When a recurring problem shows up in a business, the first instinct is usually to focus on the people involved: Someone needs more training. Someone needs more accountability. Someone needs to communicate better. Someone needs to pay closer attention.
Occasionally, those things are true. More often, however, the problem is not the people. The problem is the design.
This is one of the most difficult lessons for business owners to learn because it challenges an assumption many of us carry without realizing it: if smart, capable people are repeatedly struggling with the same issue, someone must be doing something wrong.
When the same problem appears over and over again, involving different employees, situations, and circumstances, the more useful question is not “Who made the mistake?” It is, “Why does the system continue to produce this result?”
Property management offers countless examples. A maintenance request falls through the cracks. The immediate reaction is often to focus on the individual who missed it. But if maintenance requests are regularly falling through the cracks, the issue is probably larger than one person. The workflow may be unclear. Ownership may be ambiguous. Follow-up expectations may be inconsistent.
The same pattern appears with owner communication. If multiple team members struggle to provide timely updates, leadership may conclude that communication skills are lacking. In reality, the problem may be that no clear standard for communication exists. Employees cannot consistently meet expectations that have never been clearly defined.
Leasing presents another example. Many companies experience repeated challenges with application approvals, exceptions, and special circumstances. Each individual situation feels unique, but over time, a pattern emerges. Team members continue seeking approval because the organization has never clearly established where decision-making authority begins and ends.
When leaders view every operational challenge as a people problem, they spend their time correcting behavior. When leaders view challenges as design problems, they begin examining the systems that shape behavior.
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That distinction matters. People operate within the environment they are given. They respond to incentives, expectations, workflows, and accountability structures. While individual performance always plays a role, organizational design has an enormous influence on the results people produce.
This is why some problems seem impossible to solve through additional effort alone. Teams work harder. Managers follow up more frequently. Owners become more involved. Yet the same issues continue to surface because the underlying structure remains unchanged.
A poorly designed process can make talented employees appear ineffective. On the other hand, a well-designed process can help average performers achieve remarkably consistent results.
One of the most productive exercises a business owner can undertake is to identify a recurring frustration and examine it through a different lens. Instead of asking who is responsible for the latest mistake, ask what conditions allowed the mistake to occur in the first place.
Was ownership clearly defined? Were expectations documented? Did the workflow make success easy? Was accountability visible? Did the process rely on memory instead of structure?
These questions often reveal opportunities that would otherwise remain hidden.
The goal of leadership is not to create a business that functions only when exceptional people are present. The goal is to create an organization where good people can consistently succeed because the system supports them. That requires a shift in focus.
The most effective leaders spend less time trying to fix people and more time improving the environment in which people operate. Because while people influence outcomes, systems influence people. And most operational problems are design problems long before they become personnel problems.
— Abi 💜
In our paid articles, Todd breaks down exactly how to build workflows, systems, and automations that keep work from coming back to you — using tools like LeadSimple, Jotform, and more, in a way you can actually implement inside your business.
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The views expressed in this publication are the views of the author only and not any advertisers, sponsors, partners, affiliates, or organizations that the author may be a member of.
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