Don’t be afraid to fix the difficult things. In some cases, people accept unacceptable problems because they are perceived as too difficult to fix. Yet fixing unacceptable problems is a lot easier than not fixing them, because not fixing them will lead to more stress, more work, and chronic bad outcomes that could get you fired. So remember one of the first principles of management: You need to look at the feedback you’re getting on your machine and either fix your problems or escalate them, if need be, over and over again. There is no easier alternative than bringing problems to the surface and putting them in the hands of good problem solvers.
Understand that problems with good, planned solutions in place are completely different from those without such solutions. Unidentified problems are the worst; identified problems without planned solutions are better, but worse for morale; identified problems with a good planned solution are better still; and solved problems are best. It’s really important to know which category a problem belongs to. The metrics you use to track the progress of your solution should be so clear and intuitive that they are obvious extensions of the plan.
Think of the problems you perceive in a machinelike way. There are three steps to doing this well: First, note the problem; then determine who the responsible-parties to raise it to are; and finally decide when the right time to discuss it is. In other words: what, who, when. Then follow through.
Diagnose Problems to Get at Their Root Causes When you encounter problems, your objective is to specifically identify the root causes of those problems, the specific people or designs that caused them, and to see if these people or designs have a pattern of causing problems. What are the most common reasons for failing to diagnose well? The most common mistake I see people make is dealing with their problems as one-offs rather than using them to diagnose how their machine is working so that they can improve it. They move on to fix problems without getting at their root causes, which is a recipe for continued failure. A thorough and accurate diagnosis, while more time-consuming, will pay huge dividends in the future. The second most common mistake people make is to depersonalize the diagnosis. Not connecting problems to the people who failed and not examining what it is about them that caused the failure will not lead to improvements of the individuals or the machines. The third biggest reason for failure is to not connect what one is learning in one diagnosis to what was learned in prior ones. It is important to determine whether the root cause of a particular problem (“Harry was careless”) is part of a larger pattern (“Harry is often careless”) or not (“It’s unlike Harry to be careless”). In the case of our client service analytics team, I knew that unless we got to the root cause of the problems, standards would continue to decline. Bridgewater’s other leaders agreed. So I led a series of diagnostic sessions with the team, getting everyone at every level into the room to probe and find out what had gone wrong. I started with my mental map of how things should’ve gone, based on the machine I’d built, and asked the new managers to describe what had actually happened. Bad outcomes don’t just happen; they occur because specific people make, or fail to make, specific decisions. A good diagnosis always gets to the level of determining what it is about those people that led to the bad outcomes. This can be uncomfortable but if someone isn’t suited for a job, they need to be moved out of it so that the same mistakes won’t keep occurring. Of course, nobody is perfect; everyone makes mistakes. So it is important to look at people’s track records and their specific strengths and weaknesses in doing a diagnosis. Coming out of these sessions, a few things were clear: Several of the new line managers who the top managers had brought in to run client service analytics didn’t have the right skills, synthesis abilities, or levels of caring to oversee the quality-control process; and the top managers were far too distant from the area and not probing adequately to make sure that everything was going well. This was the “what is”, the reality we faced that produced our problems. It wasn’t a pretty picture, but it was exactly what we needed to know in order to move to the next step of designing the changes we had to make. The following principles flesh out how to diagnose well, beginning with a basic overview.