Most leadership teams are not short of intelligent people.
They can identify problems, debate options and agree on sensible solutions.
Yet the same issues keep returning.
A difficult employee is discussed repeatedly. A process remains inconsistent. Sales forecasts continue to be missed. Two departments keep blaming each other. An important decision is made but never fully implemented.
The team becomes frustrated because it feels as though the problem has already been solved.
Usually, it hasn’t.
It has been discussed, managed temporarily or pushed below the surface.
The team is solving the symptom
A recurring issue often indicates that the team has addressed what happened without identifying why it happened.
A customer complaint leads to an apology.
A missed deadline leads to a revised date.
A poor result leads to another sales target.
A people problem leads to one more conversation.
These responses may be necessary, but they do not always reach the root cause.
When an issue returns, ask:
“What is the underlying reason this keeps happening?”
Continue asking until the team reaches something it can address permanently.
The real issue feels uncomfortable
Leadership teams frequently know what the real problem is.
They may be avoiding it because it involves a long-serving employee, a family member, an influential customer or someone sitting in the room.
The team finds safer issues to discuss around it.
They talk about communication instead of performance.
They talk about workload instead of accountability.
They talk about strategy instead of acknowledging that the wrong person may be in a critical seat.
The more sensitive the underlying issue, the more likely the team is to describe it vaguely.
Clear language matters.
A problem cannot be solved properly until the team is willing to name it.
There is no clear owner
A leadership team can agree on a solution without deciding who is responsible for making it happen.
When everybody owns an action, nobody truly owns it.
Every decision should create clear accountability:
- Who owns the next step?
- What exactly needs to be completed?
- When is it due?
- How will the team know it is finished?
A To-Do should belong to one person, even when several people will contribute.
Shared accountability often becomes diluted accountability.
The solution is too complicated
Leadership teams can turn straightforward problems into elaborate projects.
The solution grows into a collection of meetings, policies, reports and software changes. Because the response is difficult to implement, progress slows and the original issue remains.
Good problem-solving should usually produce a simple, practical action.
Complex problems do not always require complex solutions.
Sometimes the answer is:
- Make the decision
- Clarify the expectation
- Change the process
- Have the conversation
- Assign the responsibility
- Stop doing something
- Move the person into the right seat
The best solution is often the one the team can execute consistently.
The decision was never truly made
Some leadership-team discussions end with apparent agreement, but individual members leave the room believing different things.
One person thinks the team made a final decision. Another believes it agreed to investigate further. Someone else assumes the founder will decide later.
The issue then returns because the conversation never reached a clear conclusion.
Before moving on, confirm:
“What have we decided?”
Then capture the decision in direct language.
Clarity in the room prevents confusion outside it.
The team does not follow through
A good solution without execution is only a good intention.
If agreed actions are not reviewed, leaders learn that commitments are optional. The team discusses the same issue again because the previous solution was never completed.
A strong weekly meeting pulse makes follow-through visible.
To-Dos are recorded, assigned and reviewed. Leaders either complete what they committed to or explain why they did not.
This is not bureaucracy.
It is accountability.
The process allows the problem to return
Some recurring issues are not isolated events. They are the predictable result of an inconsistent process.
If customer handovers repeatedly fail, the team may not need another conversation about communication. It may need a clearly documented handover process followed by everyone.
If new employees repeatedly struggle, the onboarding process may be unclear.
If invoices are regularly delayed, ownership of the billing process may be fragmented.
When people must remember what to do differently every time, the problem will eventually return.
A strong process makes the correct behaviour easier to repeat.
The team moves on too quickly
Leadership teams are busy. Once a reasonable action has been identified, there is pressure to move to the next issue.
But speed is not the same as resolution.
Before closing an issue, ask:
- Have we reached the root cause?
- Is the solution clear?
- Does one person own the next action?
- Is everyone genuinely aligned?
- Will this solution prevent the issue from returning?
- Have we addressed any uncomfortable people component?
If the answer to one of these questions is no, the issue may not be solved.
Solve it once
Within EOS®, leadership teams use the Issues Solving Track™:
- Identify
- Discuss
- Solve
The order matters.
Identify the real issue before discussing it. Keep the discussion focused on information that helps the team reach a decision. Then solve the issue with a clear conclusion or action.
The objective is not to have a brilliant discussion.
It is to make the issue go away forever.
Recurring issues contain useful information
When the same problem returns, do not simply add it to the agenda again.
Treat its return as evidence.
Something about the previous solution was incomplete. The team may have addressed the symptom, avoided the uncomfortable truth, failed to assign ownership or neglected to follow through.
Good leadership teams are capable of solving difficult problems.
Great leadership teams also develop the discipline to solve them permanently.
For practical information about EOS implementation in Perth, visit:
https://www.samkeats.com.au/eos-implementation-perth/
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