The Three Questions
The shape of any change
Every improvement effort answers these three, whether or not anybody writes them down. Most that fail did answer the first two well and never seriously attempted the third.
What to change?
Find the core problem, not the symptom that shouts loudest.
Most businesses can list twenty things that are wrong. Nearly all of them are effects of one or two underlying causes. Fixing effects feels productive and changes nothing, because the cause keeps producing new ones.
Ask yourself
If this one thing were solved, how many of my other problems would stop happening on their own?
What to change to?
Decide what the situation should look like instead.
A direction, not a wish. It has to survive the obvious objection: if it were that simple and that good, why has nobody already done it? Usually the answer is a conflict somebody has been quietly living with, which is what the Evaporating Cloud is for.
Ask yourself
What would have to be true for this to be an obviously better way to run?
How to cause the change?
Work out the order, and who has to agree to what.
This is where most improvement dies. The idea was right, the sequence was wrong, or the people who had to carry it were never brought along. A Prerequisite Tree handles the sequence. The Layers of Resistance handle the people.
Ask yourself
What has to be in place before the next step is even possible?
Question two is where a conflict usually surfaces. Take it to the Evaporating Cloud. Question three is sequence and people: the Prerequisite Tree and the Layers of Resistance.
Stuck on it?
These are simple to draw and hard to fill in honestly. If you want a second pair of eyes on yours, that is a thirty minute conversation and it costs nothing.
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