Everything going wrong? Take your eyes off the problem
“Just look at these problems!”
Leaders get concerned when things are going badly in their team, organisation or system – and rightly so. Yet we also need to be careful not to fall into the trap of getting obsessed by the problems.
When a fire breaks out, our natural response is to focus on the fire and putting it out. What if another fire breaks out just as you’re attending to the first? And what if that keeps happening?
Over the past couple of years I’ve supported several teams where this has been happening again and again – problem after problem after problem. And the leaders I meet are exhausted from spending all their time and effort dealing with each problem as it arises.
The depressing thing for these leaders is not just that they’re tired, but that it’s clear their efforts aren’t stopping the problems occuring. New fires keep breaking out. They tend to ask ‘how do we fight these fires faster?’.
I think leaders in this kind of situation need to do something very brave and counter-intuitive.
Take your eyes OFF the problem
The problems you face ARE important. But sometimes they are a SYMPTOM of something rather than the CAUSE.
Some of the problems leaders have to address arise in isolation. There’s no pattern of recurring problems, and just ‘fire-fighting’ is exactly the right thing to do.
However, a spate of problems or a pattern should always make us look for an underlying issue. To pause long enough to ask “why”. Time after time, I see a whole range of different kinds of recurring problems which have been tackled one-by-one by the leaders – dealing with the WHAT but not the WHY.
Finding the underlying issue is often quite straightforward, although it can be easier for outsiders to see it than people ‘in the thick of it’. But taking your eyes off the problems and focusing instead on the causes does take courage – sometimes a lot of courage. Facing up to underlying issuess that are creating repeated problems is rarely easy. I’ve found it can take leaders quite deep into fundamental aspects of their situation. We need to look at the values, shared purpose, relationships, culture and structures. It’s hard, personal and often painful work. But it’s also where the solutions lie.