If you fixed something in your business and the numbers didn't move, you didn't fix it too gently. You fixed the wrong thing. A problem that won't solve isn't the problem, and behind it sits another one you haven't identified yet.
The car and the kitchen floor
The source opens with an example that sounds almost silly. Before you can solve a problem, you have to recognize what it is. If the car has broken down, no amount of work on the kitchen floor will get it running again. And the reverse holds too: repairing the car won't lay a new kitchen floor.
That sounds obvious, which is exactly the point. In a business it happens all the time, just in a less conspicuous form, and that's why it is so hard to see from the inside.
Suppose an owner rebuilds her website three times because she believes there aren't enough enquiries. In fact the enquiries are arriving. They just aren't being answered in time. She worked on the kitchen floor, and the car is still standing in the driveway.
Or a designer who learns a new tool because her projects keep running long. They run long because of approvals, not because of the tool. She put in the hours to learn it, and the problem stayed exactly where it was.
The rule: fixing harder doesn't help
From this the source draws a single rule, and it's worth reading slowly:
“ANY PROBLEM THAT DOES NOT SOLVE IS NOT THE PROBLEM.”
There has to be some other problem behind it.
The rule turns the natural reaction upside down. When a fix doesn't work, the instinct is to add more of the same: more hours, another hire, another version of the website. According to the source, if you fixed it and nothing changed, that is the signal your fix was aimed at the wrong place. More force in the same direction only deepens the waste.
A wrong identification isn't a neutral mistake either. As long as you keep repairing the wrong spot, the real problem goes untouched and keeps working quietly in the background.
Three places a stoppage can sit
The source reduces every stoppage in a business to three categories. Personnel: is there anybody to do it at all? Hats: a hat is a role, and the question is whether it's clear what that role produces. Lines: a line is the route a thing travels from one point to the next, and the question is whether it actually gets through.
The source's own examples show how easy it is to confuse the three. Production hours are down, fifteen new people are added to the area, and production stays down. It was a problem in lines, not in people. In a pipe shop confusion reigns, the lines are carefully straightened out, and the confusion stays. It was a problem in hats.
Suppose a garage owner adds a mechanic because jobs are running late. The delay actually sits in parts ordering, which is a line, not a personnel problem.
One mistake runs through all of these: answering a problem from one category with a solution from another. Picture an owner who adds an employee to an area where nobody can say what the product is. The problem is in hats, and his solution is in personnel. Once he defines what that area should produce, it turns out he didn't need the employee either.
Or an owner who puts the whole process in order, start to finish, and the confusion stays. Nobody knows who decides on a discount. That's a missing hat, and tidying the process doesn't fill it.
The business that stays small
The source's third example speaks to nearly every owner. The organization doesn't grow. The people running it put in longer hours, and it is still the same size. According to the source, this was a series of problems in personnel, hats and lines, and none of them was ever addressed.
This is where the rule stings most. Working harder is the most natural fix, and the easiest one to get wrong. It feels like a solution, and it touches none of the three categories.
So how do you know you diagnosed correctly? Not by a feeling, not by how clever the solution was, and not by whether everyone agreed. The test is whether production rose: more of it, better, and lasting. The source also reminds you why any of this exists:
“Organization is not an end-all. To have value it must result in production.”
Suppose an owner rolls out a new system that the whole team likes. The monthly number doesn't move. Everyone is happy, and the diagnosis was still wrong.
At the other end, the same owner changes one small thing: who signs off a treatment plan. This time the number goes up. The small change passed the test, and the system everyone liked did not.
What the booklet has on this
In I Work Harder Than Anyone I Know, this chapter closes with two exercises: diagnose, and test. The chapters around it deal with what you actually sell, the difference between busy and producing, and the two ways to break a structure that works.
When a fix doesn't work, don't fix harder. Go looking for the other problem.