The Way You’re Solving Problems Is Probably Wrong

Let’s be honest: most managers don’t know how to solve problems. 

They spend their days firefighting issues they don’t understand, slapping on plasters, and praying the next disaster waits until they are on holiday. Enter Ed Wells, Chief Strategy Officer of What Caused This, who’s here to explain why your organisation’s approach to problem-solving is probably as effective as the proverbial chocolate teapot.

This episode explains the messy, often ignored world of root cause analysis—not just as a buzzword, but as a way to stop repeating the same mistakes. Ed breaks down why complexity isn’t going away, why your quick-fix mentality is costing you more than it’s saving, and why the "five whys" method is just the start.

Ed explains to Jimmy and James, ever the sceptics, that this is just for specialists and pointy heads. Whether you’re dealing with a train company blaming "lack of staff" for delays (while ignoring the fact they sacked half the workforce) or a football club sacking managers like it’s a hobby, the lesson is clear: if you don’t dig deep, you will never understand the causes of your problems.

Key points:

• Complexity isn’t a trend—it’s the new normal, and your old problem-solving habits won’t cut it.
• Root cause analysis isn’t just for disasters; it’s for preventing them (and maybe even improving things).
• The "golden four" criteria for solutions: Will it work? Can I do it? Can I afford it? Will it backfire spectacularly?
• Teams solve problems better than lone wolves—but good luck getting one when the budget’s been slashed.
• If you don’t track your fixes, you’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes. 

So, if you’re tired of putting out fires only for them to reignite the second you turn your back, this is your wake-up call. Or, as Ed might say, your chance to stop being the hare and start being the tortoise—before the race ends.

Transcript

Speaker 0:03

Hello, I'm James. Hi, I'm Jimmy and welcome to a Job Done Well, the podcast that helps you improve your performance enjoyment at work.

James 0:15

Hello, how are you doing?

Jimmy 0:16

I'm doing well. What are we covering today then?

James 0:18

Well today we have got a fascinating conversation, believe it or not, about root cause problem analysis. I can see you're excited already, aren't you?

Jimmy 0:29

Why should.

James 0:30

Well, so we've got a a gentleman called Ed Wells with us who is the chief Strategy Officer. Nevertheless, have an organization called What Caused This. But what they do is they talk to organizations who've got problems and issues and help 'em work their way through it. And I'm thinking, well, if you listen to this podcast, you've probably got a load of problems and issues anyway. So this is the sort of thing that will be useful to you.

Jimmy 0:51

And I think, James, that the world is an ever more complex and we are constantly bombarded with problems and issues and things we need to improve. And Ed's got some really neat ways of thinking about it and approaching it. So he's gonna share those with us today. I hope so. We'll, it'll sort both of us right out with that. We've got complex problems.

James 1:16

Yeah, we'll have you back. We'll have you back. So, ed, without further ado, how about you introduce yourself?

Ed 1:23

Yeah. Thank you very much. Well, thanks James. Thanks Jimmy for the introduction. Yes. My name's Ed Wells. I'm the chief strategy officer of a company called What Caused This. I'm also a founder of that business. We're a couple of years old as a business now. We are proverbial. One trick pony as a business. I don't like the phrase stay in your lane, but I'm gonna use it because that's exactly what we do. We are a root cause analysis business. All of our team are in the wall root cause analysis professionals, so we've all got at least a decade's worth of experience in the field of is known as complex problem solving.

James 1:59

I know it's a bit of an obvious question, but do organizations really need root cause analysis? I mean, why bother? I've seen plenty of organizations go along without getting to the root cause of anything.

Ed 2:12

Well, to some extent it leans back into what Jimmy was just saying about complexity. And it's interesting you talk about that ever increasing complexity. I won't hazard a guess at how long you guys have been in the workplace, but I've done three decades over that period of time. One thing I know is that there hasn't been a reduction in complexity. They say that there's two things that are constant in human life, don't they? Death and taxes. I think a third is probably increasing complexity. Now, my little boy was 13 this week and. Still high on his present list is Lego. So he had this huge Lego set and it got me thinking about when I was 13 years old. 'cause I liked Lego when I was 13, as you guys probably did as well.

James 3:00

Jim is 58 and he likes.

Jimmy 3:02

I still like it.

Ed 3:03

Still loves it. Well, there we go. Now I'm looking at what my boy got for his birthday. This, there's a animation, Japanese animation called One Piece. You got this. Lego one piece kit. Huge, hundreds, thousands of pieces, I'm sure. And I was thinking, well, when I was 13 years old, I'm pretty sure I had a Tupperware box in the corner of the bedroom with a load of plastic blocks in it. And if I had enough time and imagination, I could make a race car or a fire station or whatever, took my but it was nothing like what my has got. And if you were to ask my son to tell you about Lego. He'd tell you about a whole Lego universe. And it strikes me that an organization like Lego is a metaphor for all of our organizations dealing with complexity because they're not even a hundred years old as a business. So the short answer to your question, James, is why do they need it? Well, they need it because they're dealing with greater and greater complexity and the methods in which we adopt when we work in non-complex. Environments aren't fit for purpose as that complexity grows

Jimmy 4:09

But if I'm sitting in the middle of an organization, I'm running a team or a unit or whatever, what does root cause analysis or complex problem solving, why is that important to me?

Ed 4:19

Well, I think it's important to you because you want to be s you want to be moving from that, ideally moving from that reactive environment where you are firefighting constantly. Because we all wanna be problem solvers, don't we? I, in inherently in an organization as a manager, you are. Most likely in enroll because you are to some extent an effective problem solver.

Jimmy 4:42

Yeah. Yeah.

Ed 4:43

It, and it helps you move up through that organization you hope. You do want your problem solving not to purely be reactive, don't you? I mean, the holy grail of all problem solving is to spin that problem solving round from reactive to proactive, or

Jimmy 5:00

Yeah.

Ed 5:00

in fact, actually more than that, from reactive to proactive and ultimately towards continuous improvement. We often think of continuous improvement and performance in different terms to problem solving. But it's the one and the same, isn't it? It's how you, it's how that problem solving manifests itself. But ultimately, if you take a term like marginal gains, which I know has been used to death in recent years, but if you wind your thinking back 20 years to when the marginal gains. of thinking reached the public consciousness under Dave Brailsford and British cycling, which, I think British cycling won 14 medals under Brailsford in the previous 70 years of Olympic games. They'd won two it was very effective. Marginal gains as a method is essentially. Root cause analysis personified, but instead of looking over your shoulder at what has happened, you're looking forward towards what could happen because root cause analysis. Although it means different things to different people, it's its essence is breaking a problem down into its constituent moving parts so that you can pick off each part individually rather than hoping that you can suddenly find some magic bullet that will make your woes vanish in one go. We can't snap our fingers and make this squad go from losers to heroes. But if we break this down and we can make a 0.5% improvement here in a 1% there. We can aggregate all of those and we'll suddenly find our way moving from the mediocre to the high performance well cause analysis, methodology, or philosophy or approach, or whatever you wanna call it, is exactly that. Break my problem down into chunks that I can actually deal with and pick those off individually and then we can move forward. It's getting away from that mindset that, there'll be some quantum leap that if I just work hard enough or look hard enough, I'll suddenly discover. I mean, the reality is in all mature organizations, low hanging fruit, unfortunately for most of us, was picked a very long time ago. Those options aren't open to us anymore.

James 7:13

So you say, as managers we are problem solvers by nature, and I think you're right. A lot of management is just professional problem solving. But why do we need a method then? What is wrong with the approaches that we've currently got?

Ed 7:25

I think a lot. I think an answer to that, James, is thinking about how problems differ as we move up through an organization. So. When we are early careers, and even when we're doing our e let's say we're working our way through a university and we're working at a fast food joint, we still get rewarded, don't we? For problem solving, for quick thinking. If we do the right thing quickly and we solve problems, ultimately we get employee of the month. We get that little gold star on our badge and well done and happy us and. we move through the organization, we typically build on that level of problem solving that quick thinking approach, don't we? And we react very quickly. We jump to conclusions and all of those behaviors like making assumptions and jumping to conclusions and not having a structure. All of those serve us pretty well when the problems we're trying to solve. A, aren't complex, and b. Don't have huge negative implications if we get them wrong. Now, as we move up through the organization, we end up dealing with problems that aren't like that. They are complex. The ramifications of getting them wrong are significant, not just for us, but for the organization and for our colleagues, therefore, the skills. Behaviors that reward us early Careers are exactly the behaviors that can start to chip us up as we move up through the management ranks.

Jimmy 9:00

like you said, when you start your career off, Of the things that I found that helped me was just being decisive.

Ed 9:06

Yes.

Jimmy 9:06

making the decision quickly when it's simple decisions, the likelihood is you don't need to think about it for ages. The trouble is, as you say, when you get further through your career. That builds your confidence. I remember thinking that I couldn't do any wrong. I couldn't make a mistake. I couldn't get anything wrong. And then all of a sudden you start making mistakes. You think, oh shit,

Ed 9:25

yep.

Jimmy 9:25

you realize it actually, it's more difficult. But the trouble is you go through a lot of your life with that blind confidence. It blinds you to possibilities, issues you. That's that you developed that quite early on,

James 9:40

So what's the better way? What should we be doing instead?

Ed 9:43

Root cause analysis means different things to different people based on what's sector they work in. But actually, if you do a sort of. Root branch diagnosis across all the different sectors, and you strip away their root cause analysis methods to the bare bones. They actually are interchangeable because they all follow the same. use the term hero's journey. It's about being so it's about making sure that you have all the verifiable information possible. That's that point of not jumping to conclusions. Second step is to make sure that you actually do understand the problem you're trying to solve. You've defined it clearly if you haven't done that. Then you are likely to have no parameters in terms of the scope and scale of what you're gonna try and fix. You won't know when it's fixed. I mean, if you haven't defined a problem clearly, how can you say when you've solved it?

Jimmy 10:39

Ed. James is getting so excited now just because on his gravestone that is what's going to be written because everyone who's ever worked with James for any amount of time

Ed 10:50

Yeah.

Jimmy 10:50

the same thing. What's the problem we're trying to fix?

Ed 10:53

what's the problem we're

Jimmy 10:54

Loves it.

James 10:55

I should.

Ed 10:55

you can't answer that. You're absolutely right. For a whole host of reasons, you've gotta define it, particularly if you're collaborating, if it's a group of people trying to solve a problem together and for the bigger problems, inevitably it will be collaborative rather than working solo.

Jimmy 11:18

Just, sorry. Just to pick up on one one small subtlety, and this may sound a bit pedantic, but you'll get where I'm coming from. We're talking about problems a lot The inference of problems is something has gone wrong and I get that's where you apply this a lot, but actually thinking more positively to what you were saying earlier. You want more of the outcomes of stuff doesn't go wrong,

Ed 11:40

oh

Jimmy 11:40

that's all about improvement and getting better and having successful outcomes. Now that as a leader in an organization that's my challenge, isn't it? I wanna do more things right and less things wrong. So yes, when something goes wrong, I can apply this thinking, but actually I can apply the thinking just to, how do I do things better? How do I get improvement from my team? How do I, whatever outcomes it is, how do I get more of them? So I think it's important just about the stuff that you talking about in both of those dimensions.

Ed 12:10

While I completely agree, as you can probably imagine, my biggest frustration is in the world of. Structured problem solving, root cause analysis, whatever you want to call it, is that probably 90% of the activity that takes place within that sort of structured framework is. Once the excrement has hit the fan and

Jimmy 12:30

Yeah.

Ed 12:31

Something's gone wrong, we need to understand why. And none of us are naive. We completely know why that is, particularly when there's governance and regulatory frameworks involved, or people's safety or reputation and the environment involved.. But you are absolutely right. The same processes, can easily be pivoted towards understanding success.

Jimmy 12:51

Yeah. Yeah.

Ed 12:51

And actually some of the most exciting work we've done over the past 12 months or so has been around strategy, has been organizations, instead of starting their analysis with X went wrong. They started with this is what we'd want. How do we achieve something? This is what we want to

Jimmy 13:06

Yeah.

Ed 13:07

How do we achieve it? that's about that problem definition.

Jimmy 13:11

yeah, so step one is have you got your, get all the evidence together? Step two was get clear on the problem. You can solve. What's next?

Ed 13:19

Problem solving is always better when it's conducted by teams, and that's because you get better evidence gathering and you get multiple perspectives. When you've got multiple perspectives and better evidence, you're gonna be more objective

Jimmy 13:32

Yeah.

Ed 13:32

a less bias. So that is always gold standard reality. Is that a luxury that's always open to us? Do we often than not operate solo or at least not as collaborative as we'd ideally like? So teams are fantastic when it comes to solving problems. And the more complex the problem with the higher risk attached to it, the more the reward of putting a good team together is self-evident.

James 14:05

but a good team is a diverse team because they have different ways of looking at the picture.

Ed 14:10

team is a diverse team.

Jimmy 14:11

So your point is a good one though. Ed, which is often, we don't have the luxury of being able to structure a team, but I get your point about diverse thinking and different solutions and different perspectives, but the, the reality is often you're on your own or with a minimal number of people that you don't get to choose.

Ed 14:30

Yeah, absolutely. It can be more of a challenge than we'd like, but I mean, certainly as a core pillar of effective problem solving, collaboration is one of those effective, non-negotiable pillars really.

James 14:46

So we've got problem statement and then we've got team. What's the next bit?

Ed 14:51

So if we take it step by step, you, your pre RCA step. Would be your team assembly. Step one is gather the necessary evidence that comes before the problem statement because you don't want your problem statement, to drive your evidence gathering. You want your evidence gathering to drive your problem statement. In other words, the information should give you a hypothesis, not the other way

James 15:13

Yeah.

Ed 15:14

From there, you move into your analytical stage, which. It is different in different RCA methods, and you've talked about a few of the methods previously. This is where we hear terms like the five wise method or the fishbone method or the cause and effect method, but they're all visual ways of mapping out a problem and the reason why they're visual. And the reason why they're causal, 'cause those are the two ingredients for effective rca, is that we want to take the analytical stage away from the verbal from the storytelling, that's verbal or whether that's written. So to in that search for clarity and that search for objectivity, that's why you'll tend to see in all RCA methods, something that is essentially a visual presentation. Of the events, granular parts of its singular moving parts. So that gives you your objectivity and your clarity, but what it also does is it gives you your it gives you your real estate, your environment for what comes next, which is the solution process.

James 16:21

But then, so what you're saying really is it's about as a method, for example, sticking post-it notes up on the wall, this happened, why did that happen? And then drawing out all the possible causes for that and pointing them at it, and then going through each of those. So why did that happen? And drawing out all of those, so you effectively get a, almost like a tree diagram or something like that. You're just getting a really granular understanding of all the possible causes of your problem. Got it.

Ed 16:48

Absolutely.

Jimmy 16:49

How do you know when you.

Ed 16:54

That's an interesting question. So obviously you're gonna live and die on the base of the evidence So root cause analysis, if it's done well, ought to be something that delivers high quality solutions. So I sometimes say root cause analysis is a solution generating engine, leads me then to say, well, what's the fuel source of that engine? And the fuel source of that engine is. Validated and verified information on to James's point about building out those sort of causal pathways in the simplest form of five why's, which starts off with your problem and you drill back five why's until you get to your root cause. More. Developed versions of that would be, as James describes, a sort of causal map if you like. And that does typically look like the branches or the roots of a tree, doesn't it? Hence the term almost root cause analysis. How do you know when you've driven back far enough? I think what you're looking to move through three distinct levels of causes. Now your first sets of causes you encounter as you drill back from ground zero of an event are what are sometimes referred to as your primary causes or your immediate causes. An example might be that, we lost our online services to a client. The primary cause of that is that our server shut down. Okay. But that's not really telling us much, is it? Other than

James 18:14

It's a bit like East Midlands railway. They'll come up and they'll tell you. They'll tell you, oh, your train has been delayed through lack of staff. At which point you think to yourself, well, why the fuck didn't you have any staff then? Yes.

Ed 18:30

stick sticking with an East Midlands theme the signage down the a 14 for at least a year now. Says we haven't got any signage due to vandalism. Well, that can't be the reason why we haven't got any signage for 12 months. It might be the reason why the signage didn't work initially, but that can't be sufficient to explain why we still don't have it now. So you're right. You've got your primary causes. They essentially are telling you what. What happened to immediately what happens to create your incident. But you fix those, typically that's firefighting. you come to next is what sometimes known as contributory causes, underlying causes, contributing factors, different terms for the same thing. I often call that the fat middle of the analysis, where that is telling you what all the sort of ingredients of your fault were. The third and final category of cause level is what is called root causes. And of course, at that point you start to move into the organization or the deeper organizational and systemic causes almost the fuel for all those contributory causes. Now, there's a little paradox here as well though, which I think does lead us onto the next step of the process. We think about solutions. Organizations, regulators and other stakeholders always talk about, we've got to get to the root cause of this problem. And understandably, say that in reality. Is it ever root cause or is it frequently root causes that we solve? Or actually do we just try and mainly put right contributory causes? Because root causes are often systemic financial challenges. They're

Jimmy 20:20

Yeah.

Ed 20:21

challenges. They can be challenges that are delivered to us externally through regulation, through law, through pressures put on us by our clients. We often love the idea of finding the root cause. In reality, even making small inroads into root causes often involves slow, painful trade-offs that ultimately we are not prepared to go down. Or at least even if we do go down on them, we know they're not going to turn the ship around particularly quickly. So actually, and this is something that I often have to say to people that we work with, which is. Root cause is a term we use, but don't overlook the contributory causes because in the main, the contributory causes are the policies we have, the tasks people are given, the

Jimmy 21:13

Yeah.

Ed 21:14

structures the resourcing and local budgeting, and we can fix those. Those are in our purview to control.

James 21:21

can I give you an example then, ed, if I've understood correctly. Then, so the train didn't turn up. Why didn't the train turn up? Because there weren't any staff. Why weren't there any staff? 'cause they were all off sick. Why were they off sick? Because they don't like the new rotor that's being forced on them. Why have they got a new rotor forced on them? Because. The organizations decided to go through some headcount savings

Ed 21:41

Yes.

James 21:42

the question is, at what point can you cut into that and make something useful of it?

Ed 21:46

Yeah.

Jimmy 21:46

Well, I suppose, I suppose one, one of the challenges is that with the pressure on us is often to answer quickly and to move quickly, and so therefore it's how do you get the balance between that push to move quickly and actually you've got to get deep enough, and like you say, you can't always get. To the granular route. 'cause in James' example, yeah, they've made cost savings. Why did they have to do that? What was it that caused them to do that? And you could keep going on, it's at what level do you go to I another example I read earlier today a very interesting article written by someone about the correlation between football managers, the number of managers you have and the success you have, and the

Ed 22:28

Yeah,

Jimmy 22:29

good article.

Ed 22:29

the internet alive, that one,

Jimmy 22:31

It did. It did. But the point being, that's often what happens in football teams under performance. Get rid of the manager. And, we were talking Ed, without pointing finger at you as a Tottenham supporter who's possibly facing allegation, it's always replaced the manager.

Ed 22:48

probably facing relegation. Jimmy?

Jimmy 22:51

Possibly. Possibly. But the point is. There's some systemic things that are wrong with the club that

Ed 22:58

Yes.

Jimmy 22:59

issues that happen, but you deal with it.

Ed 23:03

Yeah. Yeah.

James 23:09

But then, so what you're telling me, ed actually is,, you could go on and on forever with your flipping root cause analysis. The real point is at what point do you cut in with some solutions and how do you know those solutions are gonna work? Is that a fair statement?

Ed 23:23

absolutely., I think we maybe we'll play with the football analogy a little further, but if you think about, if you can imagine building out root cause analysis chart of. Substantial failing at a football club. And it does look like the sort of roots of a tree, ultimately going back to a number of root causes. And you almost split it into three waves. That first wave is your primary causes of failure, of relegation, let's say. And they may ultimately be a poor manager and insufficient squad, for example, and. Ultimately those are true, but you're not, if you swap your manager out and you just buy ad hoc again, then you are gonna have a poor manager and a poor squad this time next year as well. If you haven't solved, what were the, what were the incentives to do it badly and. My team are a team who have probably have just repeated that cycle several times, and they're an example a leadership team who have focused on those primary causes because they've been desperate to stabilize the ship. so they've panicked. They go into fix the primary causes stabilization mode. It stabilizes the ship for a limited period of time, and that might be a month, it might be a season. But ultimately what you've seen over a period of 15 years or so is that cycle repeat itself. They'd gone a bit deeper into. The fuel source of the problem into the contributory causes, it would be a lot better, and they probably reflect more correctly, reflect a lot of the mid table teams, because if you go to contributory causes, you move away from stabilization to strengthening. At that point, you strengthen the organization. you won't be, they'll never be elite will they? Because all they've really done is strengthened an existing framework. If they were able, if a club is able to push through to the root causes. You then have less stabilization behind and arguably you've even less strengthening behind. And you've moved into transformation.

James 25:32

So what? What makes a good solution? And so accepting that you never get to the ultimate root cause. 'cause you go on and on. What makes a good solution?

Ed 25:43

Within a root cause analysis framework, the root to a good solution is. Essentially plural. It is getting away from that mindset that there must be a solution. That there must be a fix. That there must be a right answer, which is another thing that we are taught when we're at primary school, isn't it? Humans, we like a simple answer. To a complex problem, and I think that's partly why we have recurrent issues. What a root cause analysis method, home to you, whether you like it or not, is that your problem is not gonna be solved by a single solution that your problem has. Root cause is a number of cause. It's not a root cause. That's one of the reasons why that, Complex organizations apply simple root cause analysis methods like five why's that lead them on a single pathway to a singular root cause and apply a fix there. It's why they don't ever make the problem go away. It's why they get caught out again, because they've probably solved one of the root causes to a complex problem, not. All of the root causes. To solve the problem, we're gonna need multiple causes. Some of those might be at the primary cause level. A good number will probably be at the contributory cause level. And if we're very patient and very lucky, we might be able to fix some of the genuine root causes.

James 27:20

Okay, but so what you're saying is if you really want to solve a problem, it's, you've got to make multiple interventions to do it.

Ed 27:27

because there will be multiple causes.

James 27:29

Yeah. So recognizing I've got a whole host of interventions I could make. How do I know the A good intervention or not?

Ed 27:37

The easiest way to think about it is implementing what is sometimes known as the golden four criteria or the universal four. I sometimes lazily call 'em the big four.

James 27:47

Yeah.

Ed 27:47

got a solution to to evaluate for want of a better word, gonna have four criteria. I'm gonna first of all ask myself, will it be effective? I've revealed a cause, and now I'm gonna try and fix it. I've gotta propose solution. Will it be effective?

James 28:03

Yeah. So will it work?

Ed 28:04

Yeah. Will it work? Will it break the causal chain in ultimately? The second question I'm gonna ask, have to ask myself is, can I actually do this? Do I have the expertise? Do I have the time to have the resource? Is it, does it fit within our legal governance framework? So assuming I can implement it, it's effective, I can implement it. So far so good.

James 28:28

Yeah.

Ed 28:28

third one. Third one of course is can I afford it? My first three are straightforward. I think most of us can do those. Will it be effective? Can I implement it and can I forward it? fourth one is slightly more challenging at times, and that is about really summed up in the term of sort of unintended consequences or negative So maybe something is effective, implementable, and affordable, but. Would it affect the reputation of the business? Would it have an impact on morale? Does it simply move risk from one part of the organization, my department to another? Is it gonna create disruption amongst the team? All those types of factors that the, but assuming something passes all four of those criteria. You've made a pretty compelling case for that solution.

James 29:19

And then presumably, once you've got to that point and everybody's happy, it's a question of it.

Ed 29:26

It's a question of trying it, it's possibly a case of recognizing whether it's a short-term, medium or long-term solution as well.

James 29:33

Yeah.

Ed 29:33

not there's anything wrong with short-term fixes because they're essential at times, but we probably also want to. We want to be looking at our solutions and have that sort of balanced portfolio of short, medium, and long-term solutions as well. Short-term solutions are particularly good if they are being used strategically to buy us time for those longer term solutions,

James 29:54

And what about, so you then implemented your solution and the risk of leading the jury, or, I've seen plenty of occasions where people have implemented solutions. And then just left it at that. We put in a fix, but the fix hasn't necessarily worked.

Ed 30:11

Well, I would say in my experience, the biggest failing of organizations that have put in structured problem solving is to fail at that final hurdle. It's not to revisit those solutions further down the line. It's just to assume that we've done it we've completed some form of action, therefore. it's effectively job done at that point. And if you think about it from a purely logical perspective and let's say you've moved into this arena where you are conducting root cause analysis at scale to drive improvement in your business. Why is that root cause analysis gonna fail? I mean, there's three reasons really. One is your analysis was wrong in the first place, so you missed stuff. The second is that you didn't generate the necessary solutions.. And the third and final one is the one that you mentioned that your analysis is great, your proposed solutions are amazing, but actually you never really implemented and tracked them. So ultimately they weren't nurtured.

Jimmy 31:09

Organizations in general just wanna do stuff and move on, but particularly when something goes wrong, quite often it's like, we wanna put it behind us. I went and helped an organization not so long ago, solve a massive problem. It was existential problem for them. And we, when we, as soon as we got it started to get it moving, everyone wanted to talk about something else.

Ed 31:32

course.

Jimmy 31:33

It's like, I don't wanna talk about it anymore. I wanna talk about other stuff. So, to your point, if you don't see it through and make sure it's sustainable and, and carry on it it may well crop up again, but I can understand the kind of what drives that, if you like.

Ed 31:47

Of course. And with the, I think how many people talk about COVID in any detail these days, for most people, that's, that was such an existential threat that once it was done and dusted, it was time to move on and don't look over your shoulder.

James 31:59

So let me have a quick summary then. Number one, get your data. Don't try and re reverse fit it. Get your data to start off with. Number two, if you can get a team, the more diverse the team, the better. Number three. What is the problem we're trying to fix? Write down your problem four. Then it's a question of, I mean, it is the five whys, but it's doing the five whys as a route, as a Yeah. Branched route. It's just draw it out. What are the causes and the really reason for drawing it out is so people can see what the assumptions are. Yeah. Once you've done that, decide where you're gonna attack. Hack away at that route. So a number of different solutions. prioritize them using the core four. If you can't remember what the core four is, you'd have to go back and listen again. But then it's a question of well check, see if it works and repeat. And it is as simple as that. How to do, go and gimme a mark out of 10.

Ed 32:51

Fantastic. I'd say a strong nine plus. And the only reason you didn't get a 10

James 32:56

I'll go on.

Ed 32:56

be, well, it's probably only because I think. we were really gonna go gold standard, The cherry on top is to make sure that we communicate what we've learned and what we're gonna do about it with real clarity to our colleagues, because ultimately we all need to stand on the shoulders of giants. We're all learning from other people and. that closes the loop that you were talking about earlier.

jimmy_2_04-24-2026_151618 33:19

A couple of bits that I would've picked up as well, ed, I think one was. That actually, this is not the preserve of just root cause analysis teams. This is anyone who's got complex problems to solve, which is absolutely any manager in any organization. Whether that's stuff going wrong or more importantly, to your point, stuff going right and how do you do more stuff, right. I think that was a big takeaway for me. The second one was. When you get to the root cause, it's just getting deep enough knowing that you can't get to the perfect answer. But what level do you need to go so you're not too superficial? But you get right to the level of the problem that can really help move it forward. And then understanding that complex problems don't have one solution.

ed-wells_2_04-24-2026_151616 34:02

Yeah.

jimmy_2_04-24-2026_151618 34:03

Tempted to.

ed-wells_2_04-24-2026_151616 34:10

Yeah, there. Yeah. I, I agree. To just summarize, really what I would say is that whether we are talking about this as, as individuals or as groups at the local level, or the sort of global corporate level, we often think of root cause analysis as a method, which undoubtedly it is. But I'm much more comfortable with the term approach. I think if we've got that kind of root cause analysis approach and we

jimmy_2_04-24-2026_151618 34:35

Yeah.

ed-wells_2_04-24-2026_151616 34:35

use those little way stations along the way to keep us on track, to slow us down, because there is an element of the. Tor and the hare when it comes to, to, to problem solving. We all want to be the tortoise 'cause we know the tortoise wins. But typically we fall into the trap of being the hare and race towards the finish and we miss the detail and we make assumptions and jump to conclusions. And then we don't win the race because ultimately we haven't done what needs to be done.

james_2_04-24-2026_151616 35:02

Very good. So Ed, if people want to learn more, where should they go Looking?

ed-wells_2_04-24-2026_151616 35:07

They should come and see us online at www.whatcausedthis.com, and they can see our fabulous technological solutions and they can also see what we can do for them in l and d and training and help them solve those complex problems in their business.

james_2_04-24-2026_151616 35:26

Super, and we'll put that in the show notes as well. Lovely;././///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////,,,,,,. Well thank you very much for your time. I enjoyed that, Jimmy. I thought that was fascinating.

jimmy_2_04-24-2026_151618 35:34

Only because Ed gave your, your favorite /saying of what we're trying to solve here.

ed-wells_2_04-24-2026_151616 35:39

Uh.

jimmy_2_04-24-2026_151618 35:39

you. It didn't matter what else was said once that was said, you all over it. Well, thank,

james_2_04-24-2026_151616 35:46

Thank.

ed-wells_2_04-24-2026_151616 35:47

Brilliant.

jimmy_2_04-24-2026_151618 35:48

thanks, ed. Really appreciate.

ed-wells_2_04-24-2026_151616 35:50

pleasure.

Speaker 2 35:50

We cover a whole host of topics on this podcast

Speaker 3 35:53

from purpose to corporate jargon,

Speaker 2 35:55

but always focused on one thing, getting the job done well,

Speaker 3 35:59

easier said than done. So if you've got. Unhappy customers or employees, bosses or regulators breathing down your neck.

Speaker 2 36:08

If your backlogs are outta control and your costs are spiraling and that big IT transformation project that you've been promised, just keeps failing to deliver,

Speaker 3 36:17

we can help. If you need to improve your performance, your team's performance, or your organizations, get in touch at Jimmy at@jobdonewell.com orJames@jobdonewell.com.