The problem you can see may not be the problem you need to solve

Problems have a habit of appearing in one part of a business even when they started somewhere else.

That is one of the reasons they can be so difficult to solve.

Weak sales naturally draw attention to the sales team. Poor profit sends everyone towards the costs. High staff turnover becomes a recruitment or management issue. A founder working far too many hours is told to delegate more.

Sometimes the obvious explanation is the right one.

But not always.

A sales team can work incredibly hard and still struggle if customers no longer see enough difference between what the business offers and what everyone else offers. Costs can be cut repeatedly without solving a margin problem caused by poor pricing. Managers can be told to take more responsibility while knowing that important decisions will eventually be taken back from them.

I tend to become suspicious when the same issue keeps returning.

A change is made, things improve for a while and then, a few months later, almost the same problem appears again. At that point I start wondering whether the business has been dealing with what it can see rather than what is causing it.

Take staff turnover. Recruitment might be part of the answer, but perhaps people are joining unclear roles or finding that the business they were recruited into is not quite the one they meet when they arrive.

Or take a founder who has no time. Better diary management may help, but it will not solve much if too many decisions, relationships and pieces of knowledge still sit with one person.

Businesses do not operate in neat compartments. The work you sell affects what you have to deliver. What you deliver affects the people you need. The people you have affect what the founder ends up doing. One decision in one part of the company can create a problem somewhere else entirely.

That is why, when something refuses to go away, I would be inclined to look beyond the place where it is showing up.

What changed before the problem started?

Where else can you see the same pattern?

Have you tried to fix this before?

If so, why did it come back?

There is nothing particularly clever about those questions, but they often take you further than another quick solution.

The issue creating the most noise in the business is not always the issue that needs your attention first.