Welcome to Friday 411, issue #124. In 4 minutes, with 1 insight and 1 action, you’ll avoid wasting time on ineffective solutions to your business problems.
1 Insight:
The biggest problem in your business might not be the problem itself, but how you respond to it.
Imagine you visit your doctor and say, “My stomach hurts.” Without asking another question, the doctor writes a prescription for antibiotics, hands it to you, and says, “Take these for a week.”
The medicine might make you feel better for a few days. But what if the pain was from appendicitis? Or a food allergy? Or stress? You’d be back in the office in no time—only worse off.
That’s how we see many leaders deal with problems in their businesses. When a challenge pops up, they jump into problem-solving mode and throw a “solution” at it before they’ve fully understood what’s going on.
The ability to solve problems quickly is one reason they promoted you into leadership. But that same ability could cause you and your team headaches as you deal with the same problems over and over.
There are four common mistakes that leaders make when they encounter problems. If you make any of these mistakes, you can almost guarantee that you won’t solve the problem.
You might even make the problem worse.
Mistake 1: You React Too Quickly
Your instinct is to fix every problem now. You spot a drop in sales, a spike in turnover, or a missed deadline, and you immediately push out a new policy, design a new process, or assign someone to fix it fast.
Quick action often puts a band-aid over the wound without healing it. You solve this version of the problem but ignore the root cause, so it comes back.
Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, noted that cause and effect are not necessarily closely related in time and space. In other words, today’s problems might result from decisions made months ago. When you respond too hastily, you don’t consider factors beyond those that have occurred recently.
Slow down enough to understand the problem. The better you understand the problem, the easier it is to solve.
Mistake 2: You Misuse Data
You’re surrounded by data. Sales figures. Customer feedback. Employee engagement scores. Website analytics. The challenge isn’t finding data—it’s using it well.
You can misuse data in three common ways:
1. Ignoring data altogether.
Some leaders rely entirely on gut instinct. And while intuition is valuable, making decisions without consulting the facts can lead to costly mistakes. It’s like driving at night without headlights—you might make it home safely, but you’re far more likely to hit something along the way.
2. Focusing on one data point.
Some leaders make huge decisions based on a single piece of information. You get one negative review and, instead of considering all customer input, change everything. Or, without considering seasonal trends, marketing spend, or supply chain issues, you cut a product line because last month’s sales dipped.
3. Drowning in data.
At the other extreme, some leaders gather so many reports, dashboards, and metrics that they become paralyzed. Data begins to complicate the issues and becomes an excuse to procrastinate.
Mistake 3: You Think One-Dimensionally
Every problem in your business has two dimensions: the business dimension and the leadership dimension.
- The business dimension is determined using data to help you understand factors that contributed to the current problem. You use data to understand trends, identify root causes, explore options, and execute solutions. But don’t stop there.
- The leadership dimension involves people—starting with you. Every business problem starts as a leadership problem. In our Unleashed Leadership framework, we’ve identified seven leadership issues that cause most organizational breakdowns: Character, Competence, Capacity, Clarity, Community, Culture, and Consistency.
If you fix the business dimension without addressing the leadership dimension, the problem will inevitably reappear—because you haven’t addressed the human element.
Mistake 4: You Overcomplicate the Solution
Few problems require you to reinvent the wheel. You don’t need to overhaul processes, rewrite playbooks, or launch new initiatives for every problem. As Peter Senge, who we quoted earlier, said, “small, well-focused actions can sometimes produce significant, enduring improvements, if they’re in the right place.”
We once worked with a company losing hundreds of thousands of dollars annually because their front line wasn’t delivering on contracted services. At first, the leader tried to motivate the team. Then he instituted a new reward system. Then he hired more staff.
Instead of these drastic solutions, we helped them identify one habit that they needed to change. It took them about 5 minutes per day to do this habit. That little habit helped them earn back multiple six figures every year.
Look for small actions done consistently over time that can produce big results.
How to Stop the Problem Cycle
The next time a problem pops up — which will probably happen today — resist the urge to fix it immediately. Instead:
- Slow down.
- Look at the data.
- Examine both the business and the leadership issues.
- Create a simple solution.
1 Action:
The next time you face a problem, take 24 hours to implement the four steps above.