Pizza Won't Fix Turnover: root cause beats symptom every time.

Transcript

…which might work short term, but it's like putting a plaster, a band-aid, on something. It might fix it short term, but long term it's not going to do anything. It's like taking paracetamol if you break your arm: the pain might go away a little bit, but when it wears off, it's still there. And that's the importance of understanding the root cause.

So here's an example. We've got high staff turnover. That's not a problem, it's not a decision, it's not a resolution and it's not a solution. That's a symptom. So when people look at this without understanding the possible root causes, they might implement the wrong change. Our staff turnover is really high. Well, a possible root cause might be down to poor onboarding, or recruitment: we might be recruiting the wrong people.

Now, go back to the symptom, high staff turnover. Somebody could say it's down to motivation: "You know what we need to do? Every Friday we'll have a pizza Friday. We'll bring pizzas in, and that'll help with staff turnover, because people will be very happy." Now, they might enjoy those pizzas. But if we haven't understood the root cause, which is actually poor recruitment, then that pizza is going to be a band-aid. It's going to be your paracetamol for a broken arm.