Man - I don't envy that guy

In an episode of The Simpsons dating back almost a decade, Homer is so overwhelmed with his adult responsibilities that he decides to shirk them by getting drunk. He justifies his choice by stating;

“That’s a problem for future Homer...
Man, I don’t envy that guy!”

Homer’s is a clear choice between dealing with the tough decisions of now, versus kicking them into the long grass for another day. All the while knowing it will be more problematic for him (and others) later.  It’s this kind of decision making that many of us display or encounter day after day in our working lives.  Problems come along and we do our best to ignore them, deny they’re really a problem at all, patch them with a quick fix, or if we possibly can, bump them upstream or downstream for as long as we can.



Many of us just don’t feel confident that we have the time, resources or support to manage big problems in an effective or structured way. We’re used to hearing objections like ‘we just don’t have time for this’ or ‘let’s just get it up and running for now’ or ‘we are already way too busy for this’.  But deep down we know that this is faulty logic and that these problems are always going to catch up with us in the end.

Arguably most of us do this because our decision making is based on a major oversight – namely that we ARE already dealing with these problems.  BUT we’re dealing with them in the least efficient, least predictable and least effective way that our organisations could possibly tolerate. It’s only because many problems are so drawn out, so thinly and widely spread across an organisation that we can somehow compartmentalise and delude ourselves that the problems are anything but massive.

In fact, it’s not uncommon for us to become so conditioned to the problems around us that even though we’re fighting exactly the same fires over and over again, we cannot see them for what they really are.  

The tale of the fish and the frog springs to mind:

Two young fish are swimming across a pond and a wise old frog calls down to them from his lily pad. “Hey boys, how’s the water?” he calls.  They look at each other, embarrassed, and swim on by.  Once they are a safe distance away, one fish turns to the other and asks, “So, what’s water?”  

You see, when you’re in it, you don’t know what ‘it’ is. 

Once we recognise that our problems share root causes that can be addressed, we discover that putting time into solving these problems is NOT more work. On the contrary, it’s the biggest resource saver available. Through a dedicated, effective program of uncovering and tackling root causes we can start to save huge chunks of time and money and use the outcomes for value-added problem solving; for design, for creativity, for improvement, for efficiency and for planning.  

If you want to know more about how our Root Cause Analysis and Tactical Problem Solving methodology could help your organisation solve problems, reduce risk and improve performance please contact us.