“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” | Dan Heath in Upstream
So, if we’re attempting to figure out how to fix bad outcomes/outputs, we’re best served if we ignore the specific incident at hand and move upstream to figure out how the system design allowed it.
To make that more concrete – if we’re regularly losing our temper in the second half of the day for example, it may just be that our sleep/nutrition/fitness systems are not providing us the energy we need to be at our best. And, it likely has little to do with the project or people involved.
The key is to always start with the assumption that the problems we’re facing have solutions rooted in the system vs. the specific incident at hand.
And, that assumption generally holds up well.