Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen

by Dan Heath

When you spend years responding to problems, you can sometimes overlook the fact that you could be preventing them.

Downstream actions react to problems once they’ve occurred. Upstream efforts aim to prevent those problems from happening.

Notice what was missing: It was no group’s job to ensure that customers didn’t need to call for support. In fact, no team really stood to gain if customers stopped calling. It wasn’t what they were measured on.

What issues do we face today that can be approached with this mindset? Time = # meetings? What else? Training?

That’s one reason why we tend to favor reaction: Because it’s more tangible. Downstream work is easier to see. Easier to measure. There is a maddening ambiguity about upstream efforts.

A telltale sign of upstream work is that it involves systems thinking:

upstream solutions are generally more desirable, they’re also more complex and ambiguous.

Downstream efforts are narrow and fast and tangible. Upstream efforts are broader, slower, and hazier—but when they work, they really work. They can accomplish massive and long-lasting good.

That’s the type of good we want here, long term and lasting!

We’re so focused on saving the drowning kids in the river that we fail to investigate why they need saving at all.

How many times have I personally said my sole mission in life is to put out fires? How could I have addressed those upstream issues then and, more importantly, what can we do to address our current issues now?

Problem blindness is the first of three barriers to upstream thinking that we’ll study in this section. When we don’t see a problem, we can’t solve it.

that’s just how it is—so no one questions it.” That’s just how it is—so no one questions it. That’s problem blindness.

We suffer from this now with the motor pool, low training standards, and more! I have to get upstream!!

Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.

As a teacher, if you accept that your job is to support students, not appraise them, it changes everything.

Does that apply to our Soldiers? They too are going through a transition as well...if we don’t support them early are they doomed to fail?

you need to know more about her, and you need collaborators.

Invested leaders at echelon...hmmm

To succeed upstream, leaders must: detect problems early, target leverage points in complex systems, find reliable ways to measure success, pioneer new ways of working together, and embed their successes into systems to give them permanence.

The first time someone saw a leprechaun in place of a page number, they thought, What the hell? A leprechaun? The second time, it was Oh, there’s another one. The fourth time, it had vanished from their consciousness. That’s habituation. We grow accustomed to stimuli that are consistent.

This is exactly what’s happening here at the 61st

The escape from problem blindness begins with the shock of awareness that you’ve come to treat the abnormal as normal.

The seed of improvement is dissatisfaction.

BG Rsgin’s anger and disappointment was the shock I think we all needed!

The upstream advocate concludes: I was not the one who created this problem. But I will be the one to fix it.

What’s odd about upstream work is that, despite the enormous stakes, it’s often optional. With downstream activity—the rescues and responses and reactions—the work is demanded of us.

upstream work is chosen, not demanded.

The first force, problem blindness, means: I don’t see the problem. (Or, This problem is inevitable.) A lack of ownership, though, means that the parties who are capable of addressing a problem are saying, That’s not mine to fix.

But the question is not: Who suffers most from the problem? The question is: Who’s best positioned to fix it, and will they step up?

The question they asked themselves was not: Can’t someone fix this problem? It was: Can we fix this problem? They volunteered to take ownership.

Might the rest of us be unwittingly allowing problems to persist that we could help solve?

What if you told the story of your relationship problems as if you were the only one responsible?

Asking those questions might help us overcome indifference and complacency and see what’s possible: I choose to fix this problem, not because it’s demanded of me, but because I can, and because it’s worth fixing.

when people experience scarcity—of money or time or mental bandwidth—the harm is not that the big problems crowd out the little ones. The harm is that the little ones crowd out the big ones.

When people are juggling a lot of problems, they give up trying to solve them all. They adopt tunnel vision.

There’s no long-term planning; there’s no strategic prioritization of issues. And that’s why tunneling is the third barrier to upstream thinking—because it confines us to short-term, reactive thinking. In the tunnel, there’s only forward.

People who are tunneling can’t engage in systems thinking. They can’t prevent problems; they just react.

you can’t systematically solve problems, it dooms you to stay in an endless cycle of reaction. Tunneling begets more tunneling.

How do you escape the tunnel? You need slack. Slack, in this context, means a reserve of time or resources that can be spent on problem solving.

Where / how do we build slack or ourselves and our organization?

guaranteed block of time when staffers can emerge from the tunnel and think about systems-level issues.

When your emphasis is always forward, forward, forward, you never stop to ask whether you’re going in the right direction.

How will you unite the right people?

first step, as in many upstream efforts, was to surround the problem—to recruit a multifaceted group of people and organizations united by a common aim.

Once you’ve surrounded the problem, then you need to organize all those people’s efforts. And you need an aim that’s compelling and important—a shared goal that keeps them contributing even in stressful situations

Using data for inspection is so common that leaders are sometimes oblivious to any other model.

“And I never hear back ‘It’s important to set up data systems that are useful for people on the front lines.’ Never,” he said. “But that’s the first principle!

“We were addicted to mediocrity. We were accustomed to failure.

A lot of finger pointing, a lot of blame.”

“The very first step is to believe you can actually do it,” said Jaeger. “It’s hard. It’s a big mind shift. It’s no longer just taking care of the problem, which is what we were doing historically, but ending the problem.”

This is the leap we need to make, now..how do we get there?

The endgame is to eliminate the need for courage, to render it unnecessary, because it has forced change within the system. Success comes when the right things happen by default—not because of individual passion or heroism.

the strategy used by the Crime Lab’s leaders to find those leverage points is closer to universal: Immerse yourself in the problem.

Looking at the CG’s revised priorities where do we dive in first? (Little three and communication?)

The postmortem for a problem can be the preamble to a solution.

Our postmortem can include several things: maintenance Discipline Lack of focus in training Standards NCO empowerment

As an alternative to the focus on risk and protective factors, consider whether your leverage point might be a specific subpopulation of people.

...our sergeants! Need a leader development program for them sooner rather than later.

if I can learn to uncross my arms and extend my hands, I can be someone who eases suffering rather than ignores it.

when we isolate ourselves—when we allow ourselves to be shielded and disconnected from those who are vulnerable and disfavored, we sustain and contribute to these problems. I am persuaded that in proximity there is something we can learn about how we change the world.…”

Applicable during command too - sensing sessions are a must and need to be timed with actions and change to,show they’re worthwhile to the Soldiers

even a defeat is effectively a victory. Because every time we learn something, we fill in one more piece of the map as we hunt for the levers that can move the world.

How can you get early warning of the problem you’re trying to solve? Imagine a smoke detector that’s custom-tailored to your work.