3) Diagnosing the Problems

It is a very common mistake for people to move directly from identifying a tough problem to a proposed solution in a nanosecond without spending the hours required to properly diagnose and design a solution. This typically yields bad decisions that don’t alleviate the problem. Diagnosing and designing are what spark strategic thinking.

You must be calm and logical.

Root causes, like principles, are things that manifest themselves over and over again as the deep- seated reasons behind the actions that cause problems. So you will get many everlasting dividends if you can find them and properly deal with them.

It is important to distinguish root causes from proximate causes. Proximate causes typically are the actions or lack of actions that lead to problems—e.g., “I missed the train because I didn’t check the train schedule.” So proximate causes are typically described via verbs. Root causes are the deeper reasons behind the proximate cause: “I didn’t check the schedule because I am forgetful”—a root cause. Root causes are typically described with adjectives, usually characteristics about what the person is like that lead them to an action or an inaction.

Many problems are caused by people’s mistakes. But people often find it difficult to identify and accept their own mistakes. Sometimes it’s because they’re blind to them, but more often it’s because ego and shortsightedness make discovering their mistakes and weaknesses painful. (As I mentioned in the last chapter, most learning comes from making mistakes and experiencing the pain of them—e.g., putting your hand on a hot stove—and adapting.) It is at this stage that most people fail to progress.

I call the pain that comes from looking at yourself and others objectively “growing pains,” because it is the pain that accompanies personal growth. No pain, no gain. Of course, anyone who really understands that no one is perfect and that these discoveries are essential for personal growth finds that these discoveries elicit “growing pleasures.” But it seems to be in our nature to overly focus on short-term gratification rather than long-term satisfaction—on first-order rather than second- or third-order consequences—so the connection between this behavior and the rewards it brings doesn’t come naturally.

Remember : Pain + Reflection = Progress

There is no getting around the fact that achieving success requires getting at the root causes of all important problems, and people’s mistakes and weaknesses are sometimes the root causes. Of course, some problems aren’t caused by people making mistakes. For example, if lightning strikes, it causes problems that have nothing to do with human error.

The most important qualities for successfully diagnosing problems are logic, the ability to see multiple possibilities, and the willingness to touch people’s nerves to overcome the ego barriers that stand in the way of truth.

In diagnosing problems, how willing are you to “touch the nerve” (i.e., discuss your and others possible mistakes and weaknesses with them)?

Are you willing to get at root causes, like what people are like?

Are you good at seeing the patterns and synthesizing them into diagnoses of root causes?

4) Designing the Plan (Determining the Solutions)

In some cases, you might go from setting goals to designing the plans that will get you to these goals; while in other cases, you will encounter problems on the way to your goals and have to design your way around them. So design will occur at both stages of the process, though it will occur much more often in figuring out how to get around problems.

Creating a design is like writing a movie script in that you visualize who will do what through time in order to achieve the goal.

designing solutions, the objective is to change how you do things so that problems don’t recur—or recur so often. Think about each problem individually, and as the product of root causes—like the outcomes produced by a machine. Then think about how the machine should be changed to produce good outcomes rather than bad ones.

But an effective design requires thinking things through and visualizing how things will come together and unfold over time. It’s essential to visualize the story of where you have been (or what you have done) that has led you to where you are now and what will happen sequentially in the future to lead you to your goals. You should visualize this plan through time, like watching a movie that connects your past, present, and future.

Then write down the plan so you don’t lose sight of it, and include who needs to do what and when. The list of tasks falls out from this story (i.e., the plan), but they are not the same. The story, or plan, is what connects your goals to the tasks. For you to succeed, you must not lose sight of the goals or the story while focusing on the tasks; you must constantly refer back and forth.

When designing your plan, think about the timelines of various interconnected tasks. Sketch them out loosely and then refine them with the specific tasks. This is an iterative process, alternating between sketching out your broad steps (e.g., hire great people) and filling these in with more specific tasks with estimated timelines (e.g., in the next two weeks choose the headhunters to find the great people) that will have implications (e.g., costs, time, etc.). These will lead you to modify your design sketch until the design and tasks work well together. Being as specific as possible (e.g., specifying who will do what and when) allows you to visualize how the design will work at both a big-picture level and in detail.

Of course, not all plans will accomplish everything you want in the desired time frame. In such cases, it is essential that you look at what won’t be accomplished and ask yourself if the consequences are acceptable or unacceptable. This is where perspective is required, and discussing it with others can be critical. If the plan will not achieve what’s necessary in the required time, so that the consequences have an unacceptably high probability of preventing you from achieving your goal, you have to either think harder (probably with the advice of other believable people) to make the plan do what is required or reduce your goals.

People successful with this stage have an ability to visualize and a practical understanding of how things really work. Remember, you don’t have to possess all these qualities if you have someone to help you with the ones you are missing.

Remember: Designing precedes doing! The design will give you your to-do list (i.e., the tasks).

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5) Doing the Tasks

Next, you need to “push through” to accomplish the goals. This requires the self-discipline to follow the script that is your design.

I believe the importance of good work habits is vastly underrated. People with good work habits have to-do lists that are reasonably prioritized, and they make themselves do what needs to be done. By contrast, people with poor work habits almost randomly react to the stuff that comes at them, or they can’t bring themselves to do the things they need to do but don’t like to do (or are unable to do). There are lots of tools that can help (e.g., thank God for my BlackBerry!)

People who are good at this stage can reliably execute a plan. They tend to be self-disciplined and proactive rather than reactive to the blizzard of daily tasks that can divert them from execution. They are results-oriented: they love to push themselves over the finish line to achieve the goal. If they see that daily tasks are taking them away from executing the plan (i.e., they identify this problem), they diagnose it and design how they can deal with both the daily tasks and moving forward with the plan.

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The Relationships between These Steps

Designs and tasks have no purpose other than to achieve your goals. Said differently, goals are the sole purpose of designs and tasks. So you mustn’t forget how they’re related. Frequently I see people feel great about doing their tasks while forgetting the goals they were designed to achieve, resulting in the failure to achieve their goals. In order to be successful, your goals must be riveted in your mind: they are the things you MUST do. To remember the connections between the tasks and the goals that they are meant to achieve, you just have to ask, “Why?” It is good to connect tasks to goals this way (with the “Why?”), because losing sight of the connections will prevent you from succeeding.

this 5-Step Process is iterative. If this process is working, goals will change much more slowly than designs, which will change more slowly than tasks. Designs and tasks can be modified or changed often (because you might want to reassess how to achieve the goal), but changing goals frequently is usually a problem because achieving them requires a consistent effort. I often find that people who have problems reaching their goals handle these steps backwards; that is, they stick too rigidly to specified tasks and are not committed enough to achieving their goals (often because they lose sight of them).

Weaknesses Don’t Matter if You Find Solutions

To repeat, the best advice I can give you is to ask yourself what you want, then ask ‘what is true,’ and then ask yourself ‘what should be done about it.’ If you honestly ask and answer these questions you will move much faster towards what you want to get out of life than if you don’t!

As I mentioned before, everyone has weaknesses. The main difference between unsuccessful and successful people is that unsuccessful people don’t find and address them, and successful people do.

It is difficult to see one’s own blind spots for two reasons:

1) Most people don’t go looking for their weaknesses because of “ego barriers”—they find having weaknesses painful because society has taught them that having weaknesses is bad.

2) Having a weakness is like missing a sense—if you can’t visualize what it is, it’s hard to perceive not having it.

For these two reasons, having people show you what you are missing can be painful, though its essential for your progress. When you encounter that pain, try to remember that you can get what you want out of life if you can open-mindedly reflect, with the help of others, on what is standing in your way and then deal with it.

What do you think is the biggest weakness you have that stands in the way of what you want – the one that you repeatedly run into?

To repeat, the five steps and the qualities that I believe are required to be good at them are as follows:

Values→ 1) Goals → 2) Problems → 3) Diagnoses → 4) Designs → 5) Tasks

The pain of problems is a call to find solutions rather than a reason for unhappiness and inaction, so it’s silly, pointless, and harmful to be upset at the problems and choices that come at you (though it’s understandable);

We all evolve at different paces, and it’s up to you to decide the pace at which you want to evolve;

The process goes better if you are as accurate as possible in all respects, including assessing your strengths and weaknesses and adapting to them.

The organization Outward Bound has a concept that is helpful in thinking about the optimal pace of personal evolution. They speak of a comfort zone, a stretch zone and a panic zone. It’s best to spend most of your time in the stretch zone.

（ The management Principle is not so pressing useful to me. So it's the end of the note on self-evolution Principle.）