Start with what you can see

What are you seeing?

Choose what is being experienced first. Leave the proposed solution aside for a moment.

Seven places worth looking

These are not stages, levels or scores. Each lens is a place to look, and every one of them touches the others. A problem may sit in one lens or in several at once.

What changes when the response matches the real limit?

Pick a situation, then try a response. The same response can help in one situation and do very little in another. The difference is what is actually limiting the outcome.

Illustrative systems model — not a forecast or business diagnosis. Capacities are example assumptions in arbitrary units per week; the “output” of the system is simply its most limited stage. Effect sizes are invented to show the logic, and real effects depend on how well an intervention is carried out. Blue tick = before.

Sometimes the solution arrives before the problem is clear

Choose something people commonly arrive with, then keep asking questions. The examples are illustrative, and they do not all end the same way.

Questions worth asking

Nothing is calculated. A ticked question is simply somewhere worth looking.