Two signs give away a wrong cause before you've even acted on it. The first: you've known it for a long time, and the problem hasn't gone anywhere. The second: to handle it, you have to rack your brain for a brilliant solution.
The source calls the real cause the Why: the basic thing that, once corrected, brings the numbers back. A wrong Why is one that was identified incorrectly, and acting on it makes things worse. That's why it pays to catch it before you act, not after you've already paid for it.
Neither sign needs a long analysis. Both just need you to ask yourself two honest questions about the answer you already have.
If you already knew it, it isn't the Why
According to the booklet, this may be the most surprising line in the whole source. The source says some of the most workable causes it ever found came as a surprise, so it also asks, every time: “did I know this? Am I surprised?”
The rule that follows: an answer you've known for a long time, while the situation keeps going, is most likely the wrong answer.
The part doing all the work is that condition, that the situation still exists. When the answer was known and the problem stayed put, only two possibilities remain: either you never acted, or the answer is wrong. And most of the time you've already tried acting. That leaves one.
Suppose an owner who has been saying for four years that he's not good at marketing. He has known this since day one, and through all those years nothing has moved.
Or an owner who has been saying for two years that she needs to charge more. She knew it all along, and that's exactly the sign it isn't the Why. What was really behind it was that she didn't know how many hours actually went into each job.
Or a contractor who knew for a whole year that he needed another fitter. Once he checked, it turned out the fitter he already had lost a third of his day on the road, on trips that could have been merged.
And if you have to strain to invent a fix
The second sign is about what happens after you've found a cause. The source puts it this way: “When you have a right Why, handling becomes simple.” And the harder someone has to work to come up with a bright idea for handling it, the more likely the cause in his hands is wrong.
That turns a common intuition upside down. Most people expect a hard problem to call for a clever, elaborate fix, and the more elaborate it gets, the better they feel about it. The source says the reverse: how complicated the fix is tells you about the quality of the diagnosis, not the size of the problem.
This doesn't mean there are no hard problems. It means that when the diagnosis is right, the next step is clear almost immediately, and you don't have to invent it.
Suppose an owner who builds an eleven-step marketing plan. Not one step is ever carried out in full, because his diagnosis was that there's no brand awareness.
The opposite is the same man after his diagnosis changes: most of his enquiries come from referrals, and he has no way to ask for one. The fix turns out to be one sentence at the end of every job.
Or a clinic owner who plans a whole new practice-management system, when all that was missing was a reminder the day before each appointment.
You need both signs together
The two signs work as a pair, not each one alone. Some answers surprise you and lead to no action at all. Others lead to action, but to one you've already tried ten times. What marks a real cause is the combination: a surprise, and a handling that leaps out at you.
Suppose an owner who hears from a consultant that he never lets the customer know when the job will be finished. He's surprised, and he knows right away what to do. Both conditions hold.
Now a salon owner who discovers that a large share of her customers aren't coming back. The number surprises her badly, and she has no idea what to do with it. That's one condition only, so what she found was a situation, not a Why. A situation is something you saw and didn't expect, not the thing that caused it.
When she keeps digging, she finds that nobody follows up after the first visit, because there's no list of who came in and when. At that point the action leaps out.
A surprising discovery with no action attached doesn't end the search. It only tells you where to keep digging.
What the booklet has on this
The chapter this article draws on includes two exercises: surprise, and simplicity. It also has a self-check, and it's part of a full booklet on the difference between a plausible explanation and a real cause.
Next time you're sure you know why something isn't working, it's worth asking one question: if I've known this for so long, why is it still here?