When the coffee maker „broke“, problem solving skills saved the day
The best troubleshooting lessons come from everyday frustrations. Like when a simple request for after-dinner coffee turned into a masterclass in using problem solving skills under pressure!
The crisis
Saturday evening, 7 PM. Everyone had finished dinner when our host asked, „Does anyone want coffee?“ After such a hearty meal, caffeine sounded perfect.
Minutes passed. No coffee. Then the dreaded announcement: „Sorry everyone, we are having technical issues with the coffee maker.“ Every attempt to turn it on shut down the power.
Frustrated voices declared: „The coffee maker is broken!“ But my friend and other guests instinctively began applying systematic logic, the same approach we teach in Kepner-Tregoe problem-solving classes.
5 Whys & problem analysis
Kepner-Tregoe Problem Analysis finds the cause of performance deviations using data, not assumptions. It starts with a clear problem statement where cause is unknown.
We use the 5 Whys technique to drill down through symptom layers
Here are our questions:
- Coffee maker will not turn on – why?
- Circuit is becoming overloaded – why?
- Too many devices drawing power at once – why?
- Devices are losing power – why? As this is not a question we can answer using common sense, knowledge, experience or observation, this becomes our problem statement.
Organizing the data: what is happening?
With „Devices are losing power“ as our problem statement, we ask specific questions to organize what we observe. This data forms the „IS“ part of the problem analysis matrix we will see later:
- Which devices are losing power → Coffee maker, TV, Google Home, Sonos speaker
- Where is this happening? → Left side of kitchen only
- When did it start? → Around 4pm when we tried to make coffee
- How much power loss? → Four devices, complete power loss, one area affected
The power of IS NOT
Here is the key: Most people focus only on what IS wrong. True systematic troubleshooting demands equal attention to what IS NOT affected. This is where our problem solving skills help to keep us on track from the start, eliminating false causes, and potentially saving us from wasting money on a brand new coffee maker:
Critical IS NOT questions revealed:
- What related devices have NOT lost power? → Refrigerator, oven, all other appliances could have lost power but did not
- Where is power working normally? → Right side of kitchen, all other rooms
- When was power last working? → Before 4pm to our knowledge
- What could have been the extent of the power loss, but was NOT? → Only one, two, or three devices could have been impacted as opposed to all four. More rooms could have been impacted, as opposed to just the kitchen
The breakthrough test
Inspired by the fact that power loss was only in the kitchen, my friend moved the coffee maker to the family room. It worked perfectly with no power issues. This revealed the critical distinction: location mattered.
New questions and comparisons now emerged:
- What made the kitchen different from other rooms?
- What separated the left side of the kitchen from the right side?
- What was different about 4pm versus say, the morning when everything worked?
The answer
Every affected device (coffee maker, TV, Google Home, Sonos) ran on the same circuit breaker. The refrigerator and oven had separate breakers. In the morning, only the coffee maker used that circuit. By afternoon, multiple devices were running simultaneously.
The verdict: circuit overload, not equipment failure. The coffee maker was never broken – it was the final device that pushed an already strained circuit past its limit.
The fix
My friend replaced the faulty breaker. Problem solved. He did not need to determine why the original breaker kept tripping, just that it needed replacement.
The lesson
This simple example is about applying advanced problem solving skills quickly and under pressure:
- We clarified the actual problem – here we used the popular 5 Whys analysis to identify the problem we were actually trying to solve
- Then we compared what IS working to what IS NOT using the Kepner-Tregoe problem analysis matrix
- We then used that data to logically deduce the most probable cause and decide what to do next, whether that’s a quick fix or requires a more careful decision
For complex problems, IS and IS NOT data lets you test proposed causes by asking: „If this is the cause, how does it explain both what IS and IS NOT happening?“
The next time you face an „obvious“ equipment failure, step back. Apply IS and IS NOT thinking. Your „broken“ device might simply be the messenger alerting you to a deeper system issue.
Learn more about how 5 Whys and Fishbone Diagrams relate to Kepner-Tregoe Problem Analysis
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