Treating the symptoms

I have had a variety of intestinal ailments for more than thirty years.  In the last two weeks, I have had some nasty symptoms.  My response has largely been in the area of treating just the symptoms and not really the causes. Pain usually means we go right after the symptoms to stop the suffering as fast as possible. Dealing the with causes requires a change in behavior and the patience to see the changes take effect.

Guess what? Our business issues are the same. Drops in revenue or service levels, customer complaints, systems failures; whatever the pain we tend to go right after the symptoms rather than address the causes.  But in business as in our own health, the long term solution that addresses root causes is the only way to permanently eliminate the symptoms.