“I’ve Seen This Before”
Is How the Real Cause Gets Missed.

Something keeps going wrong on your team, or across the part of the company you run. Maybe it's a deadline that keeps slipping, or a number that keeps coming in low. So you ask a few people why. And each of them gives you a different reason.

Then one of those reasons sounds like something you've seen before. And you feel sure, before the last person's even done talking. And you hear yourself say, "I've seen this before." Maybe out loud, maybe it's just in your head. So you back that reason.

And then what happens? The reason that felt familiar becomes the plan. And everyone else's reasons? They never make it into the plan. "I've seen this before" is how the real cause gets missed.

This is The Autistic Leader Podcast. I'm Uday Kiran Bolusani. Each week, I take one piece of advice every leader already gives, and I give you one skill that makes it work for every kind of mind.

So, this week's advice. You've heard it your whole career. "Trust your gut."

Here's what it means. Your experience and your judgment are why you're the leader. So you act on them, even when you can't yet explain why.

And that advice makes real sense in some jobs. Think about a ship's captain, or the general manager of a factory. They meet the same situations again and again. They've had years to learn those situations. So their gut feelings are likely to be well trained.

So here's how trusting your gut can play out on one team. Your customer orders keep shipping late. So you ask the three leads involved why. Your operations lead says the warehouse is short of people. Your finance lead says the new credit check is holding up the large orders. And your sales lead says your biggest customers have changed how they order. They send fewer orders now, and each one is bigger.

So you've got three different reasons. And one of them sounds just like something you've seen before. Short staffing. You know that one. So you go with your gut, and you back your operations lead. You approve two more hires for the warehouse.

Then the next review comes around. Your finance lead brings more numbers on the credit check. Your sales lead brings a chart of order sizes. And by spring, guess what? The orders are still shipping late.

So what does that tell you? Each of those leads saw something real.

And what are you taking for granted when you trust your gut? There's an unwritten rule inside that advice. On a team that runs on gut feeling, the reason that feels right to the leader gets treated as the true one. Nobody ever says that rule out loud.

And what about your finance lead and your sales lead? Their reasons got passed over. So those two leads spend the next few months arguing for their own reasons, at every review. That's work too. It's called cognitive load, and it's mental effort that does nothing to fix the late orders.

Look at what that costs you. You're paying three leads to think about the late orders. Your finance lead and your sales lead do that thinking, and you add the two hires without it.

A gut feeling is one way a leader reaches a judgment. Going through each person's reasons is another way. Neither one is better than the other.

Going through each person's reasons is how I reach a judgment. I'm autistic. And I have something called alexithymia, which means I can tell I'm feeling something, but often not what. Alexithymia is a trait that's common among autistic people like me. And my gut can barely tell me whether I'm happy or sad. So if I were deciding on those late orders, going with my gut wouldn't be an option.

I trust my reasoning. And with Claude, the AI I use, I can now test my reasoning about as fast as most people go with their gut.

Earlier in my career, more than once, I worked on a problem that involved both operations and accounting. Operations had its own experts, and so did accounting. So I went through every expert's reasons and looked for what they shared. And that's where I found the real cause.

Here's what I find, most of the time. Each expert is right about one part of their problem, and thinks it's the whole problem. Each of them tends to see the part closest to their own work. And they may not notice why they see that part.

My core approach as a leader is to uncover the patterns in people's reasoning, and to identify the value in each person's thinking. And I make sure strategic decisions and insights get the appropriate thinking time and space before execution starts.

And you can find what people's reasons have in common on your own team, whatever kind of mind you have.

So here's the part to take back to your team. Three questions. Two of them, you ask your people, and the third one, you ask yourself.

Before a big decision that several people see differently, you ask each of them two questions. You do it one to one, or in writing.

The first question is about what's causing the problem. "What do you think is causing this problem, and why?" Listen to the end of it. "And why." You're asking for their reasons, along with their answer.

The second question is about their own work. "What part of your work does this problem put at risk?"

Why one to one? Because when people answer on their own, nobody has to defend their view in front of the others.

Then, once every answer is in, you ask yourself the third question. "What do all of their reasons have in common?" And you decide from your answer to that one.

And your own gut feeling about what's causing the problem? You write it down too, as one more answer next to theirs.

Now you might be thinking, okay, I can't do this before every decision. And you don't have to. The three questions are for the big ones, the kind several people see differently.

So notice the sequence. First, you hear every person's reasons, and what's at risk for each of them. Then you decide from what those reasons share.

Take the late orders again, back before you approved those two hires. Your operations lead answers the first question. The warehouse is short of people, and one large order now takes the whole team a full shift to pack. What's at risk in their work? Shipping every order on time.

Your finance lead says the new credit check holds up large orders. Any order over a set amount waits for a second review. What's at risk in finance? Getting paid for every order you ship.

Your sales lead says your biggest customers now send fewer, larger orders, and those are the ones that ship late. What's at risk in sales? Keeping your biggest customers.

Now you ask yourself the third question. What do all of their reasons have in common? Every one of them is about the large orders. Your warehouse and your credit check were both set up for small orders. And your biggest customers now send large ones.

So now you're making a different decision. You're deciding how to handle large orders. And getting that right protects what each lead said was at risk. Shipping on time, getting paid, and keeping your biggest customers.

And your own gut feeling, short staffing, is still there in your notes. It's one real part of the problem, sitting next to two others.

Here's how the question works at a hotel, and then at a factory.

Say you run a hotel, and guests keep waiting too long at check-in. You ask three people the first two questions. Your front desk manager says guests show up before their rooms are ready, so they wait at the desk. At risk for the front desk? A guest's first impression of your hotel.

Your head of housekeeping says the team cleans floor by floor, because nobody knows which guests will arrive first. At risk for housekeeping? Getting every room ready before the shift ends.

And your reservations manager says more of your guests now book through travel sites, and those bookings often don't say when the guest will arrive. At risk for reservations? Your ratings on those sites.

So what do all of their reasons have in common? Nobody at your hotel knows when each guest is going to walk in. So now you're deciding something else. You're deciding how to find out when each guest will arrive, before they get there.

Or take a factory. Say you run a line that makes kitchen mixers, and more and more of them are coming back. Your quality lead says a part from your supplier doesn't quite fit the new model. At risk for quality? Every mixer working when it leaves the line.

Your line supervisor says the newer people on the line were trained on the last year's model. At risk for the line? Hitting each day's target.

And your account manager works with the stores that sell your mixers. They say customers there are confused by the new settings, because the manual doesn't explain them. At risk for that account manager? Keeping those stores ordering from you.

What do all of the reasons have in common? Your supplier's specs, your training and your manual were all still written for last year's model. So now you're deciding how to bring all three up to this year's model, at the same time.

Now take your own organization. Think of a decision coming up this month that more than one team sees differently. Who would you ask? Then think about the second question, the one about their own work. What would each of them say is at risk in their own work? And notice what your gut feeling already says about that decision. You write it down too, as one more answer, right beside theirs.

My Decision Charter is my framework for who does which part of a decision. Here, it means you gather what each person knows before anyone decides.

And AI can help with one part of the skill. It can lay out each person's reasoning, while you direct the thinking and make the decision. That split comes from my AI Cognitive Strategy Matrix. It's my framework for which parts of the work AI takes on, and which your people keep.

So where do the late orders end up? By summer, your warehouse can handle large orders. Your credit check clears your biggest customers before the big orders even arrive. And your three leads stop arguing for their own reasons at every review. They bring what they know about the large orders to each review, together.

The essay for this episode ends on a card, the Operating Brief. Here are its four parts, in my own words.

The moment. A problem keeps coming back, and each person you ask names a different cause. You recognize one of them, and you're sure before everyone's finished.

The inherited design. You're told to trust your gut. When the same situations come around again and again, and you've had years to learn them, a gut feeling can actually serve you well. But once one reason feels right, it's easy to stop listening for the rest.

The redesign. Before you decide, you hear from each person, one to one. You hear what they think is causing the problem, and what it puts at risk in their work.

And the Monday test. Before your next decision that involves more than one team, ask each person involved the two questions. Then write down what their reasons have in common.

Right under that card, the essay prints a prompt you can copy. Take out the names first. Then paste the prompt into Claude, or the AI your organization has approved for work, with each person's answers labeled by their role. The AI lays out what each view is based on, and what all of their reasons have in common. It never picks a view or ranks your people, because you decide.

The essay's on my site, under the title “Trust Your Gut” Picks the Most Familiar Answer and Misses the Full Problem. The three questions are printed there, filled in on the late orders, so you can copy them into your own notes. There are two drawings of late orders, one before the questions and one after, so you can see what changes. You can share the Operating Brief card with your team. And you can copy the prompt straight from the page, without typing it out.

Here's my ask. I built the show to help leaders who think differently reach senior roles, by changing how organizations are designed. Every person who subscribes is one more leader this work reaches, every week. So subscribe to the Substack, and take each week's skill to your team. And follow the show wherever you're listening. A follow brings you every new episode, and it helps more leaders who think differently find this work.

So this week, before your next decision that involves more than one team, ask each person the two questions. Then write down what their reasons share.