Some leadership teams are not bad at solving issues. In fact, they can be very good at getting to a solution quickly.
Sometimes, a little too quickly.
Someone raises an issue, another person immediately suggests a fix, somebody else agrees & within a few minutes the team has moved on. It feels productive. A decision has been made, an action has been assigned & another issue has disappeared from the list.
Then, a few weeks later, the same problem is back.
Usually because the team solved the symptom rather than the real issue.
One of the most common mistakes I see in leadership teams is jumping from problem to solution before spending enough time understanding what is actually going on. Speed feels efficient, but solving the wrong problem quickly is not efficient at all.
The First Answer Is Often Not the Real Answer
When an issue appears, the most obvious explanation is not always the right one.
A salesperson is missing target, so the immediate conclusion is that they need more training. A project is late, so somebody suggests that the team needs better time management. Customer complaints are increasing, so the answer becomes, “We need to improve communication.”
Maybe.
But perhaps the salesperson is in the wrong seat. Perhaps the project is late because nobody is clear about ownership. Perhaps customer complaints are increasing because the process itself is broken.
If the team accepts the first explanation without digging any deeper, it may create an action that sounds sensible but changes very little.
That is why the first step of the Issues Solving Track, commonly known as IDS®, matters so much.
Before you Discuss & Solve, you need to Identify.
And that is often where the real work happens.
Spend More Time Identifying
There is always pressure to move quickly in a leadership meeting. There are other issues waiting, everyone is busy & nobody wants to spend 20 minutes discussing something that appears obvious.
But spending a few extra minutes identifying the real issue can save weeks, or even months, of frustration later.
I will often ask questions such as:
- What is the real issue here?
- What is actually causing this?
- Is this the problem, or the result of another problem?
- Has this happened before?
- If we fixed the obvious symptom, what would still be true?
- Those questions can completely change the conversation.
What starts as a discussion about a missed deadline might reveal that nobody was clear about who owned the outcome. What appears to be a performance problem might uncover a problem with the seat itself. What looks like poor communication might turn out to be two leaders who never agreed on who had the authority to make a decision.
The first issue raised is often simply the doorway into the real one.
Recurring Issues Are Telling You Something
One of the clearest signs that an issue has not been properly solved is that it keeps coming back.
Perhaps the team created a workaround. Perhaps it fixed the immediate problem or made the symptoms less painful. But if essentially the same issue keeps returning, there is a good chance the root cause is still sitting underneath it.
Recurring issues should make a leadership team curious.
Instead of asking, “Why is this happening again?”, try asking:
“What have we still not dealt with?”
The answer can sometimes be uncomfortable.
The process is not the real problem. The person is.
The person is not the problem. The role is.
The role is not the problem. The structure is.
Or perhaps the structure is not the problem at all. The leadership team has simply been avoiding a decision it knows needs to be made.
Good issue solving requires honesty, not just speed.
Discussion Is Not the Same as Solving
Of course, there is another extreme.
Some leadership teams do not jump to solutions. They talk forever.
They revisit the history, explain every piece of background, discuss how everybody feels about it & explore every possible angle. Eventually, the meeting ends & nothing has actually been decided.
That is not good issue solving either.
IDS is not an invitation to endlessly discuss an issue. The purpose is to identify the real issue, have the conversation that needs to happen & then solve it.
Once the issue is clear, the discussion should start moving towards a decision.
What are we actually going to do? Who owns the next step? Does this require a To-Do? Does a process need to change? Is there a people decision that needs to be made? Or do we simply need to agree on something & move forward?
A useful discussion creates clarity.
An endless discussion simply creates another meeting.
Sometimes the Solution Is Simply a Decision
Leadership teams can fall into the trap of believing that solving an issue must result in a long list of actions.
It does not.
Sometimes the solution is making the decision that everyone has been circling around for weeks.
Yes, we are going to hire.
No, we are not pursuing that market.
This person owns the decision.
We are stopping this service.
We are changing the structure.
We are not carrying this priority into another quarter.
Once the decision has been made, the issue may genuinely be solved. Adding six actions simply to make the solution feel more substantial does not make it better.
Sometimes clarity is the action.
Be Careful of the Comfortable Solution
Another common trap is choosing the solution that feels easiest rather than the one that actually addresses the issue.
A process problem is easier to discuss than a people problem. Adding another meeting is easier than confronting poor accountability. Creating another report is easier than admitting nobody uses the current one. Changing a target is easier than asking why performance is consistently below it.
The comfortable solution lets everyone leave the room without too much tension.
Unfortunately, it often guarantees that the issue will return.
Healthy leadership teams are willing to ask whether the proposed solution genuinely addresses the root cause, or whether it simply allows everyone to avoid the conversation they would rather not have.
That is where trust, openness & healthy conflict matter.
Solve for the Business, Not Your Own Seat
Issues can also be solved badly when each leader approaches the conversation purely from the perspective of their own function.
Sales wants the solution that works best for Sales. Operations wants the solution that creates the least disruption for Operations. Finance wants the solution that protects the numbers.
Each perspective may be perfectly valid, but the leadership team’s responsibility is bigger than any individual function.
The question is not, “What is best for my department?”
It is, “What is best for the business?”
Sometimes that means accepting a decision that creates a little more work or inconvenience for your own area because it produces a better outcome for the company as a whole.
If everybody enters issue solving determined to protect their own patch, the conversation becomes a negotiation. When everyone is genuinely working for the greater good of the business, the right answer is usually much easier to find.
The Best Solutions Are Often Surprisingly Simple
Once you have identified the real issue, the solution is often much simpler than expected.
Clarify who owns the decision. Stop doing something. Change one part of a process. Have the difficult conversation. Move someone into a more suitable seat. Set a clearer expectation. Make the decision that has been avoided.
The difficult part is rarely creating an elaborate solution.
It is being honest enough to identify what is really going on.
I would much rather see a leadership team spend ten minutes identifying the real issue & two minutes solving it than spend two minutes identifying it & the next six months dealing with the consequences of the wrong solution.
Good Issue Solving Builds Confidence
When a leadership team becomes genuinely good at solving issues, you can see the difference.
People become more willing to raise problems because they trust the team will deal with them properly. Issues are surfaced earlier, decisions become clearer & the same problems stop circling back week after week.
The team also develops confidence that when something goes wrong, it can work through it together rather than avoiding it, working around it or allowing it to grow.
That confidence matters because every business has issues. The goal is not to create a business where problems never appear. That is never going to happen.
The goal is to become very good at identifying the real issue, discussing what matters & solving it so everyone can move forward.
So, the next time somebody raises a problem & the solution seems immediately obvious, resist the urge to race ahead.
Ask one more question. Dig a little deeper. Make sure you are solving the issue underneath the issue.
Because solving something quickly only helps when you are solving the right problem.