The root of all process improvement is the mental tic "lack of . . . "

I spent a number of years as a management consultant helping corporations and teams to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their processes. One of the first steps was to define the nature of the problem which they were facing.

One of the standard facilitation rules in problem definition was to never let the team define their problems with the phrase "lack of." Teams always instinctively want to define the problem in terms of the solution. If the problem was that the labor cost of the product was too high, teams would instinctively infer that the root cause was that there were too few skilled personnel (lack of skilled personnel.) They would then automatically start figuring out how to increase the supply of skilled personnel in order to bring the cost down. They had defined the solution into their problem definition.

The trick was to keep them focused on a higher level definition of the problem. If the problem is defined as "labor costs are too high" then all sorts of alternative solutions are conceivable. Why are they too high? Wage cost? Benefits? Turnover? Are there other alternatives such as reducing the labor component? Maybe reworking the work flow so that it requires fewer specialized skills. The more open the definition of the problem, the easier it was to consider alternative solutions.

Where India Goes by Alex Tabarrok provides an example of the "lack of" problem.

Where India Goes, a book about the problem of open defecation in India, is the best social science book I have read in years. Written by Diane Coffey and Dean Spears, Where India Goes, examines an important issue and it does so with a superb combination of human interest storytelling and top-notch empirical research made accessible.

Drawing on the academic literature, Coffey and Spears show that open defecation sickens and kills children, stunts their growth, and lowers their IQ all of which shows up in reduced productivity and wages in adulthood.

The dangers of open defecation are clear. Moreover, Gandhi said that “Sanitation is more important than independence” and Modi said “toilets before temples,” yet in India some half a billion people still do not use latrines. Why not? Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen (2013), offer a typical explanation:

In 2011 half of all Indian households did not have access to toilets, forcing them to resort to open defecation on a daily basis…

The phrasing presents the problem as a lack of access that forces people to resort to open defecation. From this perspective the solution seems obvious, provide access. After all, if you or I had access to latrines we would use them so if someone else isn’t using latrines it must be because they don’t have access. A bit of thought, however, dispels this notion.

Tabarrok points out that even where latrine building has increased access, open defecation remains a problem. It is not a lack of latrines which is the problem.

For many people in India, open defecation is preferred to latrine use. The reasons relate to issues of ritual purity and caste. Latrines in or near homes are considered polluting, not in a physical so much as a spiritual or ritual sense. Latrine cleaning is also associated with the Dalit (out)-caste, in itself a polluting category (hence untouchable). That is, the impurity of defecation and caste are mutually reinforcing. As a result, using or, even worse, cleaning latrines is considered a ritual impurity. The problem of open defecation is thus intimately tied up with Hindu notions of purity and caste which many do not want to discuss, let alone condemn.

In the villages the idea of open defecation is also associated with clean air, exercise, and health. Thus, in surveys “both men and women speak openly about the benefits of open defecation and even associate it with health and longevity.” Even many women prefer open defecation if only because it gives them a chance to get out of the house and have some freedom of movement.

Problem definition which includes the direct phrase or functional equivalent of "lack of . . . " is inherently a problem definition with a predetermined solution arrived at heuristically and without reflection. Robust problem definition, diligent root cause analysis, and disciplined consideration of alternative solutions is actually much harder work than one would think. Only by doing so can you improve your odds of solving a problem rather than simply responding to a problem unsuccessfully.