Your competitor just tried something which reduced their employee turnover. You decided to try the same thing and the result was shockingly bad. Your employee turnover actually went up!! How did that happen? The answer lies in the dynamics of the root causes, symptoms and solutions of your employee turnover.
There are certain things which are true about your organizations employee turnover:
- Your root causes are shared among many organizations
- Your symptoms are mostly shared with some being specific
- Your solutions are specific to your organization
Every one of your root causes is shared among organizations in the world. Which organizations have one or more of your root causes will not be known or available to you. The number of root causes is a large but finite number. The root causes will be spread throughout the organizations and only a root cause analysis will determine which organizations have which root causes. Using a medical analogy, for every 100 patients coming in with leg pain – 50% will have a broken leg, 30% will have a sprain, 10% will have a torn ligament and the rest will be a large number of other problems. When the person comes in the door you will not know immediately what the root problem is.
Organizations do not know how bad something is - until they start to make it better
Symptoms, on the other hand, are the same in organizations but with slight variations due to the company. The degree which the symptoms are displaying might even shadow the symptom itself. Back to our medical analogy, the base symptoms might lead you to believe a certain root cause is present. However, a root cause analysis will discover which of the root causes are actually present. This will lead to the last part of this – the solutions.
The solutions will always be specific to the organization. This is due to the specifics of the organizational culture, demographics, values, mission, strategies and so on. The solutions in some cases will be different in relatively small nuanced ways. But it is those very nuances that will make the solutions work. This is where the solutions must be carefully crafted, expertly executed with a quick eye to when an adjustment in the solution is necessary. The ability to recognize an issue in the initial solution and make the necessary adjustment(s) is priceless. As with sailing a boat the minor steering corrections are what gets you to your destination.
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