Knowledge Base · Seeing Problems
How do I run a "Where does it hurt?" session with my team?
Book 30 minutes with one agenda item, ask where the work hurts, and then only listen, write and thank people. Chapter 3 of the book sets this as the first step in uncovering problems: no defending, no explaining, and no promises to fix anything on the spot.
The session exists because of a hard truth in Chapter 3: the people closest to the work see its problems first, and fear is usually what keeps them quiet. The book tells of a claims team at a large insurer whose process map session stayed silent until one person finally pointed at a step and said where it always got stuck. Then another spoke, and another, until the map was covered in sticky notes.
Run it exactly as the book prescribes. One agenda item: where does it hurt? Ask the team to name where their working day hurts most: the hold-ups, the bottlenecks, the tasks that quietly eat hours. Your role is deliberately narrow: listen, take notes, and thank people for telling you the truth. Do not defend the current process. Do not explain why things are the way they are. Do not promise fixes in the room.
That restraint is the point. Defending teaches the team the session was really an ambush. Promising teaches them to wait for you. Listening, and visibly writing things down, teaches them their perspective is essential, which is the psychological safety every later improvement tool depends on.
Afterwards, the list belongs to the normal machinery: prioritise it openly (the impact versus effort matrix helps), and report back what happens to each item, including the ones you will not tackle yet. A session like this is a beginning, not an event; its value is set by what the team sees happen next.
Related questions
- What is psychological safety, and why does improvement depend on it?
- How do I create a culture where people speak up about problems?
- What is the Impact versus Effort Matrix?
Source: Continuous Improvement in the Workplace, Ch. 3 (Learning to See).