Greg Stevenson argues that fixing the same problem twice means you're only treating symptoms, not causes. Leaders feel pressure to solve things fast, but the real fix requires going one level deeper to find why the problem keeps coming back.
If you're solving the same problem more than twice, you're treating a symptom. The root cause is still there. The symptom trap is not a failure of intelligence. It's a failure of depth. The pressure to pick— fix things fast drives leaders to the surface solution every time. The root cause question, why is this happening, gets skipped, and so the problem comes back. The shift is not more effort at the same level. The shift is going one level deeper, finding the structural or human cause beneath what is presenting on the surface.
