Solving Organisational Problems: Identifying those causes

In our previous post about Solving Organisational Problems , we mentioned the difference between symptoms, the pain that is being experienced at the moment, and the causes of the problem, the underlying reason or trigger for the current symptoms.

Symptoms are the sign that a problem exists. Like symptoms of sickness, they may not be strong indicators of the actual problem. They are just the flag that an issue exists.

The confusing thing about causes is that they may be multi-layered.

What appears at first glance to be a cause may in fact be a different symptom on our journey to uncover the underlying cause.

The Chain of Cause and Effect

In fact what we often find is a chain of cause and effect relationships as we move ever deeper in our quest to find the initial causal trigger for the problem.