We waste a lot of time in our weekly meetings debating surface-level problems because we struggle to isolate the root cause. How do we train our leadership team to dig deeper during the Identify phase of IDS®?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Solving symptoms instead of root causes is a primary reason businesses stay stuck in a cycle of recurring issues. To master the Identify phase of IDS®, your leadership team must learn to slow down before jumping to solutions.

When an issue is brought to the table, the person who raised it must state the problem in a single, clear sentence. Once stated, the team should not immediately accept it as the real issue. Instead, you must ask probing questions to peel back the layers. A powerful technique is to ask why the problem occurred, and then ask why that happened, continuing until you reach the systemic breakdown.

For example, if the issue is a missed sales target, the root cause is rarely just bad sales. It might be a lack of marketing leads, a broken onboarding process, or a capacity constraint in operations. You have not truly identified the issue until you can point to a specific process failure, an Accountability Chart seat mismatch, or a lack of clarity in your V/TO®. Do not allow your team to move to the Discuss phase until everyone agrees on the exact root cause. By spending more time in Identify, your Discuss and Solve phases will become fast, decisive, and permanent.