When something is not working, the natural first step is to ask someone or to read a report. According to the source, that is the wrong place to start. A good inquiry starts with looking, because a report passes on mostly the opinions, cover-ups and blind spots of whoever gave it.
Start by going to see it
The source gives a sequence of steps for an inquiry, and the booklet says the first few decide everything. The first step in the sequence says to observe: go to the place where the problem happens, and see it for yourself.
Suppose an owner asks an employee why orders are being delayed. The answer is perfectly reasonable. But after the owner stands for an hour beside that employee's desk, he sees something else entirely.
Now picture the same owner after he begins every inquiry by standing in the place where it happens. Most of his inquiries end right there, without asking anyone.
The difference between the two ways is simple. When you ask, you get what the other person thinks is happening. When you look, you see what is happening.
The source returns to this when it talks about verifying. Looking at the data often reveals the major problem that leads to the cause, and often what you are looking for is something that is missing. A missing thing turns up in no report, as the booklet points out. You can see it only when you are there.
What a report tells you
The source makes several observations about reports, and each one stands on its own. By the first, opinions and reports, as they almost always arrive, seldom tell you more than the prejudices of whoever gave them, their efforts to cover something, or the things they failed to observe.
So when you receive a report, you receive the situation as it looks from where its author stands, along with everything he did not see or did not want to show.
The second observation is the one the booklet finds most useful: agreement among several people does not turn something into a fact. If three people tell you the same thing, they may all have heard the same lie. In the source's words, “Three liars don't make one fact,” and what they make instead is three oddities that need explaining.
Suppose an owner hears from three employees that the software is slow. The software is fine. All three heard it from a fourth.
Or take a consultant who gets the same answer from four clients. When she checks, it turns out to be one rumour passed from one to the next.
The idea nobody checks
The source also gives a name to the thing that holds all this in place: a fixed idea. It is something accepted without personal inspection or agreement, a reliable source that nobody challenges. In its shortest wording: “A fixed idea is uninspected. It blocks the existence of any contrary observation.”
Notice the word blocks. A fixed idea prevents the observation altogether, which is how a person can look straight at a problem and miss it.
Suppose an owner is convinced that his customers are sensitive to price, and he has never checked. When he finally raises his prices by 12 percent, no customer leaves.
Or take an owner who knows for certain that people do not read long emails. Her longest email brings in the most replies.
The report that never said when
The source offers a small example worth remembering. One office reports that another office is doing great. The information is six months old, and the report does not say so. The source counts three problems in that one report: one of time, one of falsehood and one of missing information.
The report was positive and its source was reliable. It was useless anyway, because it left out when.
Suppose an owner relies on the belief that a certain customer is always happy. When he checks, the last time they spoke was a year ago.
Now picture the same owner after he starts asking, about every report he receives, when it was last checked. Half of them turn out to be old.
Looking takes something too. The source lists conditions for accurate observation. You need to know how the scene is supposed to look, and to be familiar with how it looks when things go well and when they go badly. One condition is recognizing what is working as well, because otherwise you repair things that were fine.
Suppose an owner who writes down only problems. After six months he has changed things that were working, simply because he did not know they worked.
The booklet gives this chapter two short exercises, called observe and ask. The practice section at the end also has one called the outside eye.
The next time someone reports a problem to you, listen to the report. Then go and look for yourself.