What Kind of Problem Are We Actually Looking At?

Christina Sitaras

Sep 1

5 min read

Organizations are very good at presenting us with problems.

A project is late. A client is unhappy. A team is struggling. Turnover is increasing. A new process is not being adopted.

The instinct is often to move quickly to the next question:

What should we do about it?

That instinct is understandable. Problems create pressure for action, and action creates a sense of progress.

But there is another question that comes first:

What kind of problem are we actually looking at?

Because what we first encounter is often not the problem itself.

It is evidence that something in the system is producing an outcome we did not expect.

Observation Is Not Diagnosis

Consider a project that is running behind schedule. The observation is relatively straightforward: the work is not progressing at the expected pace.

But why?

Perhaps the team does not have enough capacity.

Perhaps the necessary capability is missing.

Perhaps priorities keep changing.

Perhaps another team controls a critical dependency.

Perhaps decisions take too long to make.

Perhaps the project was unrealistic from the beginning.

Perhaps the team is doing exactly what the organization has incentivized it to do, even though that behaviour is slowing the project.

Each explanation describes a very different problem. And each would suggest a very different response.

Adding resources will not fix decision latency. Training will not resolve competing priorities. Stronger project management will not make an unrealistic commitment achievable. Changing the team may do very little if the conditions surrounding the team remain unchanged.

The visible outcome may be the same.

The problem underneath it may not be.

Problems Do Not Always Originate Where They Appear

This is one of the more difficult characteristics of organizations.

A problem can become visible in one part of the organization while originating somewhere else entirely.

An employee struggling to deliver may be experiencing unclear priorities.

A team repeatedly missing deadlines may be absorbing dependencies created elsewhere.

A function that appears resistant to change may be responding rationally to incentives that still reward the old behaviour.

A process problem may actually be a governance problem.

An execution problem may originate in a strategic choice.

This matters because organizations naturally tend to intervene where the problem is most visible.

If performance appears weak, address performance.

If a process is slow, redesign the process.

If adoption is low, increase training.

Sometimes that is exactly the right response. Sometimes it treats the place where the problem surfaced as though it were the source of the problem.

Diagnosis Requires Changing the Frame

Good diagnosis often requires looking at the same problem from more than one perspective.

What is happening within the immediate situation?

What patterns exist in the work itself?

What dependencies or decisions elsewhere affect the outcome?

What aspects of the operating model are shaping behaviour?

What broader organizational conditions might be contributing?

The purpose is not to make every problem bigger. It is to determine how big the problem actually is.

Some problems are local. A person may genuinely need additional knowledge or support. A workflow may genuinely need to be fixed. A decision may genuinely belong with one manager or team.

The danger is not in solving problems locally.

The danger is in assuming they are local before we have understood them.

More Diagnosis Is Not Always Better

There is an opposite failure.

Once we begin thinking systemically, almost any organizational problem can be connected to something larger.

A missed deadline can eventually lead us to priorities, governance, incentives, organizational design, strategy, leadership, culture and beyond.

Those connections may be real.

They may also be irrelevant to the decision that needs to be made today.

The objective of diagnosis is not complete understanding.

It is sufficient understanding for the decision in front of us.

Sometimes the immediate situation provides enough information to act. Sometimes the frame needs to broaden. And sometimes action cannot wait for the entire problem to be understood.

A client issue may need to be stabilized before its underlying causes are investigated.

A resource constraint may require an immediate trade-off while a larger capacity problem is examined.

A decision may need to be made provisionally because waiting for certainty would create greater risk than acting with incomplete information.

Good diagnosis therefore requires judgment not only about what to investigate, but how far to investigate before acting.

The First Decision Does Not Have to Solve the Whole Problem

This distinction becomes particularly important when problems cross organizational boundaries.

There is a tendency to treat diagnosis as though it must eventually produce a comprehensive solution. It does not.

Sometimes the decision in front of us is simply the first in a sequence.

Stabilize the immediate situation.

Clarify what is known.

Identify what remains uncertain.

Make the decision that can reasonably be made now.

Then create the conditions for the next decision to be better.

This is not an argument for postponing difficult problems.

It is an argument for distinguishing between what must be decided now and what needs to be understood next.

The quality of organizational judgment depends partly on knowing the difference.

Diagnostic Thinking Is an Organizational Capability

None of this thinking needs to begin at the top of an organization. In fact, organizations become more capable when it does not.

Someone encountering a problem can distinguish between what they observe and what they believe may be causing it.

A manager can recognize when a recurring team problem may sit outside the team's control. A functional leader can see when several local problems may reflect the same organizational pattern. People throughout the organization can recognize when the problem in front of them requires a broader frame.

This does not mean everyone will arrive at the same diagnosis.

Nor does it mean every problem needs to be escalated.

It means the organization becomes better at interpreting what it is experiencing, rather than simply passing symptoms upward.

That capability compounds.

Problems arrive with more context.

Assumptions become easier to surface.

Local knowledge informs broader decisions.

And people become better able to distinguish between what they can resolve within their own scope and what requires integration elsewhere.

The Question Before the Solution

Organizations need action.

They need people willing to make decisions, solve problems and move work forward. But speed of action and quality of intervention are not the same thing.

When we move too quickly from observation to solution, we risk solving the problem as it first appeared rather than the problem that actually exists.