Your Problem is Not Your Problem
Part 1 of 3
What is your greatest problem right now? No, really.
A restaurant owner was sure of his problem. He kept firing cooks for slow service.
Finally, he brought in a consultant who found the real bottleneck: the dish-washing station. Clean plates weren’t coming back fast enough, so cooks had no way to plate the food. The kitchen wasn’t slow — the sink was.
A church board spent two years arguing about the budget, line by line. A coach finally asked, “What are you actually afraid of?” Slowly, the deeper issue came out. They’d never grieved the decline in attendance after their founding pastor left. The money wasn’t the problem. The loss was.
In each case, their problem was not their problem.
Misidentified
Many of us live defeated lives because we have misidentified our problem. We think the problem is “out there.” “If only I made more money, if I was married or single, if I had gotten that degree or had that job or was free from this medical issue, then things would great.”
But our circumstances are never the real issue. Author Stephen Covey put it brilliantly,
Anytime we think the problem is “out there,” that thought is the problem.
See It
Blaming our circumstances is so pervasive, I’m devoting three posts to interrupting that pattern. Step 1 is: See the problem.
In The Art of Asking Better Questions, J.R. Briggs describes a simple, yet profound brainstorming exercise developed by Taiichi Ohno for the Toyota Production System. It is called the “Five Whys.” For every complex problem, ask why five times.
Question 1: Why did this project go past schedule? It was much more complex that our team imagined.
Question 2: Why was it more complex that our team imagined? We had to start over in designing the product several times?
Question 3: Why did we have to start over in designing the product several times? The product was more difficult to use than we realized and confused our customers.
Question 4: Why was the product was more difficult to use than we realized and confused our customers? We assumed our customers held the same understanding and expertise of the product as our engineers.
Question 5: Why did we assume our customers held the same understanding and expertise of the product as our engineers? Because we didn’t test our product with market research as thoroughly as we should have, nor did we truly listen to the needs of our customers.*
Nailed it.
This process works in all kinds of situations. To get to the root of a tangled problem, ask why five times.
Where could you use this exercise right now?
Once you have rightly identified the problem, hold on! The next step is not to tackle it. A crucial move comes before that. I’ll cover that next time.
*J.R. Briggs, pp. 30-31
It’s Here!
Excited to share that Kinda Christian Workbook released May 26! It is designed to help individuals, small groups and classes who want to go on a deeper journey with Jesus. It’s a companion book to Kinda Christian: From Curious to Serious About Jesus.
The workbook includes much of the original content of Kinda Christian, but it also offers space to reflect on newly added questions, exercises, and journal prompts to help integrate life-giving spiritual practices into our daily lives.
Individual workbooks as well as bulk discount prices for churches and groups are available only at Invite Ministries here.