Here are five steps for quickly solving complex business problems, based on the Theory of Constraints.

Step 1: Pick a Goal

Your goal should be high-level, fact-based, and objective—not an assumption about the best solution to a specific problem.

“Increase our revenue by 20% by the end of next year” is a high-level, fact-based, and objective goal.

“Find a sales trainer to teach our sales team how to improve their close rate…so that we can increase our revenue by 20% by the end of next year” is a subjective opinion about the best solution, camouflaged as a goal.

Step 2: Identify the Big Links First

Zoom out so that you can clearly see the entire chain—and all the big links in that chain—that make up the goal.

These big links are the critical functional outcomes related to your high-level goal. “Increasing revenue by 20% by the end of next year” will result from specific marketing, sales, product development, customer retention, and other outcomes.

Step 3: Identify the Weakest Big Link

Which of the big links (critical functional outcomes) in your chain is the weakest one?

If your goal is “increasing revenue,” which functional outcome is currently your biggest bottleneck? Is your marketing not generating enough leads? Is your sales team struggling to close deals? Do you have a high customer churn rate?

Maybe there’s a big link that’s missing altogether. Do you have a sales strategy, but no process for improving inbound traffic? Is all your energy being invested in product development, with little thought given to figuring out the exact types of customers you’re building it for?

Step 4: Look at the Smaller Links

Once you’ve identified your weakest big link, the next step is to zoom in even further.

Imagine that each big link is actually just another chain made up of smaller ones. For example, if you determine that your weakest big link is your marketing, you’ll want to take a close look at all its smaller links like messaging, target audience, and branding.

Once you’ve identified the weakest of those smaller links, you may decide to zoom in even further. If you haven’t yet picked a target audience, is it because you’re still unsure about your options? Are there internal alignment issues you need to address? Are you struggling with your own fear of making the wrong choice?

Step 5: Solve the Problem

By now, you should have a much better sense of which problem you’ll want to start solving first. A link that’s small enough to wrap your head around, but not so small that fixing it makes little difference.

What will you do today to start fixing the right links in your business?

Will you map out both the big and small links, and see if you can identify the weakest ones?