# Why your explanation for a business problem is not the cause [Home](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en) › [Study](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study) › [Articles](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study/articles) author: [Axel Jedlitschka](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/about) published: 2026-10-08 updated: 2026-10-08 language: en reading time: 5 min topic: Personal source booklet: [Finding the Real Why](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/finding-the-why) A cause is not the explanation that sounds most right. A cause is the thing that, once fixed, brings the numbers back. A good explanation for a problem in your business is still not its cause. According to the source, a real cause is measured only by what happens when you fix it: the numbers come back. And when you fix the wrong cause, things don't stay where they were. They get worse. ## You have an explanation within a minute Something in your business stops working, and within a minute you already have an explanation. Usually it even sounds good. It's a slow season. Customers are sensitive to price. I don't have enough time. My employee doesn't care enough. Every one of those can be completely true and still not be the reason. They are explanations. And the gap between an explanation and a real cause is the gap between a year in which your work changes something, and a year in which you work just as hard and nothing moves. ## Three kinds of answer, measured one way The source doesn't dance around it. It gives three short definitions, one right after the other. It calls the real cause the Why. The **Why** is the basic outness, meaning the basic piece of data that doesn't fit with how things should be. Find it and correct it, and the numbers recover. A **wrong Why** is an outness that was identified incorrectly. You correct it, and the numbers don't come back. A **mere explanation** is something offered as if it were the Why, but it doesn't open any door to recovery. What the three have in common: all of them are judged by the result, not by how good the explanation sounds. The source doesn't say a Why is a correct explanation. It says that when you correct a Why, the number returns. So a brilliant answer that moves nothing is still a mere explanation, even when it is entirely true. The source illustrates this in two lines. The numbers went down because it rained that week. “So? So do we now turn off rain?” There is a more dangerous version. Say the explanation is that the staff were overwhelmed that week. Some manager will issue an order not to overwhelm the staff and feel he has solved something. But the numbers won't recover. That order looks like action: a message goes out, a procedure gets written, something is said in a meeting. In reality it is just the explanation, worded as a command. The same thing happens when an owner posts in the team WhatsApp group that from now on everyone answers customers faster. He hasn't solved the problem. He has only restated it as an order. ## Why a wrong cause is worse than nothing Here is the practical core. According to the source, a real Why that is found and corrected brings the numbers straight back. A mere explanation does nothing, and the decline simply continues. Then comes the third line: “A wrong Why, corrected, will further depress stats.” Look at what that says. Not that a wrong cause wastes time. That it **does harm**. You put in a month, money and effort, and you end up worse off than if you had done nothing at all. That is the biggest expense in your business, and it doesn't appear in any report. It also explains something nearly every owner has lived through: we worked incredibly hard this quarter, and the result came out worse. **When you worked hard and things got worse, the problem is almost always the diagnosis, not the amount of effort.** Suppose an owner decides his prices are too high and lowers them. Enquiries don't budge, and profit falls. The real problem was that he took four days to respond to customers. He wasn't lazy. He gave up profit to fix things. He simply fixed the wrong thing: profit dropped, and customers still waited four days for an answer. ## Reasonable explanation, correction, crash The best example in the source shows all three stages in a single case. The numbers in one area went down. Someone looked into it and found there had been illness two weeks earlier, and the report said the numbers dropped because people were sick. That was a mere explanation. Very reasonable, and it solved nothing. Then they acted on that explanation: they required medical exams and stopped taking on workers who weren't healthy. Because that was a correction aimed at a wrong Why, the numbers really did crash. The real cause turned out to be something else entirely. There was no clear structure of who does what, so the person in charge was giving orders to the wrong people. When those orders were carried out, they damaged each person's own results. Once who does what was sorted out, the numbers didn't just come back. They rose above where they had been. That is the sequence: a reasonable explanation, a correction based on it, a crash, a further search, and only then structure. Most people stop at the second stage, sure they have already done what was needed. ## What the booklet has on this The chapter this article draws on includes two exercises: sort, and the rain test. After them comes a self-check, and from there the booklet moves on to a single question that helps you find the real cause. The next explanation you give yourself will probably arrive within a minute and sound good. The only question is what will happen to the numbers when you act on it. - [Finding the Real Why](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/finding-the-why): A complete diagnostic method, and one test that disqualifies most of what you've been telling yourself until today. --- [עברית](https://theonlyaxelj.com/he/study/articles/an-explanation-is-not-a-cause) · [Español](https://theonlyaxelj.com/es/study/articles/an-explanation-is-not-a-cause)