Acting on a wrong cause costs money, time and effort. According to the source, the most expensive item on the bill is the real problem, which keeps operating undisturbed for as long as you are busy with the wrong fix.

In this booklet, a cause is the thing that brings the numbers back once you correct it. The booklet calls the cause the Why. A wrong cause is one that was identified incorrectly, and acting on it makes things worse. This chapter shows what that costs, and one complete case in which the real cause was found.

What a wrong cause costs

The source does not put it gently: “Acting on a wrong Why” is the stuff of which coffins are made.

It then breaks the bill into four parts. The first says that no matter how brilliant the program that follows, you are left with the same old mud. The second, and the one that hurts most in a small business, says that wrong causes work people half to death on a program that will lay ostrich eggs, and rotten ones at that. The third says it costs money and time that cannot easily be afforded.

The fourth is the real point. According to the source, a wrong cause draws your eye away from the real tiger in the woods, who is left to roar and eat the goats while everyone chases ghosts.

So the biggest cost is the real problem carrying on untouched while you were occupied elsewhere. For a small business that typically means three to six months, and no ledger records it.

Say an owner spent a whole quarter improving his website. The real problem was that nobody answered the phone, and it kept running in the background all quarter.

Or an owner spent half a year on a sales course when the problem was that she was not reaching customers at all, which had nothing to do with how she spoke to them.

Or an installer switched suppliers over quality. The number of complaints stayed the same, because they came from the installation and had nothing to do with the materials.

A complete case that starts from an outpoint

According to the booklet, this is the most complete case in the whole source, and it starts from an outpoint, a piece of data that does not fit, instead of from a problem. Reports across the business carry irrelevant data, and all of those outpoints lead to Reception.

The ideal scene of Reception is simple: a pleasant, attractive atmosphere that welcomes the public in. Then more detailed reports arrive, showing that the place is full of junk and filthy. That gives the situation, meaning a state of affairs nobody expected: the public is repelled by a filthy, messy Reception. After the situation comes one short question: why?

Notice the sequence. Nobody began with the claim that something was wrong at Reception. They got there through outpoints in reports, which is the reverse of how most people work.

Say an owner starts from a small outpoint, three quotes with no date on them, and arrives at a situation: quotes are being sent from memory.

Or an owner sees the same customer twice in one report and arrives at a situation: she has no single customer list at all.

The tempting fix that does not work

Now comes the part every business owner recognises. You go back to the data and find that the janitor never cleans the place, or does anything else. The easy way out is to sack the janitor and leave the post empty. The source stops that with one sentence: it will not handle, so there is no cause here.

This is the critical moment of the whole case. The fact is correct, since the janitor really does not clean, and an obvious action follows from it. The source still disqualifies it on one criterion alone: firing him will not handle the problem. Afterwards the post is empty and the place is still dirty, and a new person in the role meets exactly the same problem.

Say an owner fired an employee who was not hitting targets. The next employee missed them too, because the targets were not achievable.

Or an owner switched suppliers, and then did it again in the same year. Both new suppliers were late, because her orders went out too late. When she checked when she places them and moved the order a week earlier, the delays disappeared.

The cause nobody would have guessed

Then comes the last stretch of digging. You keep going, and suddenly you find that the staff speak of the janitor in low, disrespectful terms. The janitor has no status. All the outpoints say so, and it opens the door to handling.

The handling had nothing to do with the janitor himself. The post was placed under another line of authority that gave it standing, and someone wrote a plan for cleaning the offices. The outcome, in the source's words: “Magic! The offices get clean! The public again comes in.”

The booklet puts this case through its three tests, and all three hold. There was surprise, because nobody would have guessed the problem was status. There was a door, because once it was found it was clear what to do. And there were numbers, because the public came back. That is why it can be called the cause.

Say an owner discovers that his receptionist is the one person on the team with no company email address. That was why she never knew anything.

Or an installer discovers that his assistant does not introduce himself by name at the customer's door, because nobody ever told him he was allowed to.

According to the booklet, the real cause is almost always small and unexpected, and it has more to do with structure than with anybody's good will.

What the booklet has on this

The chapter this article draws on includes two exercises: the price, and the complete case. After the self-check, the ten chapters are followed by a practice and application section with five exercises, a glossary and a summary.

Every month you spend on the wrong cause is a month in which the real problem works quietly. That is why it is worth digging on until something surprises you.