack structural clarity. People do not fail in a vacuum. They fail because of bad process design, poor training, unclear expectations, or being placed in the wrong seat. To find the root cause, you must look at the system first, not the individual.

Start by looking at your Accountability Chart. When an issue arises, ask which seat owns the measurable or the process that failed. If the ownership is clear, ask whether the person in that seat truly has the resources, training, and capacity to succeed. Often, you will find the seat itself is overloaded, or the expectations were never clearly defined. This shifts the conversation from personal attack to structural problem-solving.

Next, look at your core processes. If a ball was dropped, is there a documented, simplified process that everyone is actually following? If not, the issue is not the person; it is the lack of a standardized system. If a process does exist but was not followed, then you have a management or training issue, which is still a systemic problem.

To make this stick, train your team to use objective language. Instead of saying a person is lazy or incompetent, ask what gap in our systems or training allowed this mistake to happen. This depersonalizes the conflict and allows your leadership team to collaborate on fixing the business, rather than defending their turf. It builds trust and ensures the same issues do not reappear on your list next month.