How to Solve Repeating Problems

The first time you encounter a new problem, what you most need is information and expert advice. But repeating problems are frustrating, because no matter how many experts or “proven solutions” you apply, they just keep coming back.

Repeating problems keep coming back because they are symptoms of a deeper issue. As long as you focus on the symptom, it’s just like pulling the top off a weed and leaving the roots – no matter how much time, energy, or money you invest, it will just keep growing back.

For solutions that last, you need to find the source of a problem, and make a deeper systematic change. Of course roots are underground, and they don’t usually look much like the big plants that show up as weeds in your garden, and it’s the same with problems and the systems that cause them. They often don’t look alike at all. So how do you find the roots?

You need to look for patterns. In some cases, you can sequence the events that happen before and after a problem. Sometimes you’ll find the source in the personalities and relationships of the people who are involved with the problem, including yourself. Here’s an example:

EXAMPLE

Customers want the product yesterday, production skips steps to rush the product, someone makes a mistake, the customer is angry, someone rushes to fix the problem without documenting what was done, later the customer asks for a standard replacement and gets the wrong part because documentation was missing, the customer is angry, someone rushes to help, etc. etc. etc. In this case:

1. The repeating problems are: Angry customers, mistakes in production

2. The “repeating but temporary” solutions are “appeasing angry customers with fast customer service”, and possibly some form of “training or disciplining production employees”

3. The pattern is: Rush, rush, rush to appease the angry or demanding customer, make mistakes in the rush, customer gets angrier and more demanding.

4. The root of the problem is: Rushing

5. Now we look at what causes us to rush around in response to a customer request. Dedication to the principle that the customer is always right? The fear that we will lose the customer? The need for approval?

There are many possible solutions. One might be to brainstorm on ways to talk with customers about the benefits of waiting one more day for the product so you can uphold your quality standards. The important thing is that you are addressing the issue at the source and changing the system that causes the problem. Notice that this deeper solution is almost the opposite of the solutions you would apply by only looking at the surface problem.

EXERCISE – “Getting to the Source”

Here is a series of questions you can ask yourself to help you discover what is at the bottom of a repeating problem you are facing today:

1. Write a brainstormed list of when this problem has come up for you before:
1. In what way was it similar to the problem you have today?
2. In what ways was it different from the problem you have today?
3. What solutions did you implement then, and how well did they work for you?
4. Why would or wouldn’t you want to try those solutions now?
5. If you have tried some of the same solutions, how were your results different this time from when you had the problem before?

6. What key people, issues, dynamics, or components are the same every time or most times you’ve had this problem?

7. What thoughts and feelings come up for you consistently every time this problem comes up?

8. When this problem comes up, what does it make you wonder about yourself, other people, or the world?

9. If you could change yourself, other people, or the world, what would you change to make this kind of problem go away forever?

10. How much control do you have in this situation? Do you have complete control over the problem, some influence over the problem, or no control over anything except your response to the problem?

Make a list of possible actions / decisions available to you. Make a table like the one below to analyze possible solutions.

Possible Action / Decision

Worst Possible Consequence

Best Possible Result

How I will handle worst possible consequence

How I will benefit from worst possible consequence

If you have identified a pattern in your business or your life and would like to e-mail me your responses to this exercise I would be happy to share my feedback and comments.

How Getting Organized Impacted my Business

I first hired an organizer in 2003, wrote this article 2 years later, and still pull it out every few years and re-post it.  Even now, 7 years later, I still have most of the systems in place that my orginal organizer set up for me – and I stand by the claim that having great organizational systems has a direct impact on revenue!

So, here it is again:

HOW GETTING ORGANIZED IMPACTED MY BUSINESS

One day about two years ago, I decided to find out how much the clutter in my office was costing me.  The answer amazed me.  After a few days working with a professional organizer, I immediately increased my monthly income by about 50%.  And if you can imagine anything better than that – my stress level dropped to almost nothing.  What I learned about organizing has made a huge impact in my business and my life.  Here are five things I learned about the value and process of organizing that were key to achieving such amazing results:

1. Organizing, weeding, and taking care of open issues are distinctly separate activities.  Try to do them at the same time, and you run into trouble.

If you’ve ever hired a housecleaning service, you may have noticed how quickly they get the job done.  This is because all they do is clean.  They don’t get distracted picking up clutter, or fixing broken things, or deciding if something should go to Goodwill. 

The problem with organizing our own stuff is that everything we own requires a decision or reminds us of something we intended to do.  So, instead of “getting through the box”, we spend our time taking care of what we find in the box.  This approach takes a lot of time – it’s common to end up with the box still full hours later. Working this way is frustrating and overwhelming.

The professional organizer sees things differently.  She sorts through an entire box in 20 minutes, easily.  She has no emotional attachment to the items in the box – to her they are simply objects with a use, size, shape, and category attached to them.  Her job is to get them into piles and find homes for them.  All the things that need to be taken care of get put in a “take care of” pile and can be addressed once the organizing part of the job is done.

2.  Everything has a home, absolutely everything. 

You can’t put something away if you don’t know where it goes.  If you look at a pile of clutter, in most cases it exists because 80% of the contents either don’t have a home, or the home is not easily accessible.  Anything that will reside in your space, even temporarily, needs a home.  This includes keys, borrowed books, business cards, thank you notes, and single sheets of paper with scribbled notes on them.

The “home” is specifically designed around ease of use.  It’s located where the item is most often used, and it has a container or hook that fits.  The containers and hooks are critical.  They make it easy to retrieve items and easy to put them back where they belong.  They also reduce the chance of items getting in the way of each other.

The biggest benefit of assigning homes to everything is that a mess that used to take three hours to clean only takes ten minutes.  Why?  Because you grab the stuff and put it where it belongs.  You don’t even have to think.  I thought that when my office got organized, I would have to file a few minutes every day to keep everything looking perfect.  What I found is that even if I let my filing stack up for an entire month, I could get caught up on it in less than 20 minutes.  What a relief!

3. Create decision criteria, so you know immediately what to keep and what to throw away

If you don’t decide what to keep and what to throw away you have a lot of items taking up space that don’t have homes (because you aren’t sure you’ll keep them) and aren’t in the trash (because you haven’t decided to let them go). 

Here’s where my organizer really helped me.  She gave me a simple over-riding guideline, and asked really good questions whenever I was confused.  It went something like this:

The over-riding guideline:  You only keep something if you use it regularly, or you love it.

Then, every time I wasn’t sure about something, she would ask me a series of great questions:

        a.  What situation are you keeping it for?
        b.  How often does that situation occur?
        c. What will you do if that situation occurs and you don’t have it?

Inevitably we would find a lot of things I was keeping because they were “too good” to throw away.  Now all these items get donated to places where they will be used.

Once I had created my rules, everything went much more quickly.  I would “weed” first, by throwing out or donating everything that didn’t fall into the “keep” criteria.  Then once I got to the organizing, it was simply a matter of sorting and finding homes for everything that was left.

4. I wouldn’t have done it myself. 

If I pay close attention, this is what happens when I organize alone:  I get frustrated because it’s taking too long; I get bored because it’s not interesting work; I get distracted because I think of other important “revenue producing” activities I should be focusing on; I get angry when I discover something I intended to do that fell through the cracks; I stop and try to solve problems as I uncover them.  All these negative thoughts and emotions drain my energy and pull me away from the task at hand.

With my organizer the experience is quite different:  She sorts quickly and easily because she has no emotional connection to my stuff.   As issues come up, we discuss them, and because she has lots of experience with similar situations, decisions come quickly.  There is a sense of teamwork, forward movement, and the relief of having someone experienced to lean on who will insure that the project continues to move forward, even when I’m lagging behind.

5.  The return on investment is enormous. 

For me it was several thousand dollars. It started with about four extra hours per week.  On top of that I had a more powerful presence that came from knowing I had everything under control.  I was more prepared when I gave presentations, I had a better follow up system, I put more thought into my writing, because I was more relaxed about taking the time to think.  That translated into more powerful personal interactions, which translated into more business.  My monthly revenue immediately increased by about 50% after the initial organizing effort, and never dipped back. 

It’s been about two years now since my first experience with an organizer.  Since then I’ve continued to use an organizer periodically, to replace systems as they become obsolete, or to save me if I’ve let things go for more than a few months.  Even though it’s a smaller, more intense effort, I consistently experience more confidence, more time, and increased business in the weeks following the visit. 

Copyright @2005 – 2010 Nahid Casazza   www.aspyrre.com