Recurring issues

Tip of the day: if you can't work out what to do to stop an issue from recurring, you probably haven't found the root cause.

Someone posted that on Twitter recently.

Two issues that I find keep recurring are abortion and homosexuality.

Wherever I look in online forums people keep discussing them ad nauseam and ad bored-I-am.

American Evangelical Christians seem to be obsessed with the former, while Anglicans everywhere are obsessed with the latter.

And it is indeed quite probable that I have not found the root cause.

If anyone has found the root cause, please let me know.

Seth's Blog: Solving problems (vs. identifying them)

Someone pointed me to this blog post: Seth's Blog: Solving problems (vs. identifying them):

Often, we're hesitant to identify a problem out of fear we can't solve it. Knowing that we have to live with something that we're unable to alter gives us a good reason to avoid verbalizing it--highlighting it just makes it worse.

While this sort of denial might be okay for individuals (emphasis on might), it's a lousy approach for organizations of any size. That's because there are almost certainly resources available that can solve a problem if you decide it's truly worth solving.

In my experience, people opt for avoiding both identifying problems and solving them. Instead of doing either of those things, they simply "address" the problem.

Talk nicely to the problem and it will go away.

If that doesn't work, then don't call it a problem, call it an "issue".

No problem.