How to Stop Solving the Same Problems Over and Over Again

Let maine show you a speedy story.

There was a caller municipality successful Norway backmost successful the 1990s, built by a rich | oligarch who decided to create a caller colony and unrecorded there. For astir 5 years aft the municipality was created, houses location kept catching fire. Firefighters would come, put retired the fire, spell location and travel backmost the adjacent time. They moreover hired much firefighters and extinguished much fires.

Now, this was a acold town. Fires breaking retired each different time made nary sense. Everyone was asking, “How do we conflict this occurrence better?” Eventually, 1 of the residents sewage crisp and asked a different question: “Why does this occurrence support breaking out, and really do we extremity it from happening successful the first place?”

What they found: The contractor who built the municipality had utilized a thin, highly flammable worldly supra the bricks for soundproofing successful each room, including the kitchens. Every room successful each location was fundamentally a occurrence waiting to happen. The hole was simple: Break into each room and region that layer. They besides installed a instrumentality successful each location that alerted the occurrence position the infinitesimal fume was detected. We cognize it coming arsenic a fume alarm.

After fixing the guidelines cause, the occurrence outbreaks stopped entirely.

That’s systemization thinking. The firefighters were moving difficult and thought they were sidesplitting it. But moving difficult wrong a strategy that could beryllium fixed is not efficient. A crisp personification sees the difference.

That communicative is fictional, but you get the point.

So what is systemization thinking?

Systemization reasoning is the wont of seeing things arsenic systems alternatively of isolated events.

Instead of asking, “How do I lick this problem correct now?” You ask, “What process, building aliases system tin lick this repeatedly, pinch little effort, each clip it comes up?”

A normal philosopher looks astatine slow customer support, for example, and says, “Let’s reply faster.” A systemization philosopher asks why support is slow successful the first place, past builds templates, routing rules and automations truthful that velocity becomes automatic and doesn’t dangle connected anyone trying harder.

1. Everything is simply a process

Every repeated outcome, bully aliases bad, comes from a process, whether you designed it intentionally aliases not. Employees ever late? Customers ever confused? Same bugs recurring? Probably a systems issue.

The small heart astir group person is to blasted the people. The sharper small heart is to inquire what strategy produced this outcome, and past hole the system.

2. Stop solving the aforesaid problem 3 times

If you’ve fixed thing manually 3 times, that’s a motion it needs a imperishable solution, not a 4th manual fix. Don’t trust connected representation aliases connected personification being available.

I said pinch personification who utilized to activity astatine McDonald’s. On his first day, he was already making burgers, moreover though he’d ne'er cooked before. McDonald’s doesn’t trust connected talented burger makers. It relies connected a strategy and a elemental checklist. The strategy produces the burger, not the person’s earthy ability. That’s systemization.

3. Repeatability thumps genius

A brilliant one-time consequence is little valuable than an mean consequence that happens reliably each time.

A fewer years ago, we were surviving location acold from the city, and uncovering a maid was astir impossible. No nationalist carrier reached there, and nary maid was going to return an Uber to activity each day. Person aft personification came for the interview, saw really acold it was and ne'er came back.

Then 1 female came in, started the occupation and kept coming. She’d gone connected a Facebook group afloat of drivers and negotiated a deal: aforesaid driver, greeting and evening, fixed monthly rate. She identified the problem, built a repeatable solution and executed it. We kept her. That benignant of reasoning is what separates personification who survives a difficult business from personification who conscionable complains astir it.

4. Think successful inputs → process → outputs

When thing goes wrong, don’t conscionable look astatine the outcome. Trace it back. Bad app reviews? Instead of “users are angry,” ask: What inputs caused this? Where did the process fail? What metrics would person revealed this earlier? Find wherever the strategy broke, not conscionable wherever the symptom showed up.

5. Don’t beryllium busy, beryllium efficient

Busy intends you’re ever doing something. Efficient intends what you’re doing really produces the champion consequence successful the slightest magnitude of time.

For example, if I had astir 940 package programs to review, I could constitute a archive connected really they should beryllium reviewed and delegate personification to reappraisal them 1 by one. The personification would beryllium highly busy. Instead, that aforesaid archive could go an AI skill that does the reappraisal 100x faster, and the assigned personification would only reappraisal the shortlist manually for value assurance.

Busy feels productive, but if astatine the extremity of the time the output doesn’t lucifer the hours, the hours don’t matter. A batch of what group telephone “hard work” is really conscionable an inefficient strategy that cipher has bothered to fix. “Work smarter, not harder” is simply a cliché because it’s true.

The difficult portion of systemization

People deliberation erstwhile you build a system, the problem is solved. Not each time. A strategy itself has to beryllium maintained, enforced, monitored and improved. SOPs are the astir communal shape of systemization, and they’re genuinely difficult to support alive. You’ll constitute a really bully 1 and consciousness bully astir it, past six months later, recognize cipher is pursuing it, cipher has updated it and the squad has softly gone backmost to doing things the measurement they want.

A severely designed aliases poorly enforced strategy tin create much activity than nary strategy astatine all. And a strategy that lives only successful a archive cipher opens is not a system; it’s conscionable writing.

This is why civilization matters much than immoderate individual system. Systemization requires proactivity: People person to spot a problem earlier it becomes a crisis, attraction capable to build a lasting solution and defy the easier action of conscionable handling it manually again.

The summary

Stop solving the aforesaid problem much than 3 times. When thing keeps breaking, hole the system, not conscionable the symptom. Build processes that activity without a azygous constituent of failure. And remember, a strategy is only arsenic bully arsenic the civilization that maintains it.