Outsiders are better at diagnosing root causes

Tags: Strategy

Understanding one's own problems or faults, and finding appropriate solutions, is difficult for people and for organizations. Just as patients are not typically the best evaluators of their own symptoms, organizations may not understand the true nature of their problem. Instead, they look for an obvious solution to the symptom rather than the root cause. For example, if sales are down, they hire a sales consultant who then applies a sales-centric solution and solves nothing.

  • See Best practices need to be adaptedBest practices need to be adapted
    Tags: [[Strategy]]

    Best practices and templated approaches to problem solving rarely work "out of the box." Any situation of sufficient complexity is dynamic and applying a stock approach will fai...
    - "Best practices" and templated solutions may not adequately address root causes.

References


Olson 2023