Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences:
Organizations can become increasingly effective at responding to a recurring problem without ever changing the conditions that keep producing it. Before investing in another intervention, ask whether it will reduce the problem itself or simply improve your ability to manage its consequences.
Some problems become very expensive without ever becoming smaller.
They attract meetings, task forces, consultants, new systems, revised processes, additional staff, repeated interventions and more money. Everyone is busy. Something is always being done. And yet the problem remains.
This can be difficult for organizations to recognize because activity creates the impression of movement. A new initiative feels like progress. A revised process feels like progress. A new hire feels like progress. Another round of training or a new piece of technology can feel like progress too.
Sometimes these things are exactly what is needed, but sometimes we are simply becoming better at servicing the problem.
We learn how to respond when it occurs. We create procedures for managing its consequences. We allocate resources to contain it. We become efficient at living with it. What we may never do is examine why it keeps returning.
Consider an organization with persistent customer complaints.
It can add more people to customer service, introduce escalation procedures, install a new ticketing system and create monthly complaint reports. All of those responses may improve how complaints are handled.
But if the majority of complaints continue to originate from the same broken process, the organization has improved its response to the problem without resolving the condition producing it.
The same pattern can occur with employee turnover, declining sales, project delays, poor service delivery, recurring errors or missed targets.
Once a problem becomes familiar, the response to it can become embedded in the organization. Budgets accommodate it…roles develop around it…processes are designed support it…and meetings are scheduled because of it.
Eventually, managing the problem becomes part of normal operations.
And that is where a useful strategic question emerges:
Are we solving the problem, or have we built an increasingly sophisticated system for servicing it?
The answer is not found by measuring how much effort we have invested. It is found by examining what is actually changing.
- Is the problem occurring less frequently?
- Is its impact becoming smaller?
- Are the conditions producing it changing?
- Are fewer resources required to respond to it over time? If the intervention stops, does the problem immediately return?
These questions shift our attention from what we are doing to what our actions are actually changing. An organization can invest heavily in a problem and still leave its cause untouched.
Before approving another initiative, assigning another resource or implementing another solution, it may be worth asking whether the next intervention will reduce the problem itself or simply improve your ability to live with it.
Strategic Reflection Prompt
Think about a recurring problem in your organization that has generated repeated interventions. What evidence tells you that those interventions are reducing the problem itself rather than improving your ability to manage its consequences?
About Giselle
Most costly decisions begin with a wrong read of the situation.
I’m Giselle Hudson — The Pre-Fixer. I help leaders see the real problem before they act, in my writing and in my work. I don’t fix; I pre-fix. Most advisers jump to solutions before they’ve found the real problem. I find it first — the part that isn’t fully visible yet. Once we see that clearly, everything else falls into place, and confident, right action can follow.
Through my daily Strategic Alignment Journal, I explore leadership, decision-making, and the patterns that shape organizations — helping leaders make sense of complexity before they commit significant time and money to the wrong thing.
What’s the one thing about your business that frustrates you most — the thing that, despite your best efforts, you can’t seem to resolve?
Giselle Hudson | The Pre-Fixer™ 