{"id":8755,"date":"2026-06-12T08:19:45","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T06:19:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/uncategorized\/i-had-a-toothache-that-i-tried-to-manage-with-painkillers-for-several-days-it-worked-fine-for-a-few-hours-until-i-took-another-dose\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T08:21:40","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T06:21:40","slug":"i-had-a-toothache-that-i-tried-to-manage-with-painkillers-for-several-days-it-worked-fine-for-a-few-hours-until-i-took-another-dose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/governance\/i-had-a-toothache-that-i-tried-to-manage-with-painkillers-for-several-days-it-worked-fine-for-a-few-hours-until-i-took-another-dose\/","title":{"rendered":"I had a toothache that I tried to manage with painkillers for several days. It worked fine for a few hours, until I took another dose."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I was hoping it would go away on its own, but of course it didn’t. I finally made it to the dentist, and it turned out I needed a root canal. Not just pain relief or a quick fix for a surface cavity, but actually going all the way down to the root and cleaning out the whole mess. The more I observe organizations and management, the more it seems to me that we very often do exactly the same thing\u2014we talk about problems, but we\u2019re actually just treating the symptoms.Productivity drops, accountability fades, information gets stuck somewhere, motivation wanes, constant change becomes exhausting, people burn out, and so on. Then a new tool is added, a new process, a new metric, new training, a new strategy day. Of course, all with the best of intentions, and naturally, it works quite well up to a point. I always find these kinds of workshop inquiries very interesting, and I always start wondering what lies behind them on a deeper level\u2014where conventional tools are of no help at all. My detective\u2019s eye kicks in\u2014not to figure out what the exact problem is and which technique, or \u201cpractical tool,\u201d to solve it, but the real excitement lies in figuring out what is actually causing the problem and why existing tools haven\u2019t solved it. People generally have knowledge of management tools, so that\u2019s usually not the issue, although it\u2019s often assumed that this helps. It only helps to about 70%. Every management technique, style, and method has its own limitations. Because maybe the organization isn\u2019t broken in a way that needs to be fixed with strategic management techniques? Maybe the pain has simply been suppressed for so long that the real cause has remained unaddressed. These are always the most exciting projects for me\u2014the ones where the client says right from the start that there\u2019s something we can\u2019t quite put our finger on, but we realize that it\u2019s actually guiding us in some way without us even realizing it. It seems to me that one of the biggest pitfalls of modern management is that we focus on what is visible, easily influenced, and measurable\u2014in other words, what is practical.And we avoid what is slower, more uncomfortable, internal, and harder to put into words\u2014yet still exists and can be felt through our gut or intuition.But that is precisely what is actually driving you and causing you pain. So I still urge you to ask yourself what kind of pain you\u2019re currently numbing, instead of really getting to the root of it\u2014no matter how uncomfortable that might be and how much more it might cost at first (in terms of energy, specifically)? And I\u2019m always excited to take on new projects like this, where I get to explore with the client without either of us knowing exactly where we\u2019ll end up. Generally speaking, we actually get to the root of things when neither of us has a crystal ball telling us what the right way is. The photo shows the planning of one such collaboration with a management team \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n

\"Picture:<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was hoping it would go away on its own, but of course it didn’t. I finally made it to the dentist, and it turned out I needed a root canal. Not just pain relief or a quick fix for a surface cavity, but actually going all the way down to the root and cleaning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-governance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8755"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8756,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8755\/revisions\/8756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}