When we run IDS® on operational issues, our team constantly focuses on symptoms like low sales or late deliveries instead of the structural or personal failures causing them. How do we force the team to identify the true root cause every single time?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To get to the issue behind the issue during IDS®, you must practice radical candor and relentless curiosity. Most teams fail at the Identify stage because they are polite, lazy, or scared. They accept the first statement of the problem at face value. For example, if someone says the issue is that marketing is not delivering leads, the team immediately starts discussing ad budgets. That is a symptom, not the root cause. To find the actual issue, the meeting leader must ask why at least three times. Why are the leads low? Because the campaign was late. Why was it late? Because the product team did not deliver the specs on time. Why did they not deliver the specs? Because they do not have a defined process for handoffs. Now you have identified the real issue: a process failure between product and marketing, not a marketing budget problem. You must foster an environment where finding the truth is more important than protecting feelings. Teach your team to separate the people from the process. If you solve the symptom, the issue will return next month. If you solve the root cause, it goes away forever.