Declaring Victory At The Wrong Moment

This might be seem like a familiar story:

A stubborn & persistent problem finally starts to move. The KPIs improve, revenue is up, and the pressure across the organization starts to decompress. A big sigh of relief is taken collectively, and everything feels like business as usual again.

But somewhere between six months and two years later, the problem is back again. This time, it feels worse than it did before. KPIs drop lower, revenue is lower, and resentment is starting to build across the organization.

One of the most common interpretations is read the situation as failure of execution.

The team didn't hold the line, management got distracted, or perhaps someone/some people dropped the ball. But this ends up being the same interpretation every time problems seem to circle back and get worse. The organization's collective memory gets shorter, and tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity gets lower.

Another interpretation takes a more simple approach to diagnosing the problem... and yet it is harder to fix: the "victory" was declared at the wrong moment.

You see, when a problem gets better, it tells you one thing: conditions moved in a favorable direction. That is worth noticing, and perhaps a quick acknowledgement.

But is it worth celebrating? Probably not... at least not yet.

The more important question is whether the conditions that produced the problem in the first place have actually changed. Unfortunately, this is usually not the

This is due to our current nature as humans to diagnose a more complex challenge with a known solution. It is also due to our lack of perception of how far away in time an space cause and effect really are.

Outcomes are lagging indicators. By the time a problem shows up clearly in the numbers, it has been building for a while. Additionally, by the time the numbers start improving, the underlying conditions may still be pointed in the wrong direction. Therein lies the trap for early celebration over patience for longer-term measurement of outcomes.

Most people are only trained to manage what they can measure... and measurement is almost always viewed through the lens of and outcomes and results, not the conditions that produced it. So they optimize for the signals of success while the source of the problem continues, largely unexamined, beneath the surface. The single-loop learning question of "how do we fix this?' only makes so much progress: the double-loop learning question of "what lead us to these conclusions in the first place?" offer better chances of diagnosing root cause work.

Real progress requires that double loop learning type of diagnosis. It prevents premature celebration, because the questions around root causes remains either unaddressed, or unresolved.

To make progress on root cause work often looks slower in the short term. It may get worse before better ... in fact many patterns of root cause work look like that. It requires staying curious when the numbers give you permission to relax. It requires asking uncomfortable questions precisely when the pressure lets up, because that is when the real work can happen.

Celebrating improvement is fine. Stopping the inquiry because things are looking better is where most problems are quietly given permission to return.