How to know why the numbers dropped, without settling for an explanation

01·Where you are now

When something in your business isn't working, you find an explanation for it. Usually within a minute, and usually a good one. “Customers are price-sensitive.” “The employee doesn't care enough.”

Could the good explanation be exactly what's holding you back? Not one of these is a reason. They are explanations, and “a mere explanation does nothing at all and decay continues.”

And it costs you. Fix the wrong cause, and the numbers drop even further. If you worked hard and something got worse, that is almost always a sign the diagnosis was wrong, not that the effort was too small.

And the price of a wrong cause isn't the time you lost. It's the problem that kept operating undisturbed.

02·Who's talking to you: Axel Jedlitschka

“Work hard and it will be fine” wasn't accurate

I was asked which advice I'd been given turned out to be wrong. My answer: “Work hard and it will be fine,” “Everything will be okay.” None of it is accurate.

My correction: “Work hard on yourself and it will be fine,” and “If you do something about it, everything will be okay.” A sentence that doesn't lead to action is an explanation, not a cause.

Axel Jedlitschka

04·There is a way

One question for every explanation

The booklet calls a real cause a “Why”: the thing that, once corrected, brings the number back. And “a real Why opens the door to handling”, to something you can actually do about it. So ask every cause you write down: does this open the door to handling? If not, it's a wrong Why. “The real Why when found and corrected leads straight back to improved stats.”

1. 01Write the Why.One line: what you think is causing your biggest problem today. Written down, not in your head.
2. 02The door test.Under that line, write three actions that follow directly from it. If you can't write three, go back to the line.
3. 03The surprise test.Did you already know this a year ago? If yes, and the situation is still here, it's probably a wrong Why.
4. 04The verification.For every correction, set a check date one month ahead. Did the number recover, or not? If not, the Why was wrong, and the orders you gave based on it get cancelled too.

“The stats went down because of rainy weather that week.” So? So do we now turn off rain?

What you get

What is promised, and what is not

There is no purchase and no payment here, so there is nothing to cancel. You can withdraw your consent to marketing messages at any time.

Questions?

Before you download